When Gary Beikirch was a young man, he, like Moses, did violence to protect his brethren.
When Gary Beikirch was an old man, he, like Moses, guided his brethren through their wilderness of loss.
And he, like Moses, has looked over into the promised land, where we will one day go. And he, like Moses, has been taken to his God, the Father of us all.
That’s how it goes with prophets, the prophets we are all called to be. There is sacrifice and service, driven by love and faith, and it uses up all we are and all the days we live.
Like it did with Gary Beikirch, who we gather today to honor and remember.
But like the angels told the women who came to tend the body of Jesus: “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” And why do we share our memories in the spirit of grief? Yes, Gary Beikirch is gone, but only from us, not from the love of God or the reality of life, eternal life, the life and destiny for which we were created and born.
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ,” Paul wrote, “we are of all men most miserable.”
But our hope, our assurance, is in the next life, and so we rejoice – that such a man as Gary Beikirch was born, that we were blessed to have him in our lives, and that he has died a righteous man. And we are firm in our faith that no righteous man dies before his time, but goes when he is called, to labor where he is needed, in the fields of love and service which await us on the other side.
Gary Beikirch was an American boy, a son of New York, a kid who listened to the Green Beret on the radio and went on to wear one on his head. “These are men, America’s best,” the nation knew, and he was one, he’d proven it and earned the right, with silver wings upon his chest. And a half century later, when the address line on an email said “sfmedic,” you knew it was Gary Beikirch, and you knew he still wore the beret in his heart.
But like others in God’s service, getting where the Lord needed him meant a passage through hell. A time in the wilderness. A test from the devil.
To sit at pharaoh’s right hand, and to save his family from famine, Joseph had to be sold into slavery. He had to face a horror of darkness to find his mission of light. And so it was with Gary Beikirch. To get to his lifetime of service, he had to pass through the portal of Dak Seang. The path to his promised land led through the hellfire of the Central Highlands. He could not have known at the choke point of trial where this path from the Lord would lead, or that it even was a path from the Lord, all he could do was survive the moment, live the moment, and go forward with faith.
Moses met the Lord in a burning bush; Gary Beikirch met him in a hospital bed.
And everything he was for all the years after grew out of that experience and carried its influence. As a husband, as a father, as a grandfather and friend. A teacher, a counselor, a pastor and brother. As an old man with a funny mustache who wore a medal around his neck. As a follower of Christ and a waver of the flag. A man who kept his oaths – to his God, his family and his country. A man so strong he could be meek. A man so loving he will never be forgotten.
Not by his family, not by his friends, not by his brothers and sisters in boots, or by the historians who study our bravest and best.
Gary Beikirch was a great man. But it is not enough to celebrate the great, we must emulate them. If we knew or knew of Gary Beikirch, and are no better for it, then we have failed. If we look at him without taking away things that we can do to make ourselves more like him, they we have failed him and ourselves and the Father of us all.
“Let your light so shine before men,” the Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount, “that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
Gary Beikirch did that. That’s why you loved him.
And on this day we say goodbye to him, we must look more closely at ourselves.
To make sure we are doing the same thing. To make sure we are going the same place.
To make sure we are worthy of this great man and the love he had for us.