In Memoriam - Jason Mohr

In Memoriam

Jason Patrick Mohr

1977-2019

We come from love. We return to love. And love is all around.

Jesus says, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” When he says this it had been a long night already. It’s the Last Supper, and Jesus had utterly shocked everyone by stripping down, taking a towel and basin of water, got down on his knees and washed all those feet – at least 24 if the numbers are right. All the while telling his friends and followers that this is what they had to do – wash one another’s feet, serve others, and love others, all others, as he loves them – as his Father loves them – as God loves them, and the others. All others.

Then he tells them, “I am with you only a little longer…where I am going, you cannot come. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are mine, and I am yours, if you have love for one another.” Peter asks, “Where are you going?” Jesus replies, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow later.” Peter pleads with him, “Lord, Why can’t I follow you now?”

That’s when he says, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Yet, here we are, with troubled hearts. Deeply troubled to have lost a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend. And like Peter and the others that night, that long long night, our hearts are troubled and filled with questions. With lots of “What ifs?” and “Whys?” and “What nexts?”

There are no answers to such questions. Jesus knows this which is why he says, Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house there are many dwellings. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going. I am the way, the truth and the life to the heart of my Father’s eternal love.

A friend of mine, a former French Jesuit priest puts it all this way: we come from love, we return to love, and love is all around. Jesus comes from love and returns to love. God is love. Jason came to us from the heart of God’s eternal love, was an important part of the love that is all around us all the time, and has returned to the heart of God’s eternal love. Like Jesus, we all return to the place from whence we came.

In whatever mysterious way in which we choose to understand what Jesus is saying to us right here and right now, he has promised to prepare a place for Jason, and for you and for me and for everyone. He promises to return for us. He promises an eternal place in the heart of God’s eternal love. He asks us to believe this. Thomas still has questions. So do we. It is the nature of life to have questions when we lose someone we love. It is also the nature of life to gather together to be the love that surrounds one another, to comfort one another, to begin the healing process, to begin to calm our troubled hearts. We come from love. We return to love. And we are asked, commanded really, by Jesus to be the love that is all around. Love one another, he says.

We also come together to celebrate the life of Jason Patrick Mohr. As I said to Dave yesterday, I remember Jason as a big, soft, grinning teddy bear who at one time was training to be a chef. He worked hard at it. Jason was something of a perfectionist and would tackle every one of life’s challenges with everything he had. Sometimes he worked with Dave, who says Jason had the best work ethic of anyone he ever hired. And he did not only work for himself. At the Corning Fiber Optic factory in Wilmington, NC, working 12 hour shifts, if he saw a co-worker in danger of being laid-off, Jason would mentor them, teach them how to succeed, and help them to become the best version of themselves – just as Jesus had urged his friends to get down on their hands and knees to help others wherever you are, whatever the circumstances – you can always make a difference in someone else’s life. That was Jason: generous, kind, soft hearted – a friend in need, a friend in deed.

Which should come as no surprise to those who know that Jason grew up in this church: in the youth group, at the altar, asking to read the vision of Ezekiel and the Valley of Dry Bones at the Easter Vigil more than once – a vision of God’s breath, God’s Spirit breathing new life into those who seemed as good as gone. And although like many in his generation, he had tended to drift from the church, these past four years he had once again begun to attend to his spiritual life, going back to the scriptures, asking questions, reading deeper into the faith that was nurtured by so many people here at St. Peter’s, both young and old. Jason was, is, and always will be, a fully incorporated member of the Body of Christ, the Church, and knows what it meant to love one another as God in Christ loves us.

This just scratches the surface of the life we celebrate and remember today, and there will be time afterwards to share more stories of what Jason meant to all of us. We gather to comfort one another, to celebrate Jason’s life, and finally to affirm the faith he knows and lived.

We come from love. We return to love. And love is all around. We are those people who believe that for the faithful, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place in the heavens. A place prepared by Jesus himself.  [Take just a moment to imagine how Jason’s place has been prepared. I see a fully equipped kitchen. A friendly companion cat…]

And we are those people who believe that Jason has been made one with all God’s saints in heaven and on earth, and that as we continue our earthly pilgrimage we are always supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and surrounded by their witness to God’s glory and love and mercy. Jason is no longer with us in the ways we remember, but he will still be an ongoing participant in God’s ongoing work of redemption in us if we allow him to dispel in us a little more of our darkness and lead us ever closer to the light – the light of this Paschal Candle in which Jason would read from Ezekiel, “…I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” [Ezekiel 37:14]

Let us pray:

We seem to give him back to you, dear God, who gavest him to us.

Yet, as thou didst not lose him in giving, so we have not lost him by his return.

Not as the world giveth, givest thou, O Lover of Souls.

What thou givest, thou takest not away.

For what is thine is our always, if we are thine.

And life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.

Lift us up, O God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly; draw us closer to thyself, that we may know ourselves nearer to our beloved who are with thee.

And while thy Son prepareth a place for us, prepare us for that happy place, that, where they are and thou art, we too may be; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.