Bob Ingram Funeral
July 9, 2011
You never really get to full picture of a person’s life from just a few months of having known them. We meet people at various seasons of their life and often miss out on childhood or adolescence or other formative seasons of a person’s life. And so we evaluate often based on the very short snapshot that we’re given never really knowing all the love and joy, all the hurt and pain that a person has gone through – all of which contributed to who and what a person has become.
It makes us hesitant to evaluate or sum up at all.
But in some instances and in some lives we are given glimpses of a depth of character and vision that transcend our day to day encounter with them. We hear a story or get an insight into someone’s life experiences that reveals something hidden from view. And then we see, there is much, much more here than meets the eye.
In the time that I knew Bob Ingram, he was already deep into his descent into full blown Alzheimers and with each week it was becoming progressively worse. He and I sat a table with Leigh in the fellowship hall several months ago and he told stories of some of his experiences as a father and as a pastor. The stories for him were still present to his mind even if the words were not. Leigh helped Bob with names and places as Bob would look at her and ask, “Who is that guy again?” Leigh would fill in the blanks and Bob would continue relating the memory.
As I listened, I began to realize that these were not just pastor’s memories. These were the memories of a pastor who was exceptionally brilliant, educated, compassionate and in a word - iconoclastic. Herman Norton, the dean of the Disciples Divinity House at Vanderbilt once observed that Bob was one of the most brilliant students who had passed through that school. High praise! He finished seminary and began pastoring during one of the most conflicted seasons of our country’s recent history – the 1960’s.
As a seminary student in the early 90’s, I arrived on the scene after many of the significant cultural battles this country had been fought and to a large degree decided. Bob Ingram arrived on the scene just as opening shots on the issues of race, war and violence, peace and justice were being fired. He wasn’t one to gauge the direction of the prevailing winds and play it safe. Bob had a clear and distinct picture in his mind of what Jesus would bring to the hard questions being asked and in the either/or of “this is the way we’ve always done it” versus “Jesus is calling us to a new spirit-led way of life” – Bob chose Jesus.
Mark and I had a conversation about the time we both encountered Bob that centered on many of the justice and compassion issues we saw facing Crockett County. We were concerned still with some of the racial divide but our focus had shifted to how sustained poverty and addiction impacted the lives of family and especially the children. As we got to know Bob, we realized that this too had been a concern of his, here in this community, thirty years ago. Our discussion turned to Bob. Mark had been talking with Bob about Bob’s vision for ministry and Bob had shown Mark some of things he’d written reflecting on his time and experience as a pastor. What we began to recognize and appreciate was that he had been a forerunner, identifying these issues and teaching and preaching into them long before us. And now were reaping some of the harvest – thirty years later – of seed that was sown by Bob Ingram.
Bob was an iconoclast. What others around him believed and did wasn’t near as important as the vision of life he’d been given by God. If others were bigoted and prejudicial, Bob would call people to inclusivity and fraternity. If others chose to be provincial and self-satisfied, Bob would call people to a larger vision of life that saw God’s activity and beauty and purpose taking shape in ways often very different from our own. Our God is a big God and isn’t the least bit limited to our perceptions and imperfect beliefs about Him.
In short, for Bob Ingram, there was no greater guide to life and heaven than the very life of Jesus himself. Opinions about Jesus, theology about Jesus, dogma about Jesus could never replace what one actually encountered inside of the life of Jesus – and it was that life that releases one from the shortcomings of oneself and into a grand and encompassing and eternal life with the Father.
No one is perfect, not even a minister. Paul said in Romans that “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” And I think that those who possess incredible vision for life in Christ perhaps struggle the most. They’ve been given a gift for seeing into the kingdom of God and the blessing of life together as believers but then had to provide also for their family and establish some measure of security and comfort for those who didn’t have the option of choosing full-time ministry. It’s often a tight-rope act.
In living this tension there grace and forgiveness is sought – grace and forgiveness from God… and from others. As they do their best to balance calling and home life, a minister remains someone whom God has called to proclaim a vision of heaven to people hurting and lost here on earth. And if our lives struggle to keep up with the words we speak, that doesn’t diminish the power of the words. The vision of life in Jesus is real. Ministers point to and speak of that life. And pastors like their brothers and sisters who serve alongside them daily have to choose to die to self and live in Christ. We haven’t been made exempt from the spiritual challenges faced by the people to whom we proclaim the word. The vision Bob was given was real and powerful and transforming. And it moved him to incredible compassion for hurting people. He had encountered Jesus. And his life, like all of us, was lived - again in the words of Paul in Philippians 2:12 – working out his salvation with fear and trembling.
Bob’s life and ministry stand really as a marker to the idea that every community of faithful believers exists as a prophetic and proclaiming witness to the real presence of Jesus inside of that community and inside of the lives of the people who make up that community. If someone were to ask the question, where is Jesus, I am certain that Bob would point to the church and say, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear you will encounter him there.
In a manner of speaking, Bob Ingram has left the world of the “now, but not yet” and entered the world that he knew and preached about and longed for. And it’s God who gets the glory for the amazing grace that allows Bob Ingram .. and us… to live with him eternally.
