To Know or be Known?
It is an image that is recognizable to so many of us who have been watching television since 1956, the year it became an annual broadcast event. Seeing it always makes me smile, even as my eyes unavoidably moisten. No wonder the 1939 Wizard of Oz remains one of the most watched and loved films of all time. The wizard, portrayed by actor Frank Morgan, is pictured here presenting the sentimental Tin Man, Jack Haley in real life, with a clock symbolizing that he did, after all, have a heart. And in that gesture the wizard left us with one of the most memorable lines in motion picture history:
A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.
A few weeks ago the wizard’s voice spoke to me as I was preparing to do something that is rare for me these days: officiate at a funeral. While I have assumed this role nearly 100 times in my ministerial life, most occurred long ago and far away when I was a parish pastor and nursing home chaplain. So it was with a degree of nostalgia and loyalty that I accepted a request to preside over the memorial services for a man who was both my friend and the principal benefactor of the school I was privileged to direct in Amarillo for more than a decade.
What can one offer on such an occasion that helps bring closure and comfort to a family saying its final goodbyes to a patriarch who has been their strength for decades? What should one say to the gathered friends for whom this man was such a difference maker? Friends, family, even clergy who offer their sentiments to those who mourn all face the daunting task of expressing words that are equal to the moment and do justice to the deceased.
Just as no two people are identical, no two memorial occasions are the same. The passing of an elder parent and community pillar evoke both sadness and thanksgiving. When death releases a person from the sufferings of an agonizing terminal condition, comfort comes in the relief now granted to both the deceased and to those who’ve sacrificed in caring for them. But when death snatches a young life from grieving parents, whether from illness, accident or a self-inflicted cry for help—the tragedy of the moment brings us neither comfort nor satisfactory explanation.
We may be inclined to eulogize the departed with superlatives that, however well-intentioned, paint a picture unrecognizable to those who knew both the better and worse angels of the deceased’s real nature. Clergy sometimes succumb to the temptation to offer their theological judgment of the merits of lives they now declare are entering paradise or some other state of eternal recompense. Yet at the end of the day—or in this case the end of a life—whether it was well-lived or full of sorrow and turmoil—what can any of us really claim to know about another person that allows us to pronounce a benediction that is, in fact, bene and true?
A few years ago I overheard a comment voiced between friends as they spoke of one of their parent’s impending death. My colleague’s tearful words revealed an inner fear of what would become of her father when his eyes closed for the last time: “But he doesn’t know the Lord, ” her anguished sobs laying bare the uncertainty pressing on her heart. Without much pre-thought, yet borne of the many years I have grappled with the questions that dying poses to each of us, I offered what I could in reply. “But the Lord knows him—and isn’t that what is really important?”
I was later told that these words were more comforting than I might have imagined they could be for someone whose spirits were so troubled. While I’d like to think this sentiment was my own, I suspect it was a less poetic rendering of the affirmation of faith written by the Apostle Paul in Romans 14:8:
If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
I take heart in such confident witness from a first-century Christian martyr. It reminds me in tone and spirit of the words scripted for the wizard to a “surprised by joy” man of tin. To know or be known? To love or be loved? By which of these paired qualities should we be judged? Which should we seek to attain, value and embrace? While we may measure our worth in those things which seem within our power to grasp and possibly even possess—knowledge and love—could it be that the ultimate measure of our character is found in what others see and treasure in us? And for those who wish to see a meaning in life beyond what our senses can validate, doesn’t the ultimate measure of our worth rest in what God knows of us, and how God loves us?
From the moment of our birth our identities are forged by and interconnected with others. To be human, then, is to know—at some level—other people, and to love—at some depth—others like us. Yet knowing people is as much of a challenge as is knowing anything else in this vast universe—we are always a bit in the dark, a bit limited in what we can understand with certainty. For everything we claim to know is processed through and filtered by our own experiences, intellectual capacities and emotions. We push ourselves to know things as they really are—objectively—yet as thinking and feeling subjects our knowledge is always mediated by and through what we perceive to be true and real. The Apostle Paul has left us yet another bit of wisdom to help steer us from any pretense we may have to knowing more than is humanly possible: For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (I Corinthians 13:12)
Each time I am given the opportunity to share my memories and impressions of another life now being laid to its final rest, I do so with the humble realization that my knowledge of this person—their joys, their sufferings, their private thoughts and aspirations, their inner strength and personal struggles, their failings and virtues—reveals more about me than about the one I’m trying to eulogize. Perhaps that is as it should be lest we fall into the trap of self-idolization. I therefore take heart in the belief that, even if my knowledge and love are limited, there is One who both knows and loves this person, indeed loves all of us, as we really are. And it is this faith that gives me confidence and hope in commending those whom this life can no longer support to this very One, whom most of us conceive as God, the source from which all that we experience as love and truth has its beginning and ending.
