Funeral Homily for Frank Stapp-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
The Rev Melanie Lemburg
Funeral Homily_Frank Stapp
March 13, 2024
It’s a well-known fact here at St.
Thomas by anyone who knew Frank and had any conversation about music with him
that Frank loved the English sacred music composer, John Rutter. I can remember Frank talking about this with
me at length when we planned Marion’s funeral, and I know members of our choir,
including Tripp, our organist, often heard from Frank about his love of all
things John Rutter. I talked with him on
at least a couple of occasions about how he wanted the choir to do more John
Rutter anthems (which can be quite challenging). And Frank’s absolute favorite John Rutter
anthem is titled For the Beauty of the Earth. He kept urging Tripp to have the choir sing
it, and just before his death, Frank just happened to leave copies of the sheet
music for Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth on Tripp’s desk.
So, I listened to Rutter’s For the
Beauty of the Earth, recently, in thinking about Frank and this
homily. It’s this beautiful, lilting
song, with high voices and a flute that is reminiscent of birdsong (I’m sure
that’s not coincidental considering Frank’s love for birdwatching), and the
chorus is “Lord of all, to thee we raise/ This our joyful hymn of praise.”
It occurred to me as I listened to this
lovely song, that this chorus captures how Frank lived his life. Frank lived his life like it was a joyful
hymn of praise raised up to God who he knew and loved, and in that living, he
touched so many peoples’ lives with his kindness and his generosity.
Frank
took great delight in people and in experiences, and he shared that delight
freely, thoughtfully, and abundantly. He
would often come find me at hospitality time after church to talk about a specific
point in that day’s sermon and how it impacted him. He would also remind me
that he kept a file with a copy of every sermon I had ever preached here, so
for his family who are going through his things… I’m sorry!
He was well-beloved among his
friends—the coffee group, his karaoke buddies, and so many others. He always had a new joke to tell. He cherished his family-his children and
grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Y’all were his deepest delight! And he was known and loved by everyone here at
St. Thomas with special relationships built through many faithful years of
singing in the choir. (They say that
Frank was the welcome committee for the choir.
He was also a faithful taxi service for several of its members.) And Frank cultivated strong relationships
with the children and youth of St. Thomas through his many years of
volunteering for Vacation Bible school. Frank
also took great delight in volunteering for any skits that we needed help with,
and his most recent, and perhaps most memorable role which he played with great
relish was the evil butcher in our St. Nicholas skit this past December. (The picture on the back of his funeral
bulletin is from a skit in 2022 Vacation Bible school which was super-hero
themed.)
Frank never seemed to meet a
stranger. He told me about how he first
met Marion when he was deployed in England.
He saw her in a pub and wanted to meet her, but he didn’t want to just
go up to her out of the blue, so he searched the whole pub for someone who knew
her to introduce them (and said he had a heck of a time finding someone)! Can you just imagine how many people Frank
must have introduced himself to trying to find someone to introduce him to
Marion?! And Frank shared with me that
Marion taught him to see beauty in ordinary things, and this is one thing he
delighted in in their marriage.
There
is really no way to know just how many lives Frank impacted over the course of
his life—with his career in the US Airforce for 21 years, his work as a social
worker, his cherished relationships with his family here and abroad, and all of
his friendships he made here and in other places in his life. He truly lived the verse “For the joy of
human love,/ Brother, sister, parent, child,/ Friends on earth, and friends
above,/ For all gentle thoughts and mild:/
Lord of all, to thee we raise/ This our joyful hymn of praise.”
His death has been hard. He was so vibrant and engaged until his heart
attack, and then suddenly, he just wasn’t here.
And he has left behind a gaping hole in all our lives. His death is truly a loss in our lives, and
we gather together today to acknowledge that and to mourn.
And we also gather together to remember
the hope of our faith, the hope of Frank’s faith, the mysterious truth of
Easter—that death is not the end, but a change; that through Jesus’s own death
and resurrection, God has shown us, once and for all, that God’s love is
stronger than absolutely anything, even death.
We gather to remember our hope that we will be reunited with Frank and
all who have gone before us to feast all together at God’s table and to sing
together in God’s heavenly chorus. And
we gather to give thanks for Frank, for all the ways that he loved us, how he
taught us to delight in each other and the world around us, and for how he
showed us how to live our lives as hymns of grateful praise to God.
So in closing, I’ll play for us all
Frank’s favorite song, For the Beauty of the Earth by John Rutter
performed by The Cambridge Singers.[i]
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