Don Cram

At your funeral, the little things you did will be what people remember. Your obituary will name the big things, the accomplishments and beneficence. But at your funeral it is the little kindnesses that will be most remembered.

The Gospels, in some sense obituaries of Jesus Christ, lay out His great accomplishment for us on the cross and also tell of His resurrection, the feeding of the five thousand, and the sermon on the mount.

But, the Gospels devote far more words to describing the little things Jesus did, His hand extended to heal, His heart reaching out with forgiving words, His welcome to little children.

You may never have heard of Henry Liddell (pronounced “Little”), but a little thing he did has touched you. Born in 1811, dying in 1898, he was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford for nearly forty years. That was a very great thing, but it is not what most touched you from his life.

The Oxford English Dictionary, the greatest dictionary ever published for any language, now in twenty ponderous volumes and three supplemental volumes, might never have happened if it were not for Dean Liddell. Or, at best, it might have been called the Cambridge English Dictionary.

Dean Liddell was the head of a group called the Delegates of Oxford University and the Oxford University Press. James Murray, the first Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, who was ready to give up on Oxford and go to Cambridge University for support, would never have gotten the go ahead with Oxford were it not for the support of Dean Liddell among the Delegates. Liddell’s was a great contribution to this greatest of works in English. But that is not what touched you from his life.

Dean Liddell also edited another dictionary, this one in Greek. His Greek-English Lexicon has been used by all students of Classical Greek for almost one hundred forty years. It contains and carefully defines every word from every ancient Greek document, from the works of Homer and Hesiod, to all the Classical Greek authors, to the complete Old Testament Septuagint and the full New Testament. It is absolutely invaluable in the study of Greek. But, even if you read and study Greek, his Lexicon is not what has most touched you from Liddell’s life.

Y0u will have heard of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That was really just the preface to Henry Liddell’s complete History of Ancient Rome. But, that, too, was not the thing about him that has most touched you.

But neither this great Greek Lexicon, nor his Roman history, nor his place in starting the even greater Oxford English Dictionary, nor even his long years of  service as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford is why you should remember him.

He is remembered today primarily for a little thing, a simple kindness. And that little thing was talked about at his funeral more than anything else he did.

Mourners remembered that on a Sunday afternoon Dean Liddell took his children to row up the river out of Oxford for a picnic. His little kindness was to invite along to their picnic a poor, struggling mathematics tutor who lived alone at Oxford. “It is going to be a lovely day today, don’t you think?” Liddell said to the math tutor as he motioned form him to join them in the boat.

After the picnic they all laid back on the grassy bank and read books, all but one, Liddell’s youngest daughter who could not yet read. She was getting very tired of sitting by her sister on that grassy bank and having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?

So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a chain of daisies would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking all the necessary daisies, when, suddenly, a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her through the grass.

And the little girl, named Alice Liddell, turned to the mathematics tutor, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who later took the pen name Lewis Carroll, and asked him to tell her a story. And he did. He started it with little Alice on the grassy bank on a hot summer’s day and a white rabbit, although, in Dodgson’s version the White Rabbit was seen to take out of its waistcoat pocket a watch and to mutter, “Oh dear!  Oh dear! I shall be too late!”

Later that same year, as a Christmas present to little Alice, and to return Dean Liddell’s kindness, Dodgson wrote out the whole tale and sent it to them, with thirty-seven of his own drawings, under the title Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The book has never been out of print and is now available in 150 languages.

Dean Liddell is remembered by few as the progenitor of the Oxford English Dictionary and by some as the author of the Greek-English Lexicon, and he is memorialized at Christ Church, Oxford, and there are two streets in Ascot now with the names Liddell Way and Carroll Crescent, but every English-speaking child, young or old, probably including you, is thankful that he did that one little thing, that simple kindness, of asking a lonely colleague to join them on a Sunday afternoon.

Little things, little kindnesses: in the end they weigh greatly.

It’s going to be a lovely day today, don’t you think?

Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish prisoner in Auschwitz, deeply touched those he met in the prison camp. Of the many thousands who entered Auschwitz, only five percent survived to be liberated by the Allies. But most of those who knew Kolbe personally in the camp survived.

Pope John Paul II beatified Kolbe on October 17, 1971, in St Peter’s in Rome before a crowd of thousands, many of whom were Auschwitz survivors.

Auschwitz was run by a hellish mix of dehumanization and terror. Thousands were gassed to death. But the prisoners knew there were even worse ways to die.  Each morning the prisoners had to line up to be counted. If one was missing, ten were selected at random for death, a slow, torturous death by starvation. All the prisoners awoke with that random, unpredictable terror in their consciousnesses.

Kolbe was among ten such sentenced to death.

As they were led to the concrete death house, Kolbe carried another prisoner who has unable to walk, so overcome was he by terror and anguish. Outside the door the ten were ordered to strip off their ragged prison uniforms, and naked they went down some stairs and into a barren concrete cell.

In the foul, dark air the men went into a frenzy of screaming and despair and cursing. In that darkest corner of the hell that was Auschwitz, it was this psychological anguish that killed most men before thirst and hunger could, usually on the first or second day.

We know what happened with these ten men because a bi-lingual prisoner named Meleshko, who was required by the Nazis to keep daily records of deaths at the camp, survived Auschwitz to tell the world.

As the others screamed and cursed, Kolbe stood and prayed. The others became silent.  He began to sing Christian hymns.  Slowly the others joined in. Kolbe told them about Christ’s sacrificial death for them and the offer of eternal life. He went from one man to the next, consoling each.

Daily the guards unlocked the door to check for corpses and have them dragged out. Sometimes they found Kolbe’s group so deeply in prayer that they didn’t even notice the SS officers opening the door. It took furious shouts and kicking from the SS men to get the prisoners to stop praying. The soldiers had never seen prayer in the death house, and they could not endure it.

Some of the men would cry and beg for a crumb of bread or drop of water. Kolbe never asked for anything. All he would do was remain standing and gaze directly into the guards eyes.

According to Meleshko, it was not a gaze of pleading but of deep longing, longing that the guards might be freed from the evil in which they were involved.

“Shau auf die Erde, nicht auf uns!” they ordered. “Keep your eyes on the ground, not on us.” They could not endure his gaze.

Day by day one and then another of the prisoners died. The praying continued, but now only in whispers. Each day the Guards found more bodies on the cement. But they always found Kolbe standing or kneeling in prayer.

This went on for two weeks. Finally the commander decided this had to stop and sent guards with injections of carbolic acid which kills in about ten seconds.

When Meleshko came to record the deaths, he saw the anguished faces of all the dead, twisted amidst the filth on the floor.

But Kolbe’s body was clean and his countenance was one of peace, and his body remained keeling, leaning back against the wall.

Meleshko remembers saying, “God has snuck into Hell.  I have here seen one of His saints.”

That’s what a believer does: He or she brings the light of Christ into the darkest corners of the hells found on this Earth. Through them, God Himself sneaks into those hells.

On the Cross, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. God the Father and God the Spirit were there in that darkest moment as God the Son drank fully the cup that was set before Him.

In S.t Peter’s on that October day in 1971, when it came time for the offertory, a man named Francis Gajohnichek led the procession, bearing the ciborium with the bread. All the way down the long aisle he openly wept.  When he reached the altar, the deacon was surprised to see Pope John Paul II come around to the front of the altar, take the ciborium himself, hand it to the deacon, and then embrace Gajohnichek.

For nearly thirty years before, Francis Gajohnichek had been one of those ten selected for death that day.  As he sobbed, “My wife and my children…,” Kolbe broke ranks, walked slowly forward, and said, “I want to die in place of this prisoner.”

Thump, thump, thump, and then a long silence. Then again, thump, thump, thump, and a silence. It’s June in 1135 BC in Israel and interesting things are happening. Ruth the Moabitess is over near Salem batting her eyelashes at Boaz. They will have a son whom they will name Obed and a grandchild named Jesse. Up north a little girl has just been born. Her name is Hannah. Years from now, after she has given up any hope of having a child, she will give birth to a son named Samuel. Not long after that, Jesse over in Bethlehem will have a large family, the last son being named David. It’s Israel in the 12^th century BC, and interesting things are happening all around.

In fact, it’s a little too interesting over along the coast. For the last six years raiders have swept down the coastal hills and stolen every year’s wheat harvest. No one had the courage to fight them. The local Israelites took to hiding in caves, clutching each other and shaking with fright. The annual parade of raiders included Midianites and Amalekites, Arabs and Bedouin. Interesting to watch from your cave hide out.

Much is happening all around. But not right here. Thump, thump, thump. The sound seems to be coming from down inside a small stone cistern used to crush grapes to make wine, but that won’t happen until August. Look closely and you see two eyes peering over the stone edge and up toward the coastal foothills nearby. Then Thump, thump, thump and a long pause. Suddenly (it happens so fast you are not sure you really saw it) a little puff of something shoots up into the air above the wine vat and then drifts away on the wind. Then the two eyes peep over the edge again, wide eyes with lots of the whites showing, fearful eyes.

Gideon is scared to death some raiding party will discover him as he thump, thump, threshes his wheat in the wine vat, keeps a lookout toward the hills, and then winnows the grain and chaff with the on-shore breeze. It’s hard work at any time, but doing it on down on his bent and shaky knees hiding in a wine vat is even harder.

Hard and hopeless. If this is what you get for being God’s chosen people, then demand a recount. But Gideon was too afraid to demand anything.

Another cautious peek over the rim. No one around. Thump, thump, “Hail you mighty warrior” a voice greets him. Gideon jumped like a gazelle, about four feet straight up. He didn’t know he could do that.

“There’s a lot you don’t know you can do,” said the Angel. “Be who you are.”

“I’m nobody,” said Gideon, kicking at the chaff with his foot.

“No, you are God’s own, held safely in his hand, and in that strength you’ll deliver Israel.”

“Yeah, sure. Prove it.”

God did. It took some time, and it took a couple of wet fleece, (one dry and one wet, actually), one attempt at a night-time raid, some lapping of water, and a rolling barley loaf. But by the time it was all done, Gideon was who the angel said he was, a mighty warrior. Trumpets blasted and pots were shattered and with a great shout Israel was delivered.

“How did you do it?” they asked him.  “Turns out, that’s who God made me to be,” Gideon replied.

On August 7^th forty-six years ago Kevin Alderton was born in Dartford, England. At age eight he took his first ski run down the dry practice slope at Woolwich Barracks. By the time his sixteenth birthday came around, he was a dry slope ski instructor.

While serving in the British Army he qualified as a Military Ski Instructor. He represented his military unit in alpine skiing events and race teams. That’s who he was. As unlikely as it may be for a flatland boy from England, he was a downhill skier, and he knew it.

On April 14^th of 2006 Kevin Alderton was on the famous “Flying K” straight downhill run 6,500 feet up in the French Alps. There he set a world record, 101 miles per hour as he hurtled through the timing gate.

Why did he do it? That’s who he is. God made Gideon to be a courageous warrior and Kevin to be a great skier.

God gave Ruth someone who love her, and to Hanna God gave a son.

Did it come easy? It took time. Ruth had to glean, Hanna had to learn to pray. God had to train Gideon, and Kevin had his own work to do.

“I trained hard for three months,” Kevin says, “most of which was spent in my living room [in North London] wearing skis and a helmet perfecting my position. [My partner] Susan takes pictures of me, then emails them to my trainer in Scotland who sends me feedback.”

That April 14^th Kevin was a tiny speck up on the mountain, lining up to turn down one of the world’s most dangerous ski runs.  Speed skiing is the second fastest sport.  Only sky diving is faster.

He knew he could do it. That’s who he is. He was just being who he is.

I know you are thinking speed skiing takes more courage than you’ve ever had. But, Kevin did it because he has the right muscles and training and equipment and support, right?

No, although Kevin did have a radio connection to his coach through his helmet, he was all alone down that mountain at over 100 miles per hour. No, Kevin didn’t do it because he has the muscles or the training or the equipment. Kevin did it because that is who he is. God made him to ski and ski fast, and nothing will stop him.

Eight years before Kevin was on his way home when he saw a gang of men attacking a woman in her doorway. He intervened but was brutally beaten. When they were done beating him they held him down and they gouged out his eyes.

Kevin Alderton is blind. He broke the downhill ski speed record not because he could and not because everyone said he couldn’t. He did it because that’s who he really is.