In Memoriam Robert Michael Guido

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Saturday, November 28, 2015

St. Brendan Catholic Church, Olcott Beach, New York

Good morning and thank you for joining in this celebration of the life of Robert Michael Guido—brother, husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend, proud denizen of Olcott Beach. Oh, how he loved this community; and, oh, how you all loved him back.

Jesus said: do not hide your light, but let it shine before others. We are gathered here today because we had the good fortune to spend time in the grand, glowing, glorious light that was Bob Guido and that he shared with the world.

And what a light it was: that sly, mischievous smile; that husky, quiet laugh; those big arms and that bigger personality and that even bigger heart that drew you in. There was only one Bob Guido. A skilled fisherman; an avid reader; an artist; a terrific storyteller; a dancer who could swing Sally all around the dance floor; a guy who relished good food and who liked his martinis with about one-hundred olives in them; a man so resilient we had almost come to think of him as indestructible.  

For those of you I have not met, my name is Len Niehoff and I am married to Bob and Sally’s daughter Lisa. I have the honor of sharing a few thoughts with you this morning as we remember and give thanks for Bob’s life. Indeed, I can think of no better time to honor Bob than during this season of thankfulness.

Every life offers its own lessons and I’m sure each of us could come up with a very long list of things that we learned from Bob. But, for today, I want to focus on three lessons that I see as particularly present in Bob’s life. They also happen to resonate strongly with some of the most important messages of the scriptures.

Those lessons are: welcome people in; shepherd your flock; and fight the good fight.

Welcome People In

When I first met Bob, Lisa and I were not yet married. I will confess that I was a little nervous. It seemed unlikely to me that this Italian guy from New York State had long dreamed that his beautiful daughter would fall in love with a middle-aged German guy from Michigan. 

I found Bob on the back deck of their house and he was a bit daunting. Here was this big bear of a man, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt , wearing sunglasses, smoking a cigarette and pushing a pile of sausages, peppers, and onions around on the grill. He cut an imposing figure.

Lisa introduced me and he smiled and said hello and offered me a drink. And that was that. I was in. I had been welcomed into Bob’s flock.

I suspect that many people in this room had an experience like this. It took only an instant for Bob to move you from being a stranger to being an old friend. It was a gift—a grace—of the first order, one that he shared with his treasured wife, Sally. Throughout their marriage, they welcomed everyone in, always, and never treated a visitor as a burden or an imposition. 

In the thirteenth chapter of his letter to the Hebrews, Paul says “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.” When we were talking about her experience “growing up Guido,” Lisa told me that throughout her life there were almost always visitors at the dinner table: neighbors, friends, relatives, newcomers to the community, members of clubs and organizations, all the childhood friends of Lisa and Gina and Rob and Joe who knew that Bob and Sally were the coolest parents in town, and so on.

Maybe most of those folks did not qualify as angels. But you would never know that from the way Bob and Sally treated them. Bob saw the best in everyone, and, because of the great symmetrical power of love and respect, everyone saw the best in Bob.

Shepherd Your Flock

In the first letter of Peter it says: “Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you, watching over them; and do not do it for your own gain, but out of an eagerness to serve.” I think this is a perfect description of one of the key dimensions of Bob’s life.

Bob was born in 1940 in North Tonawanda, New York. He spent the next seventy-five years bringing people into his flock, watching out for them, and helping them along. He had a wonderful role model in his beloved late mother, Elizabeth Amici Guido Amato, who on November 10 met him on the other side with open arms—and probably with a plate of meatballs—and with whom he is now reunited.

As with his mother, the most important members of Bob’s flock were his family. He cherished his relationship with his siblings, Al, Mike, John, and Teddy. He adored his wife Sally, often doting on her as if they were newlyweds. His affection for his children, grandchildren, and great-grandson was boundless. 

Whenever I would drive Lisa home for a visit, we would find Bob sitting in a folding chair next to the driveway or in the garage with the door open if it was raining. It was as reliable as the law of gravity: Bob would be there—waiting, watching, keeping an eye out for someone he loved. Like all good shepherds, Bob was always on the lookout for all of us, and we were all blessed by it.

But Bob’s flock extended well beyond his family. He cared deeply for his friends in the Lion’s Club and for all of the volunteers he worked with on the Olcott Beach Carousel Park and the Rainbow of Help. Through these service organizations, Bob’s generosity of spirit extended to people he did not even know.

Bob’s flock also included the Boy Scout troops he led. After Bob’s passing, the family received a number of messages from men who had been in those troops many years ago. A message from one of these former scouts describes the numerous ways in which being in Bob’s troop had made him a better man, including giving him a model of how to be a great father. 

You might remember some of the qualities a scout is supposed to exhibit: loyalty, friendliness, kindness, and cheerfulness. Bob may have helped those young men cultivate those qualities by what he said. But I suspect that their true lessons came in what Bob did, in how he treated them, and in who he was.

I want to say two more things about being in Bob’s flock. First, it was fun. As just one example, Lisa has described to me how Bob and Sal would take the kids on “mystery adventure caravans”—little trips to undisclosed and entertaining destinations. And, of course, for many of us being in Bob’s flock meant fishing with him, which was a tremendous joy, even though he would consistently out-fish you and he was not above a bit of extravagant gloating when he did.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that Bob cared so much about his flock did not prevent him from also working to help people he did not know. But I think it is important to emphasize how strong an impulse this was in him. It led him to his military service. And consider this: on one occasion, a number of years ago, Bob rushed from his house to pull two complete strangers from a burning car that had been in an accident—a courageous act that very likely put him in harm’s way. 

Perhaps the word “hero” gets overused. But if Bob Guido is one of your heroes you will get no argument from me.

And that brings me to the third and final lesson from Bob’s life.

Fight the Good Fight

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul says: “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race.” As all of you know, Bob struggled with grave physical challenges for more than a decade. He fought the good fight, hanging on as long as he could to the life that he lived with such zeal and the people that he he loved with such depth and gratitude. That fight took unspeakable amounts of courage—on Bob’s part, and also on the part of Sally and their children.

Of course, Bob was human and so could get frustrated with his struggles. And the same God that made Bob a wonderful man also made him wonderfully stubborn—and that could pose its own challenges. So he had his bad days. But it is a testament to Bob’s character that nothing in the last ten years—nothing—kept his spirit down for long. He fought the good fight, and he won many more rounds than he lost.

When a big, warm, welcoming, shepherding, courageous presence leaves this life for the next, the absence is sorely felt. We will all miss Bob, every day. But, every day, we will also feel his presence—when we welcome someone in; when we give someone a hand; when we stoop to help a child; when we deal bravely with the challenges life presents to us.

We did not all have the chance to “grow up Guido.” But we all have the chance to show up and step up like Bob Guido would want us to—for those who come to our doorstep; for our family and friends; for everyone in all the flocks that God puts in our care; for those in need; for strangers who we will not let stay strangers for very long.

And know this: we are all still in Bob’s flock. He’s still watching out for us. When we have finished fighting our good fight he will still be there, waiting like he did in that old folding chair in the driveway, ready to welcome us to the new neighborhood and to show us around.

As I said at the beginning, Bob let his light shine for everyone to see. His light “shines still in the darkness.” It is an inextinguishable presence in our hearts and minds and memories. For all of us who were blessed to know him and to stand in the warmth and comfort of that light, no darkness can ever overcome it. 

Not today. 

Not ever. 

Amen. And amen.

The Heart of the Matter

One of my favorite passages in scripture appears in Hebrews 13: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares."

I am interested in the question of what it would be like to bring an angel into your home.

Like all other things holy, angels have suffered from a lot of distorting publicity over the last couple thousand years. We have come to think of them as sweet, ephemeral, winged helpmates who show up on an as-needed basis to ease our back pain, get us a job promotion, or find us a parking space.

This view of angels may lead us to read the passage from Hebrews as saying: hey, invite a stranger into your home and you may get lucky--he may be an angel. If so, he can lend a hand with whatever worries you. He can make your life easier. He can sprinkle pixie dust on your path.

But this is a distorted reading of the passage because it is a distorted understanding of what angels are like and what they do. In the scriptures, the visit of an angel is usually described as a deeply disquieting event. And very often the first thing the angel says is: "Do not be afraid." We would get different reactions and different introductions if angels were like the smiling, pretty little blonde fairies we put on top of Christmas trees.

Furthermore, angels do not show up in the scriptures to do our bidding. They appear as a manifestation of God's will and to get the Lord's work done. That work may align with our hopes and wishes--or it may not.

So it turns out that this passage means the exact opposite of what we may at first think it means. It means that when we open ourselves to those we do not know--those who are unlike us--we may be severely challenged. We may be discomfited. We may be frightened. We may have to reexamine our most basic understandings of who we are and what we are called to do.

But, the scripture says, do it anyway. Why? Because it is our best shot at finding meaning, purpose, and direction in our existence.

William Bowen, the former President of Princeton, once observed that "We do not learn very much when we are surrounded only by the likes of ourselves." To find ourselves in the company of those who differ from us always brings challenges; it forces us to reconsider our established and insular ways of thinking about the world and our fixed notions of how to engage with it. But the experience also brings tremendous promise and unique opportunities to grow and learn--for exactly the same reasons.

Perhaps, the scripture suggests, in our welcoming of others we will discover that we have taken in an angel. We will then be in the presence of one who is different from us in wild and startling and radical ways we cannot imagine. We will feel the very foundation of our life shifting underneath us. And nothing will ever be the same. This happens over and over again in the Bible--someone meets an angel and everything changes.

Of course, this is how it plays out on a lesser scale when we engage with human beings who differ from us. Our understanding deepens. Our perspective widens. Our sense of the complexity and richness of human variety and experience expands. We emerge from the encounter not quite the same.

This is completely unsurprising.

After all, God sent them, too.

But I particularly like this passage from Hebrews when we read it in conjunction with the 25th chapter of the gospel of Matthew.

I'm thinking especially of the verses from Matthew where Jesus tells us that whenever we do anything for "the least" of God's children it is as though we have done it for God Himself.

Tend to the sick. Shelter the homeless. Visit the imprisoned. Take in the lost and forlorn. When we do these things, we do not just entertain God's messengers--we bring God Himself into our presence. And we serve Him.

Read together, these passages leave us with an unmistakable directive: open your door; usher the strangers inside; lift up the fallen and carry them to a better place.

And if you do these things, the Lord says, then you will know my heart.

And I will know yours. 

Amen.    

Being There

I have no idea how many times in the course of my life I have witnessed someone come into the presence of a newborn child. But I can say this with confidence: on every such occasion, the adult has said something to the infant.

It was beside the point that the child had no capacity to understand what was being said. It was beside the point that the encounter did not offer much occasion to say anything at all. It was even beside the point that the child may have been sound asleep--this simply prompted a quieter greeting. It borders on a universal and invariable truth: when we meet infants, we talk to them. Go figure.    

The second chapter of Matthew tells the familiar story of the visit of the wise men to the newborn Jesus. We are told about their travels, their encounter with Herod along the way, and their gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But we are not told whether they said anything to the infant Jesus when they met him. The gospel says that they paid him "homage," but it's not clear whether they did this through words. Maybe the homage-making consisted of a bow or the presentation of the gifts--just as the old creche scenes depict it. Or maybe the Magi did what we all do when we meet infants: say hello; exclaim over the child's specialness; show off the gifts that were hauled along.

In the last few months, we have suffered a number of losses. A dear neighbor and friend who was unexpectedly overtaken by cancer. Two beloved, old dogs. A 100-year-old matriarch whose kitchen was the center of our family's universe. A young man who succumbed to a horrible addiction. A treasured father, finally overcome by long-term illness. Over and over again, we have found ourselves in the presence of someone who was moving from this life to the next, or who was grieving the absence of someone who had done so. And over and over again we have been reminded of another universal and invariable truth: in these circumstances, we do not know what to say.

Then, just two days ago, we sat in horror as we learned about the terrorist attacks in Paris. Over a hundred dead. Hundreds wounded, many critically. A senseless and obscene act of violence. And again: we do not know what to say.

This will no doubt seem curious, given that the story about the visit of the Magi is a narrative of awe and joy, but it occurs to me that there may be embedded in this tale a lesson that we can apply during these trying times. The lesson, of course, does not lie in what the Magi said. Indeed, the scripture does not even bother to report their words, if they said any. The significance clearly lies somewhere else.

Perhaps the significance of the visit of the Magi rests in the simple fact that they paid attention. While everyone else was going about their business, they stopped theirs and tried to figure out what was happening and why it was important. Did they fully understand? We don't know--the gospel doesn't tell us. The gospel doesn't give us a set of verses in which the three wise men debrief on their long trip and what they learned, memorandum of expenses to follow. And what a relief that we don't get such a thing, because it seems to me that it would wholly and conspicuously miss the point.

In the most challenging circumstances of our lives, it is often the case that the best we can do is to pay attention. It is good to be physically present when we can, but that is not always possible. We can, however, always be spiritually and mindfully there with those who need us. And we can send messages to let people know that we are paying attention and that we stand with them--even if the best words, if there are any, do not come to us.
 
I suspect that the fact that we're paying attention is actually what matters most to those for whom we are concerned. In my experience, a bereaved friend almost always remembers that I attended a funeral of their loved one but almost never remembers anything I said. I like to think that they remember a bit more if I'm the eulogist, but that may be self-flattery.

And paying attention may also be what matters most to us. Words aside, the simple act of paying attention takes us out of ourselves, forces us into empathic and sympathetic interactions, broadens our vision, reorients our priorities, deepens our soul. When we pay attention, we change that which we observe and with which we engage. And we ourselves are changed in the process.
 
We do not know much about the wise men. We do not know a word they said in the presence of Jesus. For that matter, we do not know, for certain, that they uttered a single sentence.

But we know they were there. We know they paid attention.

And we know that they went home by another, a different, way.

As do we all, after we show up and pay attention.

As do we all.

Amen.
 

Terrible Freedom

The first seventeen verses of the opening chapter of the Gospel of Matthew seem like a bad way to start a good story. There, Matthew gives us a genealogy of Jesus--dozens of names recited without color or commentary. I have often wondered how many new readers of the gospels we lose before the end of this first chapter.

A little background helps with the tedium. Students of the Hebrew Bible will recognize that the list includes kings and commoners, men and women, heroes and minor villains, the famous and the obscure. But, even if you know the players, it does not make for exciting reading for most of us.

And yet something important must be going on here. So commentators have identified a variety of compelling reasons Matthew may have begun his narrative this way.

They point out that through this genealogy Matthew, the most Jewish of the gospel writers, links Jesus to numerous titans of the faith, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ruth, Solomon, and, of course, David.

They note that the line of descent underscores a mathematical continuity within God's plan: fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, and from the deportation to the birth of Jesus. Fourteen holds a special meaning because it is the numerical value of David's name in Hebrew and because the number seven is charged with symbolic significance. Still, this continuity is not without its problems since Matthew has to leave a few ancestors out in order to get the math to work.

Commentators also observe that Matthew uses this genealogy to set the stage, to give us a sense of historical momentum, to signal the working out of a grand, unfolding plan--the grandest of all plans throughout all of time.

This is a familiar literary device--beginning a story by using the past to tell us something about where the narrative starts and where it will go.

The great author Gabriel Garcia Marquez commences his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude this way, with one of the most famous sentences in all of literature: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

The device taps into a truth we all know and experience: where we come from matters. It matters to the now. It matters to the next.

We find this truth in William Faulkner's wry statement that "The past is never dead. It's not even past" and in Fitzgerald's closing remark that we are like boats against a current, borne "ceaselessly back into our past." And endless everyday canards and banalities remind us of it. As we all know, objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear.

But, in the gospel that follows this introduction, Jesus's lineage ends up playing a puzzling and not always consistent role.

Of course, the narrator continues to allude to Jesus's connection with David. But almost all of the other names fall away. And members of Jesus's community seem to have little interest in any part of his past, except to the extent that they question how the son of a local carpenter could make any credible claim to messianic status. As saviors of humankind go, they muse, it does not seem like much of a resume.

And the words and actions of Jesus himself seem stunningly dismissive of his immediate and distant family connections. When he is told that his mother and brothers are waiting outside to talk to him he asks "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" He then points to his disciples and declares that his family consists of those who do God's will. And when the Pharisees and Sadducees invoke Abraham as a source of their authority Jesus replies: "Do not presume to say to yourselves 'We have Abraham as our ancestor.' (Something Matthew has told us Jesus could himself say in the most literal sense.) I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham."

Reasonable people can differ about how we should interpret this tension within the text--on one hand, pulling us toward the past and signaling the importance of lineage, on the other hand, severing the connection to the past and stressing the importance of the individual and how he or she lives here, now, at this very moment. We can fairly conclude that the text leaves us room to find truth in both of these messages--as I think it does and as I think we do. But it is the latter message that probably keeps us up at night.

After all, a message that frees us from our past also pulls us in conflicting directions. The message liberates us, allowing us to cast off burdens and baggage that could slow us down or crush us as we journey through the complexities of life. But the message also challenges us, making clear our dreadfully personal responsibility for our own decisions and our own behaviors and our own willingness--or unwillingness--to be a present and palpable manifestation of God's heart and hands. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre did not believe in God, and yet there is an unsettling resonance between what Jesus tells us here and what Sartre meant when he declared that we are "condemned to be free." It is a glorious freedom we have; and it is a terrible freedom as well.

The question of how we use and manage that terrible freedom is among the central questions of our existence. We have to decide what we will allow to limit that freedom. We have to decide whether to view those claims on our freedom as limitations. We have to decide what parts of that freedom we will give to our neighbor. We have to decide whether, in the end, we can justify holding any part of it back. We have to decide whether service to others curtails our freedom--or is the very essence of it.

It would be pretty to say that our intuitions, our cultural norms, our moral philosophy, the advice of friends or family or mentors, or something else will provide us with clear and precise guidance about how to proceed in making those decisions. But it would not be true. Our untidy lives resist tidy directives. And, even when we have the evident good fortune to get one, we still have to decide whether to pay any attention to it. It falls to us to decide what we will believe, what we will do, what we will refuse to do. Period. Full stop.

If I have made this sound like a daunting, sometimes overwhelming, occasionally terrifying, and frequently lonely process, well, then, I guess I got it right. And getting it right matters here because when we delude ourselves about the terribleness of our freedom or the almost impossible nature of our task then we can convince ourselves that we don't need any help working through it. But if we honestly and unblinkingly stare at the momentous nature of our responsibility and our choices, then we will humbly realize that we need all the help we can get.

The good news--the news that follows in all the verses after those first seventeen--is that help is available to us. We can find it by looking backward to that very first parent, the one who made us free, the one who whispers to us and nudges us and sometimes even gives us a bit of a shove. This is no distant ancestor, looming in the past. This is the most imminent presence in our lives, watching how we spend the gift of our terrible freedom, helping us to see and revel in the joy of its sacred surrender.

Amen. And amen.