16 OCTOBER 2023
A funeral Mass was celebrated for Robert Yarmer at Saint Joseph Parish by Father Terrance Klein.
Link to audio recording of the homily
What's Past Is Prologue |
Robert Yarmer |
Terrance Klein |
16.VIII.2023 |
Job 19: 1, 23-27 Revelation 21: 1-5a, 6b-7 John 5: 24-29
This can be filed under that line from Shakespeare, “what’s past is prologue.” Searching for something in Robert’s stuff, Madge came across a wad of surgi cal wrapping. An attached note read, “I was eight years old when I had my first surgery. This is the wrapping they used. Robert Yarmer.”
What’s past is prologue. The eight-year-old boy, who thought it important to remember his first operation and to retain some artifact of it, would go on to be a great historian of our community, indeed of this part of Kansas.
Richard Kimple wrote:
No one knew Ellinwood like Robert. His knowledge of the town’s history was exceptional. He was everyone’s “go to” person about Ellinwood. He was so well read about Kansas history that he intimidated many people. We worked on numerous community projects, and he was always willing to share his insight. Ellinwood has a rich history and much of it has been preserved because of his efforts.
Robert served several terms on the Ellinwood City Council, and he was the President of the Ellinwood Community Historical Society when it published the 1991 history book Ellinwood Echoes.
If you’ve ever had the privilege of listening to Robert relate stories from our community’s past, you saw a man whose love of history was infectious. You’d could catch the bug listening to Robert tell Saint Joseph students about where the wagons of the Santa Fe Trail crossed the Arkansas River, just east of town, and why that spot would therefore naturally come to be the first graveyard in the region. Fording a river was a slow and dangerous process. You could just as easily be set upon by Indians as drown.
When I needed to know about the handicap ramps and steps in front of our church, Robert, who oversaw the construction, also knew what lay beneath. He had found and retained liquor bottles, which were used to toast the successful laying of the church’s foundations.
What’s past is prologue. The Robert we knew is even more comprehensible when you learn that that his father was an electrician, and that his uncle, John Yarmer, a carpenter. Robert’s mother, an amateur picture painter and one-time schoolteacher, taught him a love of reading, a passion he carried all his life.
The Robert Yarmer who went to school here at Saint Joseph’s and Ellinwood High School was also the kid who had a Wichita Beacon paper route. What’s past is prologue. He rode his bike through the streets of Ellinwood back then, and he was still riding it through them this past summer.
After graduating high school Robert joined the U.S. Army, took basic training at Fort Riley, and then attended the Counterfire School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was then attached to the Headquarters Company of the 6th Infantry Regiment, Berlin, Germany.
The great American novelist William Faulkner wrote that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Having worked his entire life in construction and carpentry, Robert will never really be past for us. You can’t walk more than a few feet in this church without encountering his handiwork. He and Mike Strobl custom-built at least fifty homes in our area. Robert’s life will continue to influence this Church and community for decades to come.
Everything in life has a beginning and an end, but nothing comes from nothing. Even the greatest of novelties has some roots in the past, which is why both the present and the future are more comprehensible if you know something of what’s past. But if Robert had the ability to take us back, a hundred years or more, imagine this community a hundred or more years in the future. Who will remember Robert Yarmer when all of us are gone?
For us Christians, the answer is simple enough. Robert will be Robert, not in memory but in the flesh. He will be who he will have become among the saints of God.
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
And that he will at last stand upon the earth;
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
Then in my flesh I shall see God
Whom I shall see on my side,
And my own eyes shall behold, and not another.
In the resurrection of Christ from the dead, we learned that the past really is prologue. Jesus rises from the dead and restores to himself all the relationships, all the loves he knew on earth.
Behold, I make all things new.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end.
Christ enters the glory of the resurrection but even there he still bears the wounds of Calvary. Even raised in glory, he remains the crucified one.
Indeed, we can define heaven as the possession in Christ of an identity, a personhood, that is indelible, that does not pass away.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever hears my word
and believes in the one who sent me
has eternal life and will not come to condemnation,
but has passed from death to life.
In Christ the past truly is prologue. The great loves of earth, even those lost to history, continue in heaven. The wisdom, so hard won by us here, does not fade away. It is taken up into the learning of Christ.
In God, as hard as this is for us to understand, there is no past or future. There is only a living, fruitful present. Today, with all the saints of God, Robert is being baptized into Christ; today he marries Madge; today he enters an eternal life that is nothing less than an eternal present.
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race.
He will dwell with them and they will be his people and
God himself will always be with them
as their God.
In the face of death, we again gather for Eucharist, executing a mandate the Lord gave us some two thousand years ago: Do this in memory of me. How faithful Robert was to that command. Wherever he might be, come the Sabbath, he was in church.
We believe that when we celebrate the Eucharist, what happened in that upper room, the night before Jesus died, is present to us. The past is never dead. It’s not even past. We also believe that this meal carries us and Robert, who remains at this altar, through centuries yet to come, to an age when all eras are gathered into a final harvest. In Christ, the past truly is prologue.
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