Sermon for Memorial Service for Charles E. Putman. Those of you who have been to a memorial service here

Transcription

1 Sermon for Memorial Service for Charles E. Putman Those of you who have been to a memorial service here know that it is our custom to have two or three people to give eulogies, to say a "good word" for the life achievements of the person who has died. You will note no eulogies in this service. While there is much to eulogize in a man who was a James B. Duke Professor of Medicine, twice recipient of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, long time administrative leader of this university, no one has been asked to say a eulogy. What the family has asked for is a sermon. A eulogy is about the accomplishments of a person, an acclamation of the life achievements of a man. A sermon is about God. And this is a sermon, not a eulogy. It would have of course been easy to do a eulogy for Charles. Friends could have testified to the depth and genuinness of his friendship. I've counted no less than a dozen of us who have claimed, in the past two days, "My best friend has died." Charles had this way of making so many feel he was their true friend. But, we're not having a eulogy. 1

2 For one thing, Charles despised large, showy state occasions with grand, high flown rhetoric. Cammie reminded us of what a challenge it was to get him to wear a tie. He carne late and left early. He couldn't stand pompousness and pretence, qualities so often in full bloom around here. We might have wanted to eulogize Charles, but as Shannon said, we just couldn't imagine him approving of it. If we had been able to have a eulogy, we could have asked almost any Duke doctor or nurse to bear testimony of a master physician. My last evening with him he told me of the thirty-three patients for whom he was caring this week, of the undergraduate who had shadowed him on his rounds, one whom he had now designated as worthy for medical school, his highest compliment. As a university administrator, he ran his office as if it were the ER. When you carne to him with some budget or administrative problem, he would want to know "where does it hurt?" As a master diagnostician, he wanted to know all sides of any problem, convinced that problems were invariably deeper, thicker, more interesting than we knew. He was faithful, as a doctor, to the point of exhaustion. We could have eulogized him using nothing more than his own writing and speeches, for he was good with words 2

3 and could be eloquent, his stream-of-consciousness memos notwithstanding. How well I remember a speech he gave to entering medical students on the privilege of their vocation. He wrote great books, but mostly he read people. He was more proud of his grandchildren than his textbook on radiology. Garret and Robert shall speak for the family, but no one will offer a eulogy. It just did not seem right to praise Charles with high words. Your presence here today says more than words could say about this life lived so well before us. So why have a eulogy? I could never get Charles to move from the back row of the Chapel. Though he and Mary were here in worship every Sunday, I wondered if, there on the back pew, managing the emergency medical team, checking out the congregation, if Charles paid any attention to what was being said and done in the Sunday service. The absence of a eulogy i s proof of his rapt attentiveness. Charles was a faithful enough Christian to know that, when all was said and done, the significance of his life lies not in what he did or in what we say about what he did, but rather in God's love and grace. 3

4 When it came time for him to walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a place where he as a doctor had held the hands of many who walked it before him, a valley that he walked far too soon to suit us, Charles knew with the psalmist that his help was in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The music, the scripture today, lovingly selected by the family, does not praise Charles but rather Jesus, Charles' one best hope in life, and in death, his last, best friend. This is a sermon. And a sermon is about God, a God whose love fashions lives worth living because they are lived to the glory, not of themselves, but to God. A God who early convinced a man like Charles that in giving we receive, that in loosing ourselves for the good of others, we save ourselves. This is about God from whose love we are not separated in life or death. We believe that today Charles is safe, cherished in the arms of the God who gave him to us. And the wonderful thing is that Charles spent his life getting to know the God whom he now stands before, walking with him, talking to him in honest, humble speech. The God whom Charles cherished in life, now cherishes Charles in death. 4

5 Let that be a eulogy if you must have one. Many of you may not know that Charles had a long ambition to preach in Duke Chapel. I know that sounds ridiculous, but he was fixated on the subject. On being installed as Duke's Executive Vice President one of his first acts was to demand that he be allowed to preach on a Sunday. He tried to talk David Arcus into joining him on a Sunday afternoon for a special service where he would preach. He begged the President to order me to invite him to preach. Some Sunday, after a sermon by a world renowned guest preacher, Charles met me at the back door saying, "I could have done that and you wouldn't have had to pay me.n I of course attempted to reason with him. You are not called to be a preacher, I would say. You have no training. He replied, I'm from Texas. Well, today, we don't have a eulogy, don't even need a sermon. Because in death, even as in life~ Charles preached. 5