Leaving a Legacy

July 3, 2011
College Place, WA

This is the sermon I delivered at my Father's Memorial Service on July 3rd. It was a wonderful day and a beautiful celebration of his life and ministry at the College Place Presbyterian Church for over 30 years. Thank you to all 500+ who attended and for those of you unable to attend, here is a brief sample of some of the wonderful, inspiring words shared in the service.


"Leaving a Legacy"
How can you measure a man’s life? Do you look at his accomplishments? Do you look at his family? What is the legacy he has left behind? My father was a worker. The Peterson family value is hard work. Many families have different ways of enjoying each other’s company… we worked. Hard. Dad even made up a song for us, “Mad dogs and Petersons go out in the midday sun.” Our family bonding took place over sprinkler pipes and broken-down tractors, onion bins and animals. I’m not surprised that God took him home before he was 60. In those few years he did the work of 3 men. One of his favorite sayings was, “A lot of men could, but not many would,” after having accomplished some incredible feat of strength and hard work. He also loved the adage, “Work smarter, not harder”, although he just worked harder anyway. He didn’t look like he could out work everyone in the field, but he did. He was so incredibly strong that we called him the “Incredible Bulk”. He never turned green.

He was always approachable. People were drawn to him. His smile and his manner were welcoming. My Aunt Pat told me a story that people have always treated him this way. Even as a baby, people loved him. Being the youngest of 13 children in North Dakota, there was not a lotof money to go around. So there weren’t many pictures of him, but there were a few. They sent a couple of photos to Aunt Pat who was working in New York as a nurse. She was dating a doctor who didn’t have any siblings and when he saw the picture of dad in a little sideways baseball cap, he asked her if he could have it. He told her he never had a little brother and that was the cutest kid he had ever seen. Aunt Pat said, “Well, I have 9 little brothers, so you can share one of them!” Years later, when she met him again, he still had that picture of dad in his wallet, his little brother. “People always loved him, for his whole life.” Aunt Pat said.

As the youngest, he wanted to be like his older brothers and sisters. They would play school with him and on the first day of first grade he already knew how to read and write, add and subtract and his multiplication tables. He was so bored that while the poor teacher of the one-room schoolhouse was busy teaching the older kids, little Robin was wandering around the classroom visiting his brothers and sisters. She got so frustrated with him that she tied his shoelaces to the chair to keep him in place and instead of staying put; he just took off his shoes. He was sent home with a note and that meant a severe punishment. The solution to the problem was that Grandma took a teaching job in another school and took dad and Aunt Kathy with her. She could teach him whatever he was ready to learn and he would mind her because it was his mother. He was a little spoiled that way. He got his own children’s books. He didn’t have his own new pair of shoes until he was 6 years old, but he had books to read. Grandma always wanted to go to Bible college and was thrilled that finally the last of her children was going to study the Bible.

He loved us. He was our softball coach, our soccer coach, our personal trainer, our mentor. He wanted us to achieve great things. He believed the best in others. He loved sports. He loved music. He loved teams and working together. He loved to tell stories and be the focus of attention. Maybe because he was the youngest of 13 kids, he had to get attention somehow. He loved sports and he supported and encouraged athletes of all ages to do their best and accomplish all they could. He was the self-appointed “chaplain” to the Wa-Hi wrestling team. It was his desire to help young men and women become the strong disciples of Jesus Christ that God desired them to be. He came to faith as a teenager at a Billy Graham crusade in Yakima and it transformed his life. He knew first-hand how important those teenage years can be to spiritual formation. He wasn’t one of those pastors who stayed inside the walls of the church expecting people to come to him. Whether it was at Camp Ghormley as the speaker or at a Blue Devil sporting event, at the hospital or the parts store, he went to where the people were and met them on their terms in their comfort zone and brought Jesus to them.

He lived his life to the fullest. He worked hard, he played hard, and if he ever sat down long enough, he slept hard, too. We have pictures of him holding each one of us kids and the grandkids and while the baby slept, so did he.

He loved the Blues Brothers and would often say, “We’re on a mission from God.” Even when he was in Seattle at the Cancer Care Alliance, he was ministering to the other patients and nurses and doctors there. He gave them bottles of wine and prayed for them. He brought Jesus to the cancer center, too. He had a passion for life and an unyielding faith in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He had a wonderful picture in his bedroom of a young man at the helm of a ship and Jesus Christ looking over his shoulder pointing the way to safety through the storm. This was the model of his life. I brought the picture to his hospital room and hung it on the wall so he would have that constant reminder and comfort that Christ was still guiding and directing and leading him every minute. Even when he suffered, he still reached people in ministry. He wrote his blogs to touch the lives of thousands of people with the saving message of Jesus Christ. He wanted to care for his congregation even in the midst of being absent physically; he was always the spiritual guide of this church. Christ is the head of the church and my father worked as His loving servant to shepherd this flock in their walk with Christ.

When my uncle suffered multiple strokes in January and February, dad wrote these words in his blog:

"Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me; and the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."

"That Jesus willingly went to the cross to conquer death is the rock that anchors my soul.

"Death in Christ is a miraculous and wonderful gift. To claim all the promises of the One who promises to be the Resurrection and the Life gives us a boldness and confidence to "surthrive" even human mortality. But the process of dying still sucks. It often hangs on to the vestiges of when it was the ultimate destiny of humanity and makes the process bitter and trying. Maybe that is part of what being crucified with Christ is all about: to share in physical pain, the loss of control and the releasing of our souls into the Hands of God may have some redemptive value we just can't see. At the end of that journey, however, I do know what awaits those who die in Christ. Twice in my baseball career I have been up to bat in the bottom of the last inning with the game on the line. If I struck out or made an out, we would lose. If I got a hit, particularly a home run, we would win. Miraculously, both times I hit a home run. Each time as I was rounding 2nd base I was suddenly grabbed by the entire team and hoisted on their shoulders and carried to third base and finally home. That is what dying in Christ is like. God's angels come swooping down and carry you home because you have fought the good fight, you have finished the race, you are lifted up on eagle's wings and you go home."

These are my Father’s words of hope and assurance of faith. He wrote these words in the midst of grieving his brother, Tom. I can’t tell you why my dad died. I can’t tell you what went wrong. He had cancer. And cancer sucks. Cancer kills people. Even good people die of cancer. Sometimes God's healing takes the cancer away from the body and other times God heals by taking the body away from the cancer. I can tell you with confidence that God was glorified, even in his death. My father sacrificed his life to love and serve Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. And his last words to us were, “Tell the kids I love them. Tell the church I love them. All to the glory of God.” Even in his dying breath, he glorified God.

He didn’t want to die. He wanted to be here with all of us today. He wanted to blow out 60 candles on his German Chocolate birthday cake.

Even though we don’t understand, even though we shake our fists at heaven and ask, “Why God? Don’t you care that we lost this man that we love? Didn’t you hear our prayers? Don’t you care about us?” God says to us, “My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness.” Those words were so important to my dad. He memorized them in Greek for crying out loud! We worship a God who loves us even more than my father did. We worship and serve a God who is holy and perfect. His timing is perfect. His will is made manifest in our lives. God is able to transform what cancer did for evil, God transforms for good.

As most of you know, dad loved the Celtic Women concerts on PBS. His favorite song was “You Raise Me Up”. The day he died, I brought DVDs of the concerts to play in his room and we played them over and over all day long. When he died, the song “You Raise Me Up” came on. It was as though God blessed us with the assurance that He had raised dad up to heaven in that moment. God gave us that blessing and comfort that dad didn’t have to suffer and fight with cancer anymore. He was raised up to a new life in a new resurrection body where there is no pain, or crying or hurt or cancer; where God wipes away every tear.

We miss you, daddy. We love you. But we know that you don’t have to fight any more. And for that, we are grateful. This world is not all there is, and my father has gone home on the shoulders of angels to hear those words we all long for, “well done, good and faithful servant.”

I remember dad saying, “When I die, I want a Dixieland band to play, “When the Saints Go Marching In”, because that day is going to be a celebration. I will be in heaven with Jesus.