Peace I Leave to You

Honoring Lieng Chao Tann

Peace I leave to you... my kind of peace... So don't be afraid.

It is hard to know how to begin to tell the story of Lieng Chao Tann's presence at Christ. We know this... Mr. Tann or "Grandpa" as many called him in respect... He loved to be in church. Except when he was in China, he was present most every Sunday and his family shared that he was a motivating force in getting each one of them here... after all, he needed a driver! Huy, Chantha, Meiyong, Meipong, many of you… all took their turns driving and accompanying him. One of my favorite photos from last summer is one of Grandson and his Grandpa at the annual outdoor worship and picnic—Grandson in his sunhat and his Gong with his signature Christ cross and hat from China that says “Great Wall” on it, both faces beaming with smiles.

Each day that was not Sunday, Huy shared that her father was longing for Sunday. As Carol shared last night, Tsereha and Habte have sat near him for nearly 40 years... And I'm just imagining the impact of sharing peace with one another something like 2000 times. Only recently have some of us learned to say this in Khmer—Johm riab sua, Peace be with you.
But Jesus greets disciples often, in story after story, with this sustaining, reassuring, empowering word. Even in the face of death, Jesus says, "Peace be with you," not in a dominating, power-over-you kind of way but in this way, to take away all fear of the future.

For weeks, many of you have gathered around your father and grandfather, Gong, in a constant vigil. It has been beautiful to witness you care for him together, even in the middle of deep pain and sorrow. Grief and the loss of a patriarch can tear families apart, but you know what your father and grandfather would have wanted for your big family, full of diverse people and many opinions and personalities, he would have wanted for you to find joy and peace and connection. Just as you have been doing, he would want you to see what the others need and work together to meet those needs.

In the Christ Lutheran context, we knew your father and grandfather as a quiet presence, but you know how he could bowl a score of 100 at midnight, you know how he could bring in a northern without a net, just walking it to the shore like a dog, you know how he could hike all day long with sore feet but without complaint, you know the stories he could tell.
You know how he was like the Good Shepherd that we praise in Psalm 23, leading you in right paths for God's sake. You can imagine the deep valleys of grief that he went through and how God led him in love to a place of being surrounded at his time of death not by enemies but by those who tenderly fed him and anointed him to travel onto this next mysterious part of the journey from life through death to life beyond death. Through the love of the Good Shepherd, your shepherding grandfather has passed this role and this work on to you...

As you together celebrate a wedding in June, as you welcome a new child and grandchild in August, you will miss this beloved one and you will also know that he is still with you, part of the communion of saints, within us and mysteriously present in ways that we cannot fully understand but that we can trust are true.

All that said, change is deeply hard.

Those of you who were closest will notice the most how this absence changes your daily life. So many of us here will notice how our Sundays feel different. At the next All Saints Day, at the next new year, Lieng Chao Tann will be one of those remember, honored—now our ancestor, one of the saints, one of the great cloud of witnesses.

I have thought of that this week as I have looked up at the banner of your father, your Gong, and thought to myself, “Well, now we can never take this down …” We wouldn’t want to… but even if some day in the future that banner does come down, even then, Lieng Chao Tann’s legacy will live on: in you his loved ones, in the body of Christ that he has changed because he has walked together with us and been himself within it.

Also, I want to share a part of the story that I felt so lucky to learn in the visiting time after our storytelling last night… Thoeun Moen approached me and shared his family’s close connection with Lieng Tann. His cousin and Lieng suffered wounds of war together. They healed together. They arrived in the U.S. and amazingly found one another in an ESL class. They were allowed to be close like family, to eat at each other’s houses.

In spite of his can-do spirit and refusal to complain, you know that your beloved father and grandfather suffered. Jesus suffered. They were acquainted with sorrow. So if you are deep in pain at this loss, you are not alone… and you can trust in the promises of God who will bring you through the pain and sorrow of death and grief to new life.

One of my friends said this week that “The joy of having a shepherd lead us is that there is nowhere we can go where God has not already been first...” I needed to sit for a minute and let that sink in again. It was a word of life to me.

Your father, your grandfather has lived deep in the love of God. He has showed you the path of life and invited you to try to keep up with him on this path, invited you to even out-distance him in showing abundant love to one another as you go forward together. But if there are days in grief when this seems so very hard to do, when you are truly in the valley of the shadow of death, remember who is with you, who will meet you in love and friendship when you least expect it, whose table is always open to you, who will never stop offering peace.

Peace I leave to you... my kind of peace... So don't be afraid.