Liberace

In 1987 I was a nervous twenty-one year old preacher wannabe.  At the time I was living in Commack, on Long Island,  as a missionary apprentice.  In May of 1996 I  moved to New York, along with five others, as a part of the Adventures In Missions Program out of Lubbock, Texas.  Our original destination was Staten Island.  There we labored for eight or nine months with a wonderful church.  However, we spent the reminder of our eighteen month committment on Long Island due to circumstances beyond our control.

One day we received a call from our friends on Staten Island.  A member of that congregation had died suddenly.  The church there was without a preacher so they called to ask if the minister we were now working with could travel to Staten Island to conduct the funeral service for our brother.  He agreed to do so.  Then he got sick.  That’s when he “asked” (told) me to do the funeral. 

 I had been to my share of funeral’s,  but I had never preached one.  I was terrified.  What could I say?  I asked for help.  Basically my boss wrote the sermon for me.  One of the points I was to make, for the sake of the audience, was that death is no respecter of persons, so you better be ready.  To illustrate the point I was to mention a person everybody knew who had died in spite of their celebrity, wealth, etc.  At the time there were several candidates  who had recently died.   I chose to talk about Liberace for reasons unremembered.  But regretted nonetheless.

So, we’re at the funeral home.  And I’m scared.  Furthermore, my balance was thrown off due to the fact that the funeral home workers insisted on calling me “Reverend Hicks.”  As a good ol’ church of Christ boy they might as well have called me Beelzebul.  I kept thinking, “Am I going to hell for not correcting them?”  Consequently, it was with thoughts of my everlasting condemnation that I began the sermon.

Soon enough I began to find my rhythem although my voice was several octaves higher than normal.  I was feeling pretty good about the lesson by the time I got to my “death is no respecter of person’s point”.  This was how I planned on making the point- “What can we learn from Art’s death?  Blah, blah, blah and finally death is no respecter of person’s.  For example, consider Liberace.  Here’s a man who had it all.  World-wide fame.  Great wealth, cars, mansions, jewels, and just about anything else he wanted.  But, you know what?  (Pause for dramatic effect)  With all of that (pause) Liberace was not able to buy one more second of life (pause) because death is no respecter of person’s.” (Homerun!)

So, I’m winding up and on a roll.  Everything is going as planned.  I swing for the bleachers by saying, “World- wide fame, great wealth, cars, mansions, jewels, and just about anything else he wanted.  But you know what?…”

 During my pause for dramatic effect the widow’s sister hollered out as loud as church bells…

“HE WAS GAY!!!”

It took every bit of self-control I possess to not crawl in the coffin with Art and slam the lid shut. 

And I should have done so because  her initial outburst, for some reason,  loosed that crazy woman’s tongue.  From then on she just couldn’t keep her mouth shut.   It was made worse by the fact she was sitting with the family, not three feet away from me, on the first row.  For the duration of my sermon the family was literally trying to gag her mouth shut with their hands.  But she was a tough ol’ bird (the crazy one’s always are) and  fought them off long enough to maintain a running commentary on the rest of my remarks.  Which I severely curtailed.

To this day I refuse to use Liberace as an example of anything.  Let the dead bury the dead.

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