Funeral Sermon for
Pastor Richard Radde
Lutheran Church of
Christ the King, Moorhead, MN
April 13, 2022
Scriptures: Isaiah 43:14, 18-21; II Corinthians 5:16-21; John
12:27-32
In the name of
Jesus. Amen.
Two years ago, when we
were just entering the pandemic, Richard Radde decided to take another crack at
writing his memoirs….something he had TRIED to do a few times earlier in his
life, but never got very far…
Then in January of 2020—when
Covid19 was starting to confront us with our mortality in ways most of us had
never experienced before-- Dick put pen to paper (or more accurately: “fingers
to keyboard”) and wrote up one memory a day for nearly three months. By March 21 he had filled or partially
filled 127 pages, which (thanks to Rachel!) I was able to read over the last
ten days.
Dipping into these
first-person recollections--written in a “sort of” stream-of-consciousness
manner by our brother Dick—three themes stood out for me:
First of all, I
gained an appreciation for the very real, down-to-earth life Dick had lived. Born
at home in the tiny town of New Germany, MN…he entered the world with his twin
brother on August 6, 1933. Baby Richard
weighed 5 ½ pounds and his twin brother Baby Robert weighed 5 pounds.
When their maternal
grandmother--Grandma Kubasch--learned the babies’ names, she bluntly observed: “Robert and Richard-- Ja, that’ll become Bob and Dick—horses’ names!”
And most of Dick’s memories
were expressed in a similar vein—offering open, honest, unadorned, “back-door
views” of a fascinating life well lived.
Always with an eye toward the humorous side of life, Dick’s memoir wasn’t
focused on making himself look good—but rather:
noticing the highs and lows in the everyday experiences he had!
There were bright spots, to
be sure…especially whenever Dick wrote about the sports he loved—whether
football or basketball or his lifelong favorites: baseball, golf and fishing.
Did you know, for
example, that when he was 12 Dick Radde was the pitcher for his hometown team
in the Minnesota State Little League Championship series?
But there were sad and
troubling events, as well, that came to Dick along the way…and in his memoirs
he delves into a number of them, starting with his family’s hardscrabble life
in a couple German-immigrant towns in Carver County, just on the western edge
of the Twin Cities.
The young twins, Dick and
Bob, lived with their parents in modest houses (the first couple of which were
without indoor plumbing), and their father struggled to make a living as a
butcher during the early years of the Great Depression.
Looking back over his
dad’s relatively short time on earth Dick described Howard Carl John Radde as “father,
drunkard, breadwinner, super athlete” whose last 14 years on earth were not
happy. “He was a lonely man when he
died,” Dick recalls. “I think I
was among the few who visited him.” (p. 72)
That poignant
observation brings us to a second theme that runs through Dick’s memoir. From his earliest years and throughout his
adult life, Dick Radde consistently had a heart for and stood with folks whom
he encountered on the hard edges of life.
When he was growing up,
Dick cared about other kids who were odd or avoided by their peers….kids like
his friend Donald who was uncoordinated because he was born with webbed
feet. Dick wrote: “Donald the kid with the webbed feet, never
learned to swim even with such an inborn advantage, nor was he ever able to
throw or catch a ball, run, or even walk:
he sort of side-winded and stumbled along. Sad to say, [Donald] was picked on. Proud to say, I was on his side and defended
him.” (p. 34)
Donald proved to be the
first among a host of marginalized persons whom Dick encountered, befriended
and for whom he advocated….for example:
·
A Jewish man who lived in
Watertown despite the rampant antisemitism of the community…where in 1945 it
was not unusual to hear comments like: “It’s
good we licked Hitler, but we should have let him kill off all the Jews first.” (p. 32)
·
Dick also got to know
o
Native American neighbors
in one of the northern MN towns where Dick pastored in the 1960s…as well as
African Americans in Selma, Alabama alongside whom Dick walked across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in 1965
o
Persons dealing with addiction
issues or same-sex attractions who came to Pastor Dick for counseling and
friendship…as well as…
o
Active-duty soldiers
(when Dick spent a year in Vietnam as a military chaplain stationed about 2
miles from the site of the My Lai Massacre) and retired soldiers to whom Dick
ministered as a VA Chaplain--veterans who struggled with addictions or other
health issues
Dick opened his arms to
so many persons who were “on the outside looking in”—not just because of his moral
convictions or political leanings….but first and foremost because of Dick’s
understanding of God and the kind of life followers of Jesus are called to live….which
leads me to the third theme in Dick’s memoirs—a theme that speaks directly to
our aching hearts, minds and spirits today….
3. The third theme I noticed in Pastor Radde’s
memoir, was about treating all his neighbors with grace and unconditional love as
a direct consequence of his Christian faith and his calling as a Lutheran
pastor…
For Dick, along with most
pastors, it started young as he attended a rural parochial school near
Watertown, MN. He and his twin Robert
were blessed with a confirmation pastor—John Spomer—whom they actually liked
despite the fact that Pr. Spomer made them “overlearn Luther’s catechism
with all those extra Missouri Synsod Bible verses, psalms and hymns…and I
excelled as a student.”
Dick goes on to say: “The best thing about [Pastor] Spomer was
that he knew the Gospel, preached Christ, [and] he spoke from the heart when he
told us what that cross on the steeple on the church meant: God loves us and will never stop loving
us.”
In addition to forming
the bedrock of his faith, young Dick also discovered his calling to pastoral
ministry, through paying attention to Pastor Spomer: “Eventually I became a Lutheran pastor,” Dick
writes. “Spomer got me going.” (p. 14)
Of course not all of his
teachers and mentors were as clear about God’s sheer, unadulterated forgiveness
and grace in Christ Jesus our Savior.
When Dick attended the funeral of LeRoy, one of us best friends from
seminary, whose severe depression had led him to take his own life…Dick was
greatly troubled by the “terrible sermon” their bishop preached—a sermon in
which the bishop declared “there was an outside chance LeRoy went to
heaven.” (p. 46)
Later, when he was
Chaplain at the Fargo VA Hospital, Dick attended another funeral for a veteran
known as “Hunce the Barber”—a man who struggled to stay sober and came to Chaplain
Radde often to confess his sins, receive absolution and be fed at the Lord’s
Supper. When the preacher at Hunce’s
funeral “told about God’s grace and how the worst of us can still (barely)
make it to heaven, although there were some doubts about Hunce” Chaplain
Radde had had enough, so he stood up and asked if he could share a Word at the
funeral: “Hunce confessed his sins
often. He received forgiveness. He communed.
God grant rest to our brother, my friend.”(p. 63)
What Pastor Radde
proclaimed to others, he also claimed for himself, and it is in that confidence
that we commend him to God’s eternal care and keeping today.
In closing, I want Dick
himself to have the last word from pp. 71-72 of his memoir: “Jesus came so that the world through him
might be saved…Everyone in; all together at last. No musical chairs…..The army
chaplaincy [in Vietnam] opened my eyes to…the universal grace of God. These different-looking, different-acting
people throughout the world all over the place, are brothers and sisters
forever, destined to be together by the love that never ends which is the love
of Jesus Christ.”
I have nothing more to
add except: Thank you, Laurie, Rachel,
and your whole family for graciously sharing Dick with the rest of us.
And thanks be to God for
the life and witness of his faithful servant, our dear brother Pastor Richard
Radde.
In the name of
Jesus. Amen.
