Joan, Bob, and All the Company of Heaven

April 5, 2025 - Thanksgiving for the Life of Joan DeHaven

My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you to everyone for being here this morning, and especially to those of you who came forward and shared your memories. Thank you. As her priest here at the Church of the Epiphany only since last June, I did not know Joan for as long as many of you have, and I never had the privilege of meeting her husband Bob, but both of them made such a profound impact here on our community.

If you look around, you’ll see their names and faces, always together, all around our building. The most obvious place to look first is on our photo wall just outside our chapel. There, attached to a photo dated November 2013, and probably up there since then, you can read that their favorite movies were “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” and “Gone With the Wind.” Their names are on our back wall here, on a plaque for the window restoration memorial in 1996. You won’t find their names on the plaques at our west-facing doors, but Bob and Joan were both instrumental in Epiphany’s Claiming the Unclaimed ministry, caring for people who had no one else to bury them, no one to mark their lives in services like these. Their impact together here goes far beyond those anecdotes... they were married here in 1960; their signatures are in a little book in the rector’s office. They were a part of this place, together, for nearly 60 years.

This service today, though, it is indeed about Joan. My experience with her began at brunch on the day I was welcomed to be your rector here over a year ago. She came up and very quietly said to me, “I was baptized here, you know.” “You were?” I asked. “When exactly were you baptized?” “When I was a baby,” she said, with her biggest smile. Her parents’ signatures are in that same little book in the rector’s office, signed in August of 1939.

That soft-spoken, quiet, confident voice she used when we first met is what I came to know of Joan over the last year. I can’t speak to how she got to be that way, or who she was before we met, but goodness, she was a quiet, confident, blessing, always seated over on that side where my girls usually sit, most often in the back pew. She would never make a fuss, she wouldn’t tell me when she needed something, she made me leave the room when it got too embarrassing for her at the hospital last fall. Janet MacKenzie told me yesterday that Joan was just that way, quiet, getting stuff done, not complaining, not asking for help, not whining, not sitting front and center and looking for attention, but in the back pew, faithful, always here, ever-helpful, a part of this people and this place.

And this is a people and a place, a church, where we understand there is more to life than what we see, that God is love, that we do not lose heart, because we are all being prepared for an eternal rest, an eternal glory, away from the body and at home with the Lord. All of our readings this morning speak of this, of mercies that never come to an end; of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever, not just for now; of a good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, bringing us all into one flock, no exceptions. There is hope here, in this place. There is life, and light, and goodness, and abundant love, and Joan was unfailingly a part of all of that, here in the flesh, for nearly 86 years.

Thankfully for us today, as part of the wider tradition of the church, we also believe that Joan’s work, her life, her presence with us did not end in late March. Like many other Christians, Episcopalians like Joan believe that our beloved friends and family who have passed away do not reside in a box or in a graveyard, though these are certainly meaningful markers to those of us they left behind. No, after death, they – and we – reside with God. These saints who lived with us and made such an impact on our lives are continually present with us here and now.

Most especially, I believe, we find them present with us at the eucharistic table, here, at the altar, as we come forward for the bread and the wine on Sunday mornings... and today. As part of the prayer that we’ll pray here in a little bit, I will read these words, “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name.”

When we read that portion of the Eucharistic Prayer, every time we come to the table, I want you to consider today who “all the company of heaven” is referring to. Christianese can admittedly become pretty rote, this whole thing that we do in buildings like these, it can become stale. It can lead us away from God rather than toward God, it can scar us, or become boring, or even meaningless. But it never did for Joan, or at least, if it ever did, she kept on faithfully powering through for nearly 86 years. Joan returned week after week, year after year, literally decade after decade to this building and to this people and to this place because she believed in Jesus Christ. And I am confident this morning, that she is now included in “all the company of heaven.”

And so is Bob. Bob passed almost exactly seven years to the date before Joan passed, and you all held a service just like this one in 2018. Christine and Derek told me last Saturday that in Joan’s final hours, she was asking for Bob to come to the bedside, asking to be with him. They were inseparable in their meaning here to us and to this place, and now, with all the company of heaven, they are together again.

May we all remember her well, with that big smile, whether that be quietly faithful in the back pew or whatever your best memory of her may be. And may we take comfort today in knowing that Angels, Archangels, Bob and now Joan, are forever singing hymns together to proclaim the glory of God’s name.

Amen.