Equipping The Saints

Feb 11, 2009
Rev. David Sugeno

Ephesians 4: 1-7, 11-13
Psalm 122
Matthew 9: 35-38

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Life, in my experience, has a funny way of looping back around upon itself. There is something very profound, at least to me, about that fact that I am back here in this pulpit, where just a few years back I practiced and learned the craft of preaching, the very pulpit from which my father preached for over 30 years. This chapel is also the very place where, 10 years ago, Amy and I were joined in Holy Matrimony, where my father, at the end of the service, came up from his seat in the congregation, threw on this very stole which has now been passed down to me, and gave us the marriage blessing right there, at that altar rail. Remembering my father while standing in a place where so much of his ministry occurred, where much of my own formation as a priest occurred, where so many before have preached and taught in what is still a very young seminary, I can feel the weight of many years collapsed into a single moment.

Life is like that. History is like that as well. It does not follow a single, unbroken line, but rather billions of tiny strands which meander, intertwine, loop back upon themselves, and, ultimately, wind up looking to most of us like an unholy mess. Few people have the ability to make sense of this mess called history.

We gather here today to remember one of those rare people my father, Frank Sugeno, beloved husband, father, teacher, friend, and historian in the truest sense of the word. It is very fitting that we should gather in this place to remember and celebrate his life, for most of his teaching ministry was done here, at this humble seminary which was fighting for its institutional life when he followed the call and drug my poor mother here back in 1964.
In the 35 years that followed, he was to contribute greatly to this place of formation, which not only survived, but thrived. He helped ensure this survival both directly, as an instructor and healing presence, and, according to reports, indirectly, by helping to make certain that we had good leadership at dean back in the 70s.

As the story goes, Gordon Charleton had recently been called as dean at a time that the survival of ETSS was very much in doubt. There were, in fact, only two students in the incoming class, a fact which was causing much consternation to my father and several of his colleagues. Thinking it only fair that they notify Gordon of this fact before he committed to coming here as Dean, my father and two other professors spent an afternoon trying to work up the courage to call and inform him. Their courage, of course, came in traditional form-I believe it was martinis. So, they kept drinking and egging each other on to call Gordon up, which, finally, one of them did, I don't know which.

Of course, Gordon did come, and served this seminary well as dean during some difficult years. Much later, someone was speaking with Gordon about his willingness to come here, even knowing that there was an incoming class of two. "I had to come", Gordon reportedly replied. "This place needed my help. It had two incoming students and three really drunk professors".

So much for telling stories on my dad. Beyond the stories, and there are many, many of them, I have found it extremely difficult to know what to say about my father at such an occasion as this. For one thing, he has already been rather brilliantly eulogized in a sermon by his friend and colleague Phil Turner. As a colleague, Phil was able to speak of my father from a vantage point which eludes me. Though my dad and I have had the relationship of peers for quite a few years, there is a degree to which a son, even a 43 year old one, still looks up to his father as if as a small child. I can never have Phil's perspective on my father, for to me he will always be a hero. For all the closeness, the warmth, and the love we shared, a part of me will always be in awe of him.

Phil Turner noted some of the saintly qualities of this unique and deeply complex man in the sermon he preached in VA. As an incurable historian, my father might want for us to examine his own personal history to try to make some kind of sense out of these qualities, so I will attempt to do so. Born into a family of Japanese immigrants in Seattle, Washington, my father learned to view life from an intercultural perspective. Born between worlds, his experience of being both Japanese and American, and yet neither, was at the heart of who my dad was. He was never completely comfortable in any specific social setting, yet he could also move rather easily from one to another. As he wrote to me a few years ago, "English is still like a second language to me. The trouble is I have no first language".

My father's profound sense of history was another important contributor to his character. To him, an incurable academic, history was no academic matter. As he once wrote, "We cannot know whither we are tending until we know from whence we come". My father knew and understood his history, ecclesiological, personal and cosmic, and so he never worried too much about the future. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil therein", as he used to quote to me. He truly lived the accompanying corollary, to not worry too much about tomorrow. Tomorrow, he knew quite well, would take care of itself.

Finally, my father lived with the absolute certainty that Jesus had revealed to us the nature of our creator, and that nature was love. It was this certainty, this abiding faith, that gave my father his deep calm, a calm that seemed to emanate from him. He knew with certainty that he was loved by his creator, and that all that was really demanded of him was that he return that love, and extend it to those around him.

My father's intercultural upbringing, coupled with his profound understanding of history, animated by his deep faith in the God of Love as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus is what made my father who he was, gave him the almost inhuman calm that so many remember about him. More than one former student has reminded me that their nickname for him back in the 80s was Yoda. A perfect nickname, for his slight build harbored an inner strength which everyone sensed, but few could quite put their finger on.

Gathered here at this seminary, it seems fitting to try to give at least a little bit of the perspective of some of the wonderful people who have been my students, who both learned from and taught my dad over the years. For he was, to the very core of his being, a teacher. The author of the letter to the Ephesians wrote that some were given gifts to be teachers, and my father was surely one of those people. As I've looked back over his life and its purpose, I think that purpose may well be found in these four simple words from the letter to the Ephesians: "to equip the saints". He taught whether he was trying to teach or not.

One woman, for example, a student of his for less than a semester, recalled how he once sat through an entire chapel service, arms folded, without moving. When some of the students expressed their concern at his lack of participation he replied "Sometimes it's enough just to be here." This same woman wrote that "I'm grateful, so grateful for his kindness and courage and sort of quiet subversiveness". One former student made the probably blasphemous comment that "I pray for you and your family even as I know Frank is currently giving sage insight to God. I can imagine God saying, ‘Gee, Frank, I never thought of it that way".

One student recalled an infamous incident that took place right here. He wrote "I'll never in my life, even if I am senile, forget the day that that the first year student, a woman whose name I can't recall, ended up dumping the hot coals on the edge of the chancel.  Frank very calmly poured red port on the smoking carpet, made a quick quip and went on as usual. We seminarians, of course, were in stitches!  That taught me two valuable lessons:  that any and everything will happen when one is celebrating and to be prepared to act quickly, and everything is redeemable, especially when a sense of humor is appropriately present".  There's a lesson worth learning.
What is left to say of him? As a preacher, I can only make the obvious and profoundly untheological observation that he was my dad. Father, friend, and role model, he was all that I aspire to be. I love and miss him more than I can say, but I cannot believe that I was so blessed as to have had this man as my father. I know that my family shares this sentiment, and that if he were here he would say that he was the lucky one, especially to have gotten to share so much of his life with my mother.

All of us gather here have been in some way touched, directly or indirectly, but this man, Frank Sugeno, who is now gone. The world is much the better for him having lived in it, but that fact also means that the hole that is left from his passing is that much the larger. Time will heal the pain caused by that gaping hole, and the knowledge of how richly we have been blessed for having known him. I believe that through our contact with him, even if very brief, each of us has, in some way, been equipped for the work of the saints by Frank, teacher and equipper. The harvest, certainly, is more plentiful than ever. A hurting world still needs to know the good news, the best news of all, that we are loved, that without love our own lives, indeed can never be fulfilled. An anxious world does not know that it is possible to live a calm and peaceful life of faith in the service of others. My father has set aside his labors, and gone to his reward. For those of us whom he labored to equip the labor goes on.

Amen.

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