PREACHING BY REGINALD
MARTIN, OP
FUNERAL MASS OF FR. JAMES STEPHEN
JENNER, OP
January 21, 2003
Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain… and he opened his mouth and
taught them.
In this chapel of the Order of Preachers, there can be no more powerful reminder of the
holiness of our preaching task than this description of Jesus preaching his great Sermon
on the Mount. And if you came here to mourn the death of Fr. Jenner, I hope you will agree
that the Scripture holds fewer images more consoling than that of Jesus, who reminds us
today that they are blessed who weep.
A sermon is not, perhaps, the place for a grammar lesson, but we ought to note that
while Jesus uses the future tense to describe the rewards of blessedness, he uses the
present tense to describe the activities that make us blessed. We shall be comforted and
satisfied in the future, for one day we shall see Christ face to face, but he tells us
this morning: if we mourn, the blessing has already begun.
So blessed are we who mourn the loss of something fine today: a Dominican brother, a
priest, a loving uncle, a gentle and witty companion, a curious and enthusiastic observer
of nature, and an almost always smiling presence.
And Jesus said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." The rewards Christ promises us are immense, but we gain them only if we are
poor in spirit. Camels pass through the eyes of needles before we enter the kingdom of
heaven - unless we are willing to lay down whatever it is that makes us rich. To be poor
in spirit is the last challenge of a Christian, and, finally, the last and greatest gift
we offer God. Anyone who loved James must have lamented his gradual decline, and
especially the agitation and apparently unresponsive purgatory of his last few days,
trying unsuccessfully to recover from surgery on Thanksgiving Day.
But when your wit is an antic as his was, when your memories as rich with white
asparagus in Salzburg, and parsnips, and ice cream, and even in illness in a nursing home,
when your life is full of flowers, and company, cello concerts performed for him alone,
and hand-drawn cards from the second graders in the parish's Sunday school, it must take a
long time to achieve the poverty of spirit that merits a place in heaven. We mourn the
death of our brother today, but he is at peace. God asked James many times whether he was
poor enough to enter the kingdom, and at last he was able to say yes.
And Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful; mercy shall be theirs." These
days, mercy is one of those words so overused it has nearly lost its worth. It means
compassionate sorrow for another's distress, coupled with a will to relieve it. Sorrow
itself is not enough. To be merciful, sorrow must be coupled with an active love. Mercy is
a welcome quality in a friend; it is essential in a priest, and there is a small crowd of
devoted penitents in Seattle who will testify the extent to which James possessed it. They
used to knock on our kitchen door and ask for him by name to hear their confessions - and
I cannot believe that his failing memory was the only thing that drew them back.
And Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek; they shall inherit the land."
Meekness, like mercy, is one of those qualities these days largely misunderstood. It has
nothing to do with a poor self-image, or a lack of assertiveness, or even a desire for
obscurity. It is the virtue that moderates anger, and anyone who watched James watch his
world contract around him knows how often he had the opportunity to be meek.
The aunt of a friend of mine, an opera singer from the turn of the last century, wrote
a book of memoirs. In it she reflected, "One is seldom aware of the sort of life one
is living while actually living it," and she added, "it is a rare thing to be
conscious of true happiness or realize what seeds are being sown…at the time of their
planting."
Trees are known by their fruits, the gospel tells us, and our Savior warns that we
shall discover our hearts where we find our treasure. When James was still able to preach,
the need for intimacy was the theme of all his sermons, and that so many have gathered
here today is proof that James sowed - and preached - well indeed. And although the
awareness of true happiness may elude our mortal consciousness, St. Paul's words to the
Thessalonians this morning afford us the comfort that he is on his way to discovering it
now.
And Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called children of
God." Peace is often understood as the absence of war, which shows how very deficient
our notion of peace can be. Christian theology tells us peace is something much greater
than the mere lack of violence and bloodshed. It is a state of tranquility within
ourselves or among individuals, and for nearly fifteen years - including the height of the
Vietnam War - our brother brought Christ's word of peace to a world of weaponry, soldiers,
and war.
James never said much about the time he spent ministering to the women and men who
served this country in that tragic conflict. His nephew was in the novitiate with me, but
even he was fuzzy on the details. We had in those days only one picture of James in the
Province archive, but he left behind two photographs in his room that offer a small
glimpse of those hidden years - in one James is giving communion to a sailor, and in the
other he is being lowered from a helicopter, to celebrate Mass on a battleship.
Fr. Steven Maekawa framed the medals our brother earned during those years. One is the
Bronze Star with combat "V," for service under fire at Da Nang. Fr. Steven can
interpret the arcane symbolism of the other ribbons and medals, but they all testify how
very effectively our brother James waged Christ's peace.
In the first of our readings this morning the author of the Book of Genesis tells us
… God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and
female he created them… and God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very
good.
When he was asked to explain a particularly obscure verse in one of his poems, Robert
Browning is rumored to have replied, "when I wrote those lines only God and I knew
what they meant; now only God knows."
We might say the same about our brother James. Eleven years ago, when he told his
superiors he wanted read at his funeral that verse from the Book of Genesis, he and God
must have known what he had in mind. Now, sadly, only God does. Unless, perhaps, in the
days before he became so very ill, James wanted us to reflect that although disease can
rob us of our memories and erase all those lines that make us look like one another, only
sin can make us look less like God.
When Jesus took on the dusty stuff of our mortality, the very elements of our world
assumed a sacramental greatness. As a result, some places on our globe are so nearly
mythic that an address is unimportant. We could write "The Vatican" or "The
White House" on an envelope and, so long as the postage was sufficient, rest
confident that our letter would eventually reach its destination.
Then there are addresses so important that they are nearly mythic; 509 West Mercer in
Seattle is one of them. The world passes this site every day without pausing in its haste,
but the Dominican community and a generation of parishioners at Blessed Sacrament owes its
thanks to our brother James for enabling the address of a boyhood home to open a window
onto a Seattle as fabled as Babylon.
And Jesus said, "Blessed are you who mourn; you will be consoled." One of the
early Christian writers said Christ saved us by going through every moment of our lives,
even the last. Jesus didn't die so that we wouldn't have to; he died to show us how. We
mourn James today, but one day we will be consoled. For one day each of us who walks under
that same certain sad sentence of death will have to become poor in spirit, too, and on
that day we shall be grateful that he has gone ahead to show us how.
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