Saint of the Month: Emma Dinan

“Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'” (John 14:5-6)

Okay. So you've never heard of Emma Dinan. If you did know her, however, I'll bet that you'd love her the same way I did. She wasn't famous or accomplished or anything like that. She was just a happy, somewhat plump, seventy-nine year-old lady from South Philly who would probably remind you of your favorite aunt or your mom. She liked candy bars and church music and spoiling her grandkids.

I promised her daughter, Jayne, that I'd write up the memorial homily I preached at Emma's funeral. I usually don't write these things out completely. I'm kind of lazy by nature, so I just write an outline and then preach off the top of my head. I can't promise that what appears below will be exactly like what I preached when we laid Emma's remains to rest last month, but it'll be pretty close. It will also—I hope—reflect my belief that the way of Christ is seen in ordinary, average people like you and me, and that a saint is nothing more than a sinner saved by God's grace.

First, however, I have to do a bit of apologizing for the recommended text my Lutheran Occasional Service Book suggests for the service of Burial of the Dead, John 14:1-6. We read this passage because in it Jesus reminds us that he will one day come again and take us to himself, “...that where I am, you may be also.” This is intended to comfort us in time of grieving, and I believe that it does. Unfortunately, the lesson ends with words I feel we in the Church have misused for the last two millenniums, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Church dogma, I think, has used these words (written some seventy years after the time of Jesus, by the way, and not found in any other source material of the period) to suggest that some kind of velvet rope has been stretched across the gates of Heaven with the Church standing guard like holy night club bouncers deciding who gets in and who gets left out in the cold. It's as if we've said, “Unless you subscribe to exactly the doctrine we preach, you're just going to go to Hell!” Personally, I think nothing could be farther from what the evangelist intended when he wrote those words.

First, however, we have to know some historic trivia. Before Christians were called “Christians,” (a name, by the way, which was given to us by others. See Acts 11:26) we were known as “those who belonged to The Way.” (Acts 9:2) So when John has Jesus say, “I am the way,” there is a little more resonance. A “way” is a journey, not a static point. It can't, therefore, be a one-and-done assent to a doctrine. It has to be something lived. Thomas, poor old guy, is confused when Jesus tells him that he “knows the way.” He thinks it's a geographic location. I can almost see Jesus rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “Thomas. Dude,” he seems to say, “you know me, right? We've lived together, journeyed together, been chased out of synagogues together, eaten and gone hungry together. You know my way.”

It's the way of Jesus—by whatever religious title we choose to give it—which brings us into relationship with the living God. And, since none of us have physically met Jesus but know Him only through the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit, I will suggest that in knowing ordinary lovers of Christ like Emma Dinan we have made contact with The Way. The way of Emma and the way of Jesus were, I suggest, very similar. If we can journey in this way, we'll know the Father as Jesus did. If we don't we won't.

So what's the Way?

For both Jesus and Emma the way is love. Generous, unconditional, forgiving—if not always uncritical—love. If you met Emma, you'd find her to be all love and perfectly adorable. Smiling, hospitable, and welcoming. She also had a tremendous love story. Almost sixty years ago, at Philadelphia's famous annual Mummers' Parade, she was introduced to a boy named Joe. She was dating a soldier at that time, but after meeting Joe she gave the G.I. his marching orders and spent the next fifty-five years with an affable, boisterous man who treated her like a princess. Having lost her father at an early age, Emma found in Joe a big brother, a protector, and a lover. They raised three children together and gleefully spoiled a bunch of grandchildren.

But the love of Jesus, and the love of Emma both had a singular characteristic—self-sacrifice. You see, when Christians worship, we don't focus on the image of a man who just hit the Power Ball. Instead we look to the man on the cross. We worship the one who is sacrificing his freedom, his body, his dignity, and his life out of love for people he never even met. Emma and Joe gave willingly of themselves, too. They took in foster children and sacrificed for them. Emma, typical of women of her generation, gave herself as a wife and mother and dedicated herself to her home, kids, and foster children. She decorated wedding cakes to raise money and taught ceramics classes in her home in order that her daughter Jayne might have a good education. After they retired to Florida, Joe and Emma continued to give back, serving as volunteer guides at the Homosassa Springs Nature Park and as helpers at Oak Hill Hospital. Even when they returned to the Delaware Valley to be close to their grandchildren, the Dinans' compassion for others led them to more volunteer work at Kennedy Hospital in Camden County, New Jersey.

The way of giving, however, also includes thanksgiving. I maintain the worst day we'll ever have on this earth will still contain more of God's blessings than we can count. Emma Dinan never doubted this, and she lived her life in gratitude to God. She was certainly one of the most genuinely cheerful individuals I ever met, and deeply thankful and appreciative for any act of kindness shown to her. Nothing gave her greater joy than to take her boys Joe, Jr. and John fishing when they were young. She and Joe both had a spontaneous and adventurous nature. It was not unknown for them to take an idea into their head, jump into their car, and head off on a holiday trip at a moment's notice. They loved travel, and through careful saving managed to visit Europe, touring in France, Italy, and Ireland. In later years, Emma's joy of living expressed itself through her membership in the Red Hat Club, and in the simple delight she took in her Tuesday game of bingo.

But the way of Christ also includes suffering. If I were to tell you that leading a good and virtuous life would garner you only good and virtuous things, I would be lying. Such a belief is not religion. It's superstition. Religion is understanding that our spiritual walk is not about the things which happen to us but rather in how we embrace them. Emma, like Jesus, took up her own cross, believing that God held her in His hand. No one who knew Emma knew, in any likelihood, the depth of her suffering as she was from a generation which believed in keeping private things private. Today, in a generation which puts the most deeply intimate details on facebook, it's refreshing to know that once people believed in bearing their own pain out of respect for others. I know Emma lost her dad early, and that her relationship with her mother was always contentious even though Emma tried her hardest to be understanding. I'm also certain that it pained her tremendously when her physical health declined to the point where she—the ultimate care-giver—had to rely on others to care for her. Most hurtful of all, I think, was the loss of her darling Joe in 2012.

But the way of Jesus must be a way of faith, of believing that God will make it all right in the end. And if it isn't all right, it's because it's not the end. Emma had been raised in the Lutheran faith, having been baptized as an infant into grace at Emanuel Lutheran Church in South Philly (the same church where, some sixty years later, I would say my first mass). She was an enthusiastic worshiper all of her life. I remember watching her express her love of Jesus by throwing her arms up in praise while singing along with Faith's Praise Team. Her more conventionally Lutheran brother and sister-in-law looked on with horror at this display, but Emma didn't care. She just loved to worship.

We will miss Emma, and we should. If tears are shed for her, they are righteous tears. The pain we feel when we lose someone we love is a reflection of the value of that relationship. Our society may feel embarrassed by such pain, but it is all part of love. As such, it should be honored.

But this is also a time for rejoicing. Faith teaches us that Emma is no longer infirm, disabled, or in pain. She is home with her Savior and with her beloved Joe. Perhaps she is keeping a motherly eye out for her loved ones here, too. I hope so.