Gertrud, Murray, Gill, Iain and Lucy… family, friends, running colleagues, business colleagues and clients.

I am sure that you, like me have been looking for reason, for logic trying to rationalise the events of late – and like me can find no answers – almost no sense to this and it is at these time s that I have to turn to the scriptures (the word of God) and Isaiah 55 vs 8- 9 come to mind where it says (God speaking) “that My ways are not your ways………” and so my faith and trust in Jesus Christ holds me firm and that the Sovereignty of God is my anchor.

You might ask who Kevin is as I am not even from Durban – but Alastair is my cousin – his step grandmother and my mother in law are the same person, making him my cousin. However I guess that over the years he really became my friend. I also through the marriage to Gertrud have a lot more cousins?!!

I met Alastair in the mid to late 80’s when he came to Cape Town to run the 2 oceans marathon which I think he ran 9 times. I remember meeting Greg – one of the first friends who came to CT to run. Later of course he came with his girlfriends – each of whom stayed with us – until Gertrud who we knew was the one – whom he later married. That does not mean that anyone was better or worse – it’s just they were a match.

We are here to remember Alastair. I am reminded of the passage in the gospel of Luke- about the parable of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son. I am not here to talk about that but rather that it reminded me that there are 2 sides to a coin and maybe some of you have only really seen the one side – but I have been privileged to experience both.

Alastair could be so much fun – and he had plenty of that. He could also be very frustrating and challenging. Children loved him.  

 There was always much light hearted banter around – but then there were also the many serious discussions. Alastair loved to debate and discuss.

 While I did not really know him on the work front I could imagine what it was like. Pedantic, demanding, hard working, straight talking but also caring and compassionate. If I ever had the need of the services that Alastair offered I would most definitely had every confidence in using him. He worked hard.

 Alastair was frugal yet generous – frugal as his 15 year old car bears testimony to but at the same time he was very generous – and I am sure that many here today will bear testimony to that. But Alastair was not just generous with material matters or finances – but also with his time he gave to people. My own personal experience was on the running front. You might know that Al’s best time for the half marathon was about 78 minutes – which is less than 4 mins per km and mine was 2 hours – yet when we ran some together he would wait for me and finish together – encouraging me all the way. Of course that did not always happen and he was an excellent hill runner and there were time when I saw him powering his way up those hills – with those muscular legs – and those big calf muscles.

 Alastair had many friends BUT he was also very private.

 He had the most enquiring mind – he asked questions, he debated, he argued, he discussed – BUT he also listened. I can remember sitting in the lounge till the early hours of the morning discussing many things – like marriage, selfish love, self-less love. We discussed books we had read or should read, and particularly over the last 6 years we had many discussions over the Christian faith. There were many questions and Alastair always looked for reason.

 It is here that while I was preparing for this ceremony that I felt I needed to look to the scriptures and I felt that Jeremiah 29 vs 12-13 was appropriate. Imagine how surprised I was that when you look at the brochure – you will find exactly the same verses that Gertrud had chosen referred to including vs 11. I would like to read it and it should come up on the screen. This was when God was speaking to the Israelites through the prophet Jeremiah. (New King James Version) “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for me with all your heart” This I guess is when all the head knowledge you have moves to your heart and this is what I could call faith.

I was privileged to know the man who still had the inner child present…….

He was

Fun but serious
Demanding yet caring
Intolerant of wrongdoing yet loving and compassionate

A man whose integrity was never in doubt.

Getting back to the coin – the 2 sides - joy and sorrow – that today we are sorrowful as we mourn the passing of Alastair – but we can also be joyous as we celebrate his life.

Your brother has not left
he is around the place -

he has just gone
outside for a while

he'll be back
he has a joke to tell you.

He's saying he's off
that there is somewhere to visit

but he's not leaving really,
it's not possible, you're brothers.

He's talking to your
        mother
and giving your father
        a hand
he's talking to himself
        as you do.

This is time for him
to do other things - go home

for a while, sort things out,
see the neighbours

but he'll be here.
He'll keep a sweet eye on his wife

and you will hear him laugh
now and then

when he drops in
to share secrets with you -

and remind you, he's
still up to mischief.

...

Funeral of Alastair Lomas-Walker
Pastor Jean-Ray Knighton Fitt
Westville Baptist Church
7 November 2009    

Today is a very sad occasion, but it is also a very special occasion.

It’s a time that we mourn the passing of our friend or family member, but it’s also day we celebrate his life and say “Thank you God for Alastair, a man who was generous, who found his meaning in life in what he did for other people, a clever man, a hard worker, a man we loved.”

I must say that I feel very honoured to be standing in front of all of you today, leading this funeral service of a great man. And so I want to welcome all of you today to share with us in celebrating the life of Alastair Lomas-Walker and mourning his passing.

Jesus said “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.” At the darkest and loneliest times of our lives, if we can find the comfort of Jesus, we find something deeper than just the easing of pain—we glimpse the object of our heart’s deepest yearning, the presence of Almighty God.

Hymn: Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Iain and Kevin are going to come and give tributes to Alastair, after that we are going to play a song for you and I want to invite you to close your eyes and listen to the words and make it your prayer of dedication.

Tribute

Dedication

Song: Lord take up your Holy Throne

Hymn: Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah.

Sermon

 Alastair was a man with a deep sense of spirituality, and also a mind that struggled with questions about life and about God, and how do we make sense of all this stuff.  I’m told he particularly enjoyed my sermons, perhaps there was some sense of connection there because I find myself the same really – wanting to experience God’s presence, wanting to know him more intimately, searching for him – and at the same time struggling with things that just don’t always make sense to us—what about suffering? Why is God so often silent when we call out to him? Why does he allow evil to dominate and destroy? Sometimes I really struggle with doubt about this person we call God.

The Sunday before last Alastair was at church here at WBC, and he got into a conversation with a couple of guys about predestination.  

Predestination is just a fancy word for the question “Does God decide how everything is going to happen in advance or not?”  Of course, if he does we are all just puppets in a great cosmic play, and free will is a complete hoax – and if he doesn’t, can he really be God after all? 

But if he does control absolutely everything, why does he make people suffer?  And if he does, why do many people live and die without the chance to believe in him?  And if he does, why does he do bad things to good people?

Now theologians and academics have debated the issue of predestination for centuries, in fact probably for millennia, and they will probably carry on trying to understand and explain how God  does or doesn’t control the movement of every atom in this universe ad nauseum, ad infinitum – which is just a fancy way of saying “forever”.

And so Alastair and Stuart and Richard never reached a conclusion about predestination that Sunday, but Alastair decided to come and see John Benn, to get his take on this important issue.  He was going to come during the next week, but he never made the appointment, because that week he suffered a major stroke and a few days later he died.

As I pondered this little chain of events of the past two weeks, the profound irony of this story struck me.  Did God know? Did God decide?  Is this what God wanted to happen? I don’t know, and I suppose I will never understand the way God is or why things happen as they do.

But suddenly the baffling question of predestination takes an extremely personal form. It’s no longer a question of how things happen out there, why the universe moves the way it does. Its no longer theory … no suddenly it’s about us, about you and me, and today its particularly about Alastair, and Gertrud, and Iain and Gill and Murrayand the rest of the family.

“Why did God allow a young, intelligent, caring man to die so tragically, so suddenly, so unexpectedly?  And does God even care?” Sometimes I wish I knew the answer to that question, and sometimes I’m glad I don’t.

But this is what I have learned from tragedies in my own life, and from watching other people face tragedy:  I think that we respond to God in one of two ways, either we see him as the cosmic tyrant: someone who only cares about himself, the cruel chess-master who moves us on his chessboard with no regard for who we are or what we feel.

If you’re looking at God like that, its going to make you bitter. Some people become angry and bitter with God, its like they shake their fists at God and they say “why did you take this person away from me?” “Why did you let this happen to me?” “Don’t you care about me?”

Now I think God understands that, I think he’s big enough to take that … but really, we are all so small, so insignificant, so fragile, our minds can’t even begin to conceive of the extent of God’s power, or wisdom, or his plans.

Paul says in Ro 11:33-36:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. 

How unsearcheable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out!

Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counsellor

Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?

From him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be Glory forever

Its really like trying to knock down a great mountain with your fists.  But God is just much too big for us, he is just too immovable for us and all we do is hurt ourselves more.  And bitterness has a way of getting stuck in our hearts and poisoning our guts.

There are some people who see God as a cosmic tyrant, and then there are other people who see him as a compassionate father, someone who feels with us, someone who opens his arms up to us and says “Come sit on my lap and let me comfort you.” It’s a whole different paradigm … it changes the way we experience him and how we cope with pain and tragedy.

Jer 29: 13 says: “And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.”  This passage has been the theme of preparation for this service today, but in many ways it was the theme of the last few months of Alastair’s life. And its also one of the important themes in the Bible.

Dt 4:29: But if, from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Pr8:17I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.

Mt 7:7 Ask & it will be given to you, seek & you will find, knock & the door will be opened to you.

Heb 11:6 tells us that God rewards those who earnestly seek him

 Anyone can seek God and find Him.

These words in Jeremiah are spoken by God to his people who had turned away from him.  They had done the most evil and detestable things: their lives were lived in total disregard for social justice they openly oppressed poor people, they didn’t care about God, they only cared about their own luxuries and comforts, and in their worship of other gods, they’d got involved in all kinds of weird sexual rituals, and human sacrifice … and they had just shut out of their minds every good thing that God has done.  And the consequences were just as God had predicted, their society collapsed around them, the Babylonian armies destroyed their cities and resettle them in another country, for from Jerusalem, far from God’s temple, far from their homeland.

But this is the promise God gives to these people: when you seek me, you will find me when you search for me with all your heart.

There is no-one too far away from the grace of God, there is no-one that is so bad that God says … “You can search as much as you like, but you will never find me.” In Ac 2:39 Peter tells us that God’s promise is for everyone, those who are near by and those who are far away, for everyone God will call. Jesus says, “Come to me all of you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest”

I’ve found that in the darkest times of my life, when I am broken and hurting, and tired and worn out, and confused … the place I find the most rest and comfort is in God’s presence.  Its like he is a big loving father who says to me, climb up here and let me give you a big hug and tell me what is going on.  And I can tell him, God I’m angry about this, and I’m confused about that and I feel helpless and vulnerable and I need you to comfort me.  That’s when I find God, that’s when I am most sure of his presence, when my doubts and confusions about him fade away.

Maybe you are in pain today, and maybe you need to seek him.  I’d like to encourage you to turn your mind back to him every time you feel the stabbing of grief and say “God, please will you comfort me” Maybe take an hour or two and go to a quiet place and have a good long honest talk to him.  None of us should be too important or too self-sufficient to come to him like little children.

If you don’t even know anything about this God, if you have no kind of relationship with him at all, perhaps you feel that there is great gulf separating you and God, perhaps you are so aware of the sins you have committed and the guilt is pressing down on your mind.  Jesus is the one who took those sins onto himself when he died for us, and he made himself the bridge over the great gulf.  And if you ask him to take those sins away from you and lead you to God, he will take you on a journey where you learn to know God and be intimate with him.

No-one is too far away from God, to seek him and find him.

We must search with all our heart.

There is a second part of this verse though that completes the picture … “when you seek me, you will find me when you search for me with all your heart.”

Jesus told a parable explaining the kingdom ofGod and he said: Mt 13:44-46

I’m told the vast majority of people who win the lottery have spent all the money within a couple of years, and their lives have actually not changed at all.  If you get something too easily, you don’t appreciate it, you don’t let it really change your life.  But people who have worked hard for what they have generally are wiser in the way the use it.

It’s the same with lots of things, it’s the same old story we heard from adults when we were kids, and now we say the same thing to our kids … ‘when I was young we used to walk to school, when I was young we could only afford to eat meat once a week, I only got my first pair of shoes when I was 16.”  We’re saying, “You just don’t appreciate what you have because you got it too easily!”

But that is just human, and I think that’s why sometimes God keeps himself a little hidden from us, he wants us to yearn for him, he wants us to search for him … because only then will we really appreciate him when we find him.  Maybe that also gives us the tiniest glimpse into the mind of God.  We run after all sorts of things thinking they will satisfy us, but they don’t. But sometimes God allows a bit of pain to help us to see more clearly, to make us yearn for him, to make us turn to him and run to him … because when we do that, we find the thing that ours hearts long for the most.

Jesus said: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

We only really “get” something when we give ourselves wholeheartedly to find it, and it is only as valuable to us as the effort we have put into finding it.

It seems to me that the level of intimacy with God that we attain, is directly dependant on how earnestly and fervently we search for him. So when God is hard to find, or when confusion and grief seems to eclipse him from your view – carry on looking for him, because he promises that …

“when you seek me, you will find me when you search for me with all your heart.”

Epilogue:

We were reflecting on the life of Alastair this week, and particularly over the last few years and months … how he so much wanted to find God is a real way, how he wrestled with the questions about God, how his heart was turned to God saying … I want to know you more than I do.

Gertrud said to me: “Alastair was a searcher, he was looking for God … and so God came and fetched him”

And so now, he is with Jesus in the place that the Bible calls paradise, because after death that inner part of us that we call the soul or the spirit, that part of us lives on never separated from God’s eternal love, and waits for the day that God will re-clothe us all in new bodies when Jesus comes again.  And then we will all be together again and live with him in the new heavens and the new earth … and the days of this life will just be distant shadowy memories compared to the glory of that life which will go on and on forever.

And so for now, whether we live or die, whether we enjoy an easy life or we suffer through painful experiences, God is holding us in the palm of his hand. You can see him as a cosmic tyrant, and fill your heart with bitterness, or you can experience him as a compassionate father. Because he is calling to us … come nearer to me, learn to search for me with all your heart, and as you do that you will find me and you will find the object of your heart’s deepest yearning and desire.

Contemplation and Remembrance:

Today we want to look back on Alastair’s life in a quiet and contemplative way, and we’re going to take the next five minutes to look at some pictures of his life and remember what he means to us.  As you look through these pictures and they spark of memories, why don’t you say quiet prayer to God for each one … Thank you God for giving us that time together, thank you for the man that he was, and still is …

Doxology of Jude
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,

To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.