Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/All the king’s horses and all the king’s men/Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Later on, I read that Humpty Dumpty referred to King Richard III who was hunchback. He had a horse named Wall. In one of their battles, King Richard fell from his horse, and his body was cut into small parts by his enemies.
I was wondering why this was categorized as a nursery rhyme since it is so violent. Maybe the resilience of this old nursery rhyme lies in the fact that it talks about life — your life and mine. And in the rhyme, there is something in Humpty Dumpty that is part of us.
Like Humpty Dumpty, we come today as broken people.
We grieve for Ray Moncada whose death was really tragic. It makes me and several others angry. I can hardly imagine how others can just take the life of someone whom we loved — for some money.
For the past few days, from friends and family, you have heard of how Ray Moncada lived his life. Like Ray, I am one of the uncles attached to the Malayang clan, but I have to admit that Ray was one of the favorites of our nephews and nieces.
Whenever we had reunions, he was there with the young ones sharing stories with their stories which were half-truths, and drinking with them. One time I remember in one of our reunions, he got a bottle of an expensive rum, and filled it with cheap rum, and gave it to the nephews who did not know the difference because they were drunk.
Before coming here, the Malayang barangay in Michigan met for a prayer service to pray and remember Ray.
And even for the very young, they had stories to share. They talked about his biko even Sans Rival could not compete with; or his white shirt that he loved to wear at home even if there were some holes.
Others shared of him staying with his wife Eva at the hospital so he can drink the Ensure in the refrigerator that was intended for the patient. Ray did not want to eat in fastfood restaurants unless he could see who was cooking. They also shared stories about the number of bottles of rubbing alcohol he would use to clean his hands each time he travelled. (The bottle of sanitizer you must have seen near the coffin was Ray’s.)
His selflessness was the main thread of his life–serving others. He told me one time that he felt more comfortable helping someone else, than someone helping himself.
I remember of a time when our children were swimming with their cousins, and we left him to be the life guard. Our daughter Jasmine followed the bigger cousins to the deeper part, and Ray first counted the heads. A few minutes later, he counted the heads again, and realized he was short of one. He blew his whistle which he brought with him anywhere he went. He actually saved our daughter from drowning that day. To this day, Jasmine would always say that she forever owes her life to Ray.
The porters at the local airport loved him for he would give them large tips.
I am sure that family and friends have a lot of memories of Ray that will always be part of our lives. Those memories will help us with our grief. He will always be part of us in the stories we share, and we surely will miss him.
The heaviness in our hearts may ease as time goes by, but there will be no end to our grieving. Aside from grieving, some of us today are exhausted. There were a few days when our hopes was buoyed up with the thought that he was getting better, but days later, there was disappointment and guilt for not doing enough. And it leaves us angry, and asking God, “Where are You?”
The passage from the letter of St. Paul mentioned problems in the church in Corinth that even their coming together, instead of helping, had made the problem worse.
And for us who are broken in spirit and in body, we pray that this passage can help us in our grieving, and we can feel the love of God.
This then takes us to the second point I would like to share. In our coming together, I pray that we encounter the risen Christ who, like us, was also broken and bruised.
Our God is also the One who was well-acquainted with grief. We see Someone with nail prints in his hand.
And so let us bring our brokenness and our sorrows to the Lord with the hope that we can touch him.
However, in trying to touch him, we find Him reaching out to us even before we are able to reach out to Him. He is the one who always cares and understands. He is the one whose love is steadfast, no matter what. God’s faithfulness never fails.
The prophet Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet. He never preached a sermon that got approval from the people. Nobody ever slapped Jeremiah on the back, and said, “We are lucky to have you as our prophet, continue on the good work. “There was never a certificate of appreciation given to him, and no one came to him saying, “I hope you will be our prophet for a very long time.”
Instead, they threw him in a cistern where Jeremiah cursed the day he was born. On another occasion, he prayed, “O that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would sleep day and night for my people.”
However, it was the same Jeremiah who wrote in his Lamentations: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.”
Today, let us bring our griefs and our pains, and place them under the Lord’s blessing. The Lord uses broken things: He uses broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give us rain, broken grain to give us bread, broken bread to give us strength.
And then the Lord takes our broken lives, using our brokenness, to be a blessing to others. We may help a few people out of our strengths but we will help a host of people by putting our brokenness under the blessing of the Lord.
When the Lord blesses our brokenness: the intolerable becomes a challenge; the reason for depression and grief become a source of purification; and what seems like rejection becomes a way to deeper communion.
The dean of Yale Divinity School relates the story of his five-year-old son who, with his mother’s help, worked weeks to make his father a surprise Christmas gift. It was a beautiful ceramic vase for his office. The vase was carefully decorated with a ribbon, then placed far out of sight under the Christmas tree so it won’t break. The boy was utterly excited about the secret. Finally when Christmas morning came and the family was gathered about the tree, the boy pulled the case from behind the tree, and joyously took it to his father. As he did so, he stumbled. The vase fell, and shattered into several pieces. The boy broke down in uncontrollable tears. The father, attempting to console the boy, said, “Son, don’t cry. I thank you for the gift, but it’s not worth crying about. Don’t you worry a thing about it.” The mother, being much wiser than the father, took the boy in her arms. “Of course, it was important,” she said. “We worked so hard on it!” She cried with her son. Finally, when his tears had subsided, the mother said, “Son, let’s pick up the pieces, and make something of them.”
And so, it is all right to cry. It is important to weep. It is just right to get angry, and to grieve for losing a man whom we truly love. It is okay to fight for justice for those who are wronged.
But when our tears subside, we must pick up the pieces of our lives, and make something of what is left–for life must go on with God to give strength, and to sustain us.
May God pick us up from our grief, and continue to heal us. And now my friends, let us go forth in peace, waiting patiently for God to renew and resurrect our lives out of our sorrow and grief. And may the grace of a loving God journey with us today and the days to come. Amen
