Today I went to the funeral of a friend of mine named Willie. Willie wasn't a great man, at least by the standards that men are often considered great. He attended a public high school here in St. Louis, although I'm not sure if he graduated. Willie didn't possess a large house. In fact, he lived in a nursing home, although he was only in his forties. Willie, for the last several years, battled a failing body, a body assaulted weekly by dialysis and other medical procedures. He didn't have a mastery of grammatical diction. (One time he told me he was going to dialysis, I thought he said he was going to Dallas!) He didn't possess a ton of charisma. Many at our church didn't even know who he was when his death was announced although he attended church frequently enough. Yet Willie's greatness came from his implicit understanding that greatness in the kingdom came from simplicity, the simplicity that Jesus associated with children. Willie simply loved Jesus and loved people. He always had a smile for everyone he met. He always said kind words about others, even those who were hateful toward him at his nursing home. The last words he shared with me were words of encouragement. He said he enjoyed my teaching and that he learned a lot from my class. Sometimes greatness comes in packages we don't expect. Jesus said something about the rules in his kingdom would be inverted; the first would be last and the last first. Willie wasn't a great man, at least by the standards that men are considered great. But he was great by God's standards and he will be missed.
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