Funeral for "Willy" Scalf (William Dennis Scalf) November 24, 2018

Today I had the sad role of performing the funeral for Willy Scalf.  Willy died far too young and he leaves behind a young daughter.  Please pray for Star and the rest of Willy's family, may God grant them strength, comfort, and peace.

Be a blessing to someone today!

In Christ,
Roy

Order of Service – Funeral for William “Willy” Scalf

Entrance: “If Heaven Wasn't So Far Away”

Call to Worship:
Gathered in Christ's name, let us praise God
who is our certain hope in all life's varied circumstances.
In the face of death believe the good news the scriptures proclaim:
As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.
(Isaiah 66:13)

Greeting:
We have come together within the strengthening fellowship of friends and family:
to praise God for the life of; William Dennis Scalf;
to share our grief with God and with one another;
to reaffirm our faith in God's unfailing goodness;
to hear again God's promise of resurrection;
and to commend Willy to God's everlasting care.

Opening Prayer:
O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our brother Willy.

We thank you for giving him to us, his family and friends,
to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage.
In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn.
Give us faith to see death as the gate of eternal life,
so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth,
until by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Reading from the Old Testament:
Psalm 139: 1-18
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light around me become night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is as bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15     My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end—I am still with you.

Reading from the New Testament:
Matthew 20:1-16 New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Music: I Can Only Imagine

Message:  Pastor Roy Karlen 
Woodlawn Christian Church, Lake City, IA

William Dennis Scalf, better known as simply “Willy” was born here in Lake City, on August 8th, 1971.  Willy's parents Dennis and Beverly were blessed with the birth of two little boys on that day, Willy and his brother Gene.  Forty-seven years later, Willy died in the same hospital where he was born. He passed from this world and into the next during the early morning hours of Thursday, November 22, 2018, it was as we all know Thanksgiving morning.  Today we are gathered to give thanksgiving for Willy's life and to give thanks for the love and the grace that our Father in Heaven holds for each of us, and for Willy.

Recently, I read an article that talked about how none of us truly has just one identity; each of us is viewed through the eyes of so very many, many, different people and each of these people constructs a slightly different, or even vastly different identity of our being... it seems nobody, not even we ourselves really knows the 'real' us... for there really is no single us... we each play different roles and have many identities in the lives and eyes of those around us.  Such was the case with Willy, each of you seated here today knew a different William Scalf.  Each of us knew Willy in a slightly different context, for some of you he was a friend, for some a son, for Gene he had the always incredibly close relationship of being a twin brother, but for Star... Willy was her father.

In the short while that I got to know and visit with Willy, I believe that was the identity he loved the most.  When I first met with Willy earlier this year he was in the hospital but his main concern was for Star and her well-being.  We really didn't talk about his illness, we talked mainly about Star. He talked about the preparations that he was making for her to be cared for after he had passed and it was obvious that his love for his daughter and the knowledge that she would be cared for... this was his primary focus.

Yesterday when Abby asked Star to select a poem for her father's funeral folder, Star selected this poem:

Daddy,
If tears could build a stairway, 
And memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to heaven
And bring you home again.

Many of us gathered here today are mothers and fathers, I can tell you that not a one of us is or ever will be a perfect parent.  Willy wasn't a perfect parent but he did the very best he could and there was no doubt how much he loved Star.  In the end, being a parent is one of, if not the most important role or identity that we can have here in this world.  Just as Star's greatest desire is and will long be to bring her Daddy home again, our Heavenly Father's greatest desire is and will always be for us to come home to Him.

It has long been my personal contention that it is impossible to grasp the love and grace of God without considering the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The metaphor of a loving father is perhaps the easiest and maybe the only way for us to try and understand our Lord.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son - Luke 15: 11-24
11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

The parable tells us of a father that loves us so very much that he is always watching, waiting, and ready to greet us home.  It tells us of a father whose only desire is to be reunited with us... to throw his arms around the child that has rejected him and his love.  This parable, taken along with the parable of the workers in the vineyard, and the reading from the Book of Psalm that you heard earlier, paint a picture of a loving father, a father that is with us no matter what and no matter where... and that our Father in Heaven waits patiently for us to decide to return home to His love, grace, and forgiveness.

A father's love is like that, it never dies... Willy's love for Star will never die it will remain with her. Though being separated from Willy is difficult and will always be difficult, she can always rest assured that just as God will always love us, Willy will always love her so very, very much.  

Though we are parted but for a time, we can take solace in the words of Apostle Paul:

1 Corinthians 13:1-8
1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends.

Even though we are apart, as long as we have their memories, and as long as these memories continue to influence our lives, our relationship with our loved ones that have passed remains.  And when that time comes that we are reunited in God's presence our joy will be complete.  In the knowledge that this separation is only temporary and with the love and comfort of our Lord along with the love and support of our family and friends, we can endure this brief separation.  For love remains, it never dies, it is there still with us.  For as Paul said;

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends, love always remains.

Praise be to God...

Eulogies and Reflections:
The family would like to allow those gathered here today to share some memories about Willy with each other.  Perhaps some stories that Star might cherish about her father as she lives out the remainder of her life.  If you like you may come forward to speak or if you are more comfortable please stand and speak from where you are.  Let us first hear a few memories from Willy's twin brother Gene.

Closing Prayer:
Let us please close with a prayer...

O God, our Strength, and our Redeemer, Giver of life, and Conqueror of death, we open our hearts to you just as we are.  We celebrate your gift of life freely given but are grieved by a sense of loss in the face of death.  The love which binds us to one another leaves us aching as ties are broken.  Accept our tears as emblems of devotion, and transform them into waters of life to nourish us in the days ahead.

We trust you.  We love you.  We know in Christ that your love is everlasting.  Nothing can separate any of us from your abiding care.  With you is eternal life.

With confidence, we now entrust Willy to your unfailing love and overflowing goodness.  Through the power that raised Christ from the dead to live eternally with you, lift up this, your servant, to a life fulfilled beyond our imagining.  We give you but your own.  Accept him as he is with all his frailties as well as his strengths.  Enfold him in your everlasting arms.  Embrace him for he is your child.

Now strengthen us, through the gift of your Spirit, to face into the future with confidence that you stand with us.  Grant that the changes of life may leave us stronger as we journey through life.

Reassured of your abiding presence, help us to knit more firmly the ties that bind us one to another.  Renewed by your love, help us to love in ever larger circles so as to embrace your people everywhere till at last we are all united eternally through Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Closing and Benediction:
“May the Lord Bless you and keep you, and may His face shine down upon you and grant you all His Peace”  Amen.

Sending Song: Dance With My Father