Sermon Tone Analysis
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We gather to bid farewell to Rachel Neff who blessed our lives and whose example will pay dividends for years to come.
Today we affirm our faith that this world is not all that there is.
Rachel spent her life seeking to follow the Lord.
Those of us who watched her can say, “Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant.”
However, the “Well Done” she lived her life for, is the well done she has now received from her Lord Jesus.
The picture of Rachel enjoying a welcoming hug from Jesus fills my sad heart with great joy.
Jesus made this promise to His followers,
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home.
If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
(John 14:1-3)
And the Apostle Paul wrote,
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.
2 We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing.
(2 Cor 5:1-2)
This is our declaration today: Rachel is not gone . . .
she has gone on.
Her death is not a period but a comma.
Let’s pray together,
O Lord, each day we receive is a gift from you.
One of the ways you present this gift to us is through the special and delightful people who come our way.
One of those people was Rachel Neff.
Today as we reflect on this gift, help us to you hand in our lives and believe the promise you give that this life is merely the prelude of the life that is to come.
Amen
Rachel Neff was a lot of fun to be around.
She had that giggle that once it got going, she found it difficult to stop.
I always thought we had had a good Thursday morning Bible Study if I cracked Rachel up at least once.
Apparently she would tell the kids not to giggle at something and then someone would start snorting and all of them were gone.
Rachel was a good mom, a loving and incredibly patient and, at times, enduring wife, and a loving grandmother and great-grandmother.
Rachel loved music.
She and Bob liked to dance to Glen Miller and others.
She tolerated some music and loved other music.
She was a huge Alan Jackson fan and also loved to dance.
She taught many people how to jitter bug.
I’m told she had a special little jig she did as the kids danced around the house.
The grandchildren would teach her the latest “cool” dance and she would always give it a try.
Rachel had lots of nicknames over the years.
Granny, Rox, Foxy Roxy, Roxy, The Doodle, and/or Raquel.
I know Mike also called her Chin Ling because he brought his shirts to her to have them cleaned, ironed, and, I believe, starched.
It was not always easy to be mom to 5 “creative” kids.
Once the boys planted soybeans in Rachel’s flower garden.
She accepted praise for how nice her plants looked.
She confessed she wasn’t sure what kind of plant it was.
Bob finally told her it was soybeans.
Rachel loved to cook and share what she had grown in the garden.
One of her special dishes was Rinktum ditty which was cooked tomatoes with cheese served over crackers.
She also made fudge and popcorn on Sunday nights.
She would ask for a piece of fudge and then pause and say, “and a Diet Pepsi to go with it.”
Here are a few things I didn’t know: she loved watching Dr. Quinn and Hallmark movies.
She would turn to whoever was there and say, “Isn’t that Sully a Hunk?”
She loved coach Bobby Knight and wrote him at the end of the Indiana basketball seasons and he always wrote back.
Rachel had a unique way of getting her point across but in a way that was subtle.
I can’t ever remember her ever telling me I was wrong about something.
She would say, “Don’t you think it might be all right to do this . . .
?”
Rachel impacted many lives.
When she worked at the school, she was constantly helping children who had needs.
It was her compassion and love for kids that started our yearly Kum Join Us Class Christmas Project where we buy new clothes for kids in the school who have a need.
For years she headed up the shopping trips to buy these clothes.
Rachel served scores of funeral meals over the years.
She and her team would make dozens of phone calls to enlist volunteers to bring something.
Rachel always made something for the meal.
She always fretted about the meal wondering if there was enough food and hoping there would be enough help to serve the food.
These were long days for those who served.
There were a few times when she saw answers to prayer as the food stretched for a crowd bigger than expected.
There were other times when I and others made a quick run to the store for more food.
My primary job at a funeral (according to the kitchen crew) was to shoot back to the church after the service to let everyone know whether it looked like we would have enough food.
I walked into the kitchen one day and I didn’t know what was going on.
Apparently, the big coffee pot which they had turned on in plenty of time, hadn’t heated up.
There was no time for another pot to finish.
So, they took the guts out of the one pot and put it into an empty working pot, and now they were boiling water on the stove in numerous pans and were pouring the hot water over the grounds.
Rachel looked at me and started laughing because apparently, I looked absolutely dumbfounded.
I looked like I thought they all had gone crazy!
She was still concerned but was confident they had things under control.
Rachel would usually make sure to stash some Deviled eggs in the refrigerator, just for me.
She always wished she could attend a funeral dinner in a new fellowship hall.
Now that we have one, it is a shame she never got her wish fulfilled.
However, she was thrilled to know that future funeral dinners would be much nicer than the ones in the past.
Rachel counted the people in church on Sunday mornings and recorded the attendance for many years.
She served on boards and committees.
She was a regular at our Thursday morning Bible Study even though she had to work her Thursday hair appointment around the study.
Rachel would not say she was a “people person” but she was.
She didn’t want to be up in front of people, but she was like a magnet that drew people to her.
Her warmth, kindness and genuine interest in people made them seek her out.
After Rachel moved to Carthage, we didn’t see each other as much.
Of course, Covid didn’t help that.
We talked on the phone several times.
However, my favorite visit was when I picked her up and we went to Hardees for a cheeseburger and fries.
She said she enjoyed our date.
I did too.
My most-cherished memory is very personal.
My marriage was crumbling, and I hadn’t told anyone.
It was coming to the point where it was going to become public.
There were a few people I felt I had to tell privately before anyone else knew.
Rachel was one of those people.
She came into church one Sunday and I asked her to step into my office.
I shut the door and told her the news.
She started to cry.
It was a profound expression of love without words.
We hugged and went on with the worship service.
I will never ever forget the kindness of that moment.
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