It was my privilege to preach at the funeral for Fr. Don Stivers, a wonderful priest and longtime Associate of OHC. The funeral was at Trinity Church, Santa Barbara. For many, many years Don presided at the Wednesday eucharist at Mount Calvary. He his wife Floss and his children Michael and Margi were/are dear friends of the community.
The service is available on Vimeo. The sermon starts a little after minute 39:
https://vimeo.com/730754240
Donald Austin Stivers RIP
10 May 1924 - 28 June 2022
Isaiah 25: 6-9; Psalm 121; Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39; John 6:37-40
Trinity Church, Santa Barbara CA: July 16, 2022
The Rev’d. Adam D. McCoy, OHC
Early in 1944. Donald Austin Stivers, 19 years old, born and brought up in Geneva, NY, was drafted into the Army, together with hundreds of thousands of other young men. His outfit was at Camp Gordon, near Augusta, Georgia, and he was in the hospital. Lt. Fr. John Baldwin, OHC, the chaplain, visited him, prayed with him, invited him to attend Mass, then taught him to serve. Donald was deeply moved. He wanted to be like Fr. Baldwin. He wanted to be a chaplain. In his kind way, Fr. Baldwin directed his ambition to a wider sphere. As Don later wrote, “I remembered what Father Baldwin said. ‘When you see a need the Lord is calling you to serve him.’” The seed of Don’s vocation was planted.
Instead of a chaplain Donald became a Battery Clerk. Typing lists. Filling out forms. A bureaucrat filing the endless paperwork the armed forces ran on. Somewhere in northern France, in the late summer of 1944, this company clerk was with the Battery Commander. A young private was brought in, who had been found drunk and cleaning his gun while on guard duty. Drunk and disarmed. Weak, foolish, irresponsible. The penalty for that offense could be to be shot. The clerk drew up the charges, brought them to the Commander for his signature. Then the clerk asked, Perhaps the army might be too busy liberating Paris to be concerned about such small matters. With wisdom about such things, the Commander said, “See if you can find the regulation that would tell us what to do.” Somehow the clerk never found that particular regulation. Almost a month later, so much time had passed that a smaller action was called for, one which could not apply the death penalty. The private pleaded guilty to his offense before a Special Court-Martial presided over by the Commander. He was sentenced to a month’s pay and three months confinement. He thanked the clerk for “saving his skin”. “I didn’t do anything,” Don said. “That’s what I’m thanking you for.” Wise as a serpent. Innocent as a dove.
From our Gospel reading: “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me.” Don Stivers helped save that weak, foolish, irresponsible lad. Helping to save. One story of many like it in his wonderful book The Chaplain’s Assistant. Don Stivers decided to give his life to cooperate in God’s saving work, to help God not lose us, us who are also so weak, so foolish and so irresponsible.
Don joined the Army a boy and left the Army a man - a man with a calling. He finished his education, was ordained, met and married his dear Florence - Floss to those who knew her - and reared two wonderful children, Michael and Margi, who are with us today. He took Fr. Baldwin’s advice and opened his eyes to see that every need we see is a call from God. A trained counselor, a musician, a serious student of theology, a youth leader, and much more.
His longest ministry was 25 years as the priest at All Saints, Irondequoit, NY, in the Diocese of Rochester. But instead of moving up the ladder and on to a bigger place, something drew him on a different path. In 1979 he came west, to minister to two hurting groups of Christians. He answered the call to be the priest at St. Christopher’s Church in Boulder City Nevada, which had been wrenched apart by the controversies of the time. For three years his gentle, skillful ministry helped heal that damaged flock. And then he was called to the Church of Christ the King in Goleta, recently shocked by the sudden death of its beloved first Vicar, and brought his enormous theological and pastoral wisdom to that place of grief.
Don, good priest that he was, chose the lessons for his own funeral. I think we may be sure they express his faith and the way that faith shone forth in his life. The prophet Isaiah speaks to us of God’s promise of the great feast for all peoples, when death is swallowed up forever, and our tears, the tears of all of us, will be wiped away. The mountain where that great feast will take place is like the mountains in Psalm 121, which promise God’s protection, even in our sleeping and our waking, in our going out and our coming in, in all the smallest details of our lives. St. Paul’s great ecstatic revelation of the true nature of things tells us that all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ. We are all of us invited into God’s family. And our Lord himself tells us, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
Don Stivers was a eucharistic evangelical. Which is to say that he believed deeply in the clear, simple Christian faith: First, that in Jesus, God came down, became one of us, lived and healed and taught and broke bread with us, suffered and died with us, and now from the right hand of the Father invites us to join him in the great Resurrection life. And second, that Christ’s invitation to us is to join the fellowship of the redeemed at the Great Table, the unfathomably unexplainable yet always beckoning fellowship of the undivided Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, inviting us into their very life, into their very communion each with the other. Don believed in his place at the altar, and cherished every opportunity he had to offer the great privilege of that eucharistic invitation.
Don Stivers’ life was one of faith and hope. But the picture of Don’s life and ministry would not be complete without one final piece: He was energetic and determined. He had a will of iron. Clothed in kindness and generosity to be sure. But he never lost sight of what he wanted to accomplish. I suspect anyone who drove with him - which is to say, anyone who was in the car when he drove - knew this in a very immediate way. This force of will formed him from his earliest years and gave him a wonderful strength of conviction. I have no doubt that there are family stories about the strength of his will. I hope so. It is a wonderful thing to be part of such a life!
We all of us look for the path to a useful life in the service of God’s promise and invitation, in whatever form it is offered to us. We want to save. But we also need to be saved. That poor lost young private stands for all of us. We all of us can be weak, foolish and irresponsible, but then, by the strangest combinations of unexpected holy events and holy energies, we also can be brought into the possibility of new life. Whatever does God see in us? Why would he invite us into his innermost life? But He does. Our lives can be set in new directions and we can be given a place in the family of God. The needs we see and the needs we have are God’s call to us: A hospital visit, an invitation issued, can become the occasion of a life-changing friendship. Mercy has many faces. Who would have thought that one of them would be a piece of bureaucratic work left undone? The kindness of a wise superior can become the occasion of a life saved which could have been lost. Churches in conflict or laid low with grief: all these can occasion the blessed healing love and life of God.
Every human life is a mystery. We think we know each other. We think we know ourselves. We think we have a grip on what God wants. But God sees more in us than we can see. God’s love breaks in, God’s love breaks open our plans, God’s love sends us in different directions, God’s love involves us in each other in ways we can hardly imagine, let alone understand. This was, I think, a secret key to the mystery of Donald Austin Stivers’ life. It can be ours as well.
