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Michael Redemer, my father, died a couple of weeks ago on February 4th at 76.
I am a writer and a public speaker by profession and yet in this most important moment my words fail. He meant so much to me and everything I write feels inadequate to the task.
He was a man in full. I couldn't even begin to list the ways he's shaped me, the advice he gave, the small but infinitely valuable ways I've seen him love me, or my friends, or my kids. He knew how to earn money and provide but always knew the point of money was generosity. That was true for him in financial giving, but also in his willingness to put his family and faith community over his career and let enough be enough. He always had an open door for guests, and an open heart for a new friend. Many men get stuck in their ways as they age–old dog/new trick–and that's certainly true of my dad to some extent but I so admired his ability remain interested in those he loved and to really follow through on that interest which meant learning. He loved to get to know the world from the inside (by reading their books, studying arguments, cultures, lives and deeds) and that was true of whole civiliazations and periods like the Civil War or Ancient Greece, but also of individuals. For example as I was growing up he constantly looked down on fictional and poetical world, but as he saw my (and my brother's) fascination with this world he took the time to dig in, read, and learn and grow. He was practically a different man by the end of that process from the one I knew when I was a child. While he still loved the sciences, history, and politics as he always had he now added these whole other dimensions to his self. It was certainly true that he remained interested in me and while he was always my dad he also became in adulthood one of my dearest friends. My dad knew that to get to know someone or something in this way required an act of the intellect but also an act of love. He was a treasure trove of stories: some his, some stretching back generations. One of the most memorable ones was a story from him growing up on the farm with his dad and grandpa. He'd help them work it after school and on weekends. One day as a teenager he was slow at the work and my grandfather laying into him for it, out in a dusty plum orchard in Kingsburg California. I imagine it being hot and they were losing the light needed to work by. After a few minutes of the kind of profanity that could only be woven by a combat hardened WWII marine my dad was crying and my father's grandfather, grandpa Lawrence, walked over and put a hand on my grandfather's shoulder. The yelling stopped and they both looked at Lawrence. He had tears in his eyes. In the silence all he said was "go easy on the boy" and then my grandpa started crying too. That's where the days work ended, three men standing in an orchard in the heat, all crying. I can still hear my dad's voice retelling me this, a tear in his own eye, the moral being so clear it need not be said.
And I have stories of my own I'll forever cherish and add to the lists and pass on. About fifteen years ago I'll never forget walking out of class at Saint Mary's College to get a phone call from my dad "Colin, I have cancer." We didn't know what it would mean or how long it would be. I couldn't think and could hardly draw breathe. I walked into the chapel because I thought I should pray and I did pray without knowing what to say exactly, but at least I figured the quiet dark chapel would be a place to calm myself down. I'm not given to seeing miracles wherever I look, being a member of the "frozen chosen," but to my own dying day I'll never forget hearing a voice say right into my ear "You want your son to know your father." I looked around to see who might be there, but even as I did I knew I was alone in the empty chapel. Yet I wasn't alone. My wife and I were fairly newly married and didn't have any kids yet but I went home and we started trying for one. Nine months later, almost to the day, I had a son in my arms and the first person I called was my dad and his first words were "Congratulations DAD!" And that moment, hearing my dad call me dad changed my life and ushered in a whole new vocation for me. The cancer went away, and my son (and now two daughters) do know my father and this is the greatest mercy I've received next to my own salvation. He lived those years to the fullest.
He loved the Lord with all his heart and mind and strength. And as his strength failed his faith continued to grow. He shined so brightly at the end I could hardly bear it. He refused morphine until the last 12 hours of his life and then only the lowest dose. He said he wanted to be clear headed when he met the Lord. When asked how he felt about his coming death he said "I don't really think about it, I'm not worried." Do you fear it? "No." He spent his last days where he was able to talk, about two days before he died, dictating letters of blessing to each of his eight grand children to my brother and I. Then he went more or less unconscious. My brother and mom and I spent his last night on earth singing hymns, reading poetry and scripture, telling stories and laughing and crying. We knew he was going to die but we didn't know how long it would be. My mother stayed up all night with him holding his hand. He loved her tremendously, and she loved him right back. That next morning after having been basically non responsive for a day he opened his eyes to look into her eyes one last time. My mother told him how she loved him, we all did, and then she said while looking into his eyes "Lord Jesus please take this sweet man" and he took a couple of big breaths like he was about to jump into deep waters and he died within sixty seconds. It was so incredible I wouldn't have believed it if you told me, but there I was, of sound mind having seen it with my own eyes.
None of this does justice to my father. As I said my words fail, but the word itself endures and has been of greater comfort to me than ever. If you've read this far consider meditating on these with me, and pray them over my family:
-But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?" Gen 3:9
-The eternal God is your dwelling place,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.
And he thrust out the enemy before you,
and said, Destroy. Deut 33:27
-The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Ps 19:9
-Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Ps 116:15
-It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting; for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. Ecc 7:2
-Fear not, for I am with you,
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. Isaiah 41:10
-Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? John 11:25-26
-Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed...
...Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death...
...But some one will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?” 1 Cor 15
-But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself. Phil 3:20-21
-Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:2
If you do not know Jesus as your Lord and Savior please reach out to me or (even better) a pastor near you, my Dad would want you to think about the things that mattered most.
Michael will rise at the resurrection of the dead and I can not wait to see him again.
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