God Moment - Blake Daniel - 6/2/2020
Not all God Moments are cheerful. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, God meets us in situations of deep pain and difficulty. Such is the case in Scripture. Such was the case for me last week, when I learned of the sudden death of my friend, the Rev. Michael Richard Boone.
I first met Mike at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC around 2009. He was a year ahead of me in the M.Div program — and he was hard to miss. Big and blonde, Mike was the embodiment of joy. He was funny. He was brilliant. He had a zeal for life and kind eyes that expressed warmth and concern in an educational atmosphere that was notoriously competitive and stressful. As fellow southerners, we bonded especially over college football and conversations about the challenges of faithful ministry in the Bible belt. We weren’t the closest of friends, but he was in my inner social circle as a confidante and faithful brother in Christ, for which I’ll always be grateful.
After I left Duke, I took a two-year pastoral call in Raleigh, and Mike came to visit me. Ostensibly he was on business with Cokesbury (with whom he was working at the time), but really he just wanted to check in and catch up. We would sit in my cramped little pastor’s study and talk about life before going out to eat a big meal together (he was especially fond of The Pit bbq). An ordained Anglican priest himself, Mike had much wisdom to share — but most of the time he would just listen. Those conversations were sacred to me, a sweet reminder of the camaraderie of seminary carrying over into the “real world,” with our friendship bridging the gap.
A year after my family and I moved to Sylva in 2015, Mike came to preach for me. I put out a call for pulpit supply to my friends back in Durham, and he was the only one to respond in the affirmative. So he drove out and preached on October 23, 2016 amidst the changing leaves and lovely fall colors. Erin and I were honored that he would take the time and effort to come all the way to the mountains, and I was especially proud to show off our new church family. There can be something scary, risky, and a bit lonely about moving and starting off in a new place, and, once again, our friendship helped bridge the gap.
After years of discernment and transition, Mike accepted a call to be pastor (technically, dean of the cathedral) of St. Charles Anglican Cathedral in Washington State in 2017. Serving as a pastor was a role he was born for, that he had trained for, that God had assuredly called him to — and I know he served the people of his congregation well as he fell in love with life in the Pacific Northwest. We saw each other only one other time, I think, before he moved and we did not see each other in person again after that. Emails and texts were our primary means of communication, and I took comfort in knowing that he was right where he was supposed to be.
And then, last Wednesday, a mutual friend called to tell me that Mike had died. Suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 35 — my age. He was at his home in Washington. At the time of my writing this, no cause is known and no foul play is expected. He is simply gone. His funeral service is this afternoon. To add insult to injury, it will take place online due to virus precautions.
The news hit me like a ton of bricks. In the midst of an already heavy week, with the pain of racism and protest and the ever-looming threat of the coronavirus, I was bowled over. Surely this couldn’t be the case. Surely such a thing couldn’t have happened, not to any of my friends and peers but especially not to my old buddy Mike. I was devastated. What about his congregation? What about his girlfriend (soon to be fiancee) and other family members left behind? What about the decades of life he had left to live? It was too much. Nearly a week later, it still is. I can’t believe the world is so broken. I can’t believe he is gone.
Over the weekend, wading in grief as I processed everything, I pulled up the sermon that Mike preached for us in Sylva. We keep audio recordings of our sermons on our church website, and I had forgotten that Mike preached on the sixth commandment, “you shall not kill,” during our sermon series on the Ten Commandments. It’s a passage that’s especially relevant today, in our culture of fear and division. As I listened to it, I heard Mike’s familiar voice. I heard his love for Jesus. I heard his knowledge of Scripture. I heard his prophetic witness and his call for the church to live a cross-shaped life. I heard all these things and was reminded of something Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, that we need each other to be reminded of the truth, to bear witness to the Word of God; for our own hearts might be weak, but our brother’s heart is sure.
And so my God Moment today is my friend and brother Mike. I remember the ways he bore witness to the Word of God. I give thanks for the ways he was my friend, and for the legacy he leaves behind. And I wait in groaning hope for the time when we will see each other again in God’s kingdom come.
We live in tumultuous times. The world can be confusing and sometimes even frightening. But we are the people of a risen savior who conquered death and blazed a trail for us to follow. The world is in desperate need of such people. Not just in theory, but in practice. In our families, in our workplaces, in our communities. We must be the people who bring the peace of Christ into the middle of a world that is often at war with itself. We do this by our words, by our actions, by our attitudes. Only through carrying this peace into the world can we be the people Christ calls us to be. And if you are following the risen Jesus, and if you’re committed to carrying your witness to that out into the world on a daily basis, then you will be a gift to those around you. It is a challenge that we all have to embrace… [God’s mercy] can come to life only as you and I carry it into the world each and every day. Thanks be to God for such merciful opportunities to witness to the One who has shown us mercy. Amen.
— Rev. Michael Boone
