Honoring the Life of William J. “Bill” Canata
- May 25, 2021
- Pastor
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Welcome
On behalf of Bill’s wife, Martha, his daughter, Kim, and son, Michael, and the entire Canata family, I would like to say “thank you” for coming this afternoon to this service. And not just for coming today, but also for all of the cards, hugs, and other expressions of love and support offered to them during these past several weeks, months, and even years.
If I may, I’d also like to extend an apology on behalf of the family. If you’ve been one of the many that have not gotten a response to an e-mail, letter, or call, it’s not because they’re not trying. And I hope you will charge that to their circumstances and memory, rather than their hearts. They’re forever grateful for your kindness and love.
There are always three things that I hope and pray we can accomplish in a service of this nature. First, we want to honor the life of our friend: a loving husband, a caring father and grandfather, a faithful churchman, and a tremendous member of this community. Second, we want to provide comfort and encouragement to Martha and the family with our words, our presence, and our touch. And finally, it’s so tempting to forget, but this service would be an utter waste of time if it wasn’t for the hope we have, as believers in Jesus Christ. So, we want to worship the Lord. May we never lose focus of giving God all the praise and glory and honor that’s due His most holy name in favor of honoring our friend.
Bill Canata tried to be good. He tried to live up to the ideals that all of us believe in, but even on his best days he was woefully imperfect. At times he could be the most stubborn, bull-headed, narrow-minded person you could ever meet. He sometimes lost control of his tongue and said things with words in ways that he later regretted and had to apologize for – something that he was always quick to do.
He would like for me to tell you that regardless of what Saint Paul said about himself – he/Bill, was the chief among sinners. And I know why Bill would want me to tell you these things, because he would not want this day to be so much about him but about his Lord, Jesus. He would want you to know that he will not enter heaven because he was good, but because Jesus was good and because Jesus died for him. He would want me to tell you these things so that you wouldn’t be tempted to leave here today saying, “I wish I could be more like Bill Canata”, but rather that you leave saying, “I wish I could be more like Bill Canata’s Savior.”
Invocation
Eternal Father, You who are the God of all mercies and comfort; look with compassion, we pray, upon all gathered here now, that our minds and hearts will be focused on Your never-ending love for us. Grant that this service of comfort, which we now hold in Your name, may bring to all a sense of heavenly nearness and great trust in You. And may the peace of Christ, even the peace that passes all understanding, abide with us and rest upon all of us. We offer this prayer to You, O Lord, in the name of Your son, Jesus. Amen.
Message
As Kim said earlier, we all have our “Bill stories.” I’ll share only two with you, very briefly by way of introduction. The first time I met Bill was when I was interviewing to become the pastor of this wonderful church. Bill was one of the people serving on the search committee, and since everyone was seated and I came in and took up the “hot seat,” I didn’t immediately recognize Bill’s difficulties in getting around. Well, a few weeks go by and the church called and asked if I wouldn’t mind being their full-time interim pastor, while they continued their search. Of course, I agreed, so long as that didn’t remove me from further consideration. They assured me it didn’t. So, I began being a little more frequent in/around the congregation, and one of the things that I started doing was attending their Men’s Bible study on Monday mornings (back then it was Monday @ 8 – today it’s Tuesday @ 9). And I came in and was making a cup of coffee as everyone was arriving.
Sure enough, Bill shows up and he’s shuffling along pretty good using his canes when all of a sudden, he has this tremendous fall. (Bill either fell gently and softly or it was a seismic event.) This was the latter. And I looked up to see what all the commotion was about, and poor old Bill is laid out on his hands and knees and not a single man moved and they didn’t even stop their conversation. We’ve all been there, right? We know the scene I’m describing, right? Well, here’s what went through my mind in that split second, “Lord, I have a lot of work to do up here. These men are stone-cold brutes.”
The last “Bill story” that I’ll share with you was rather recent – only a few weeks ago. Bill was in a weekly small group of men that meet to pray together, hold each other accountable to our Christian life, and just generally share the ups/downs of life together. On this particular day, Bill had shared with the group that he and Martha had decided to call in hospice. When Bill told us, of course, we knew that it would only be a matter of time. And so that morning’s group was just Bill sharing what was on his mind and the rest of us expressing our great appreciation and love for him.
Well, the group of men come from all types of church denominations: Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, non-denominational, and even Catholic. And, to lighten the mood, somebody said, “You know, Bill, you might have to learn to love Duke fans before God lets you into heaven.” And Bill said, “I guess I’ll be spending a lot of time in Purgatory, then.”
It was after that day’s meeting, and I was waiting with Bill for Kim to come pick him up. And I said, “Bill, what do you want me to say at your funeral?” And he said, “Just preach Jesus.” You can have a great deal of knowledge about many things, but if you don’t know the right things, at the right time, for the right occasion, then it really doesn’t matter what you know. Bill knew the right thing.
We’re living in a world that is sinking in a sea of subjectivism and reeling on the road of relativism. More and more people are becoming less and less sure that they know anything. Years ago, someone once wrote this in a periodical, and it really captures the times in which we live:
“The world is engulfed in an almost limitless quagmire of opinions, while there is a dearth of convictions. This inevitably makes for confusion and despair. Opinions are abundant while convictions are scarce. Opinions are produced by the superficial, while convictions are the result of agonized struggle. Opinions are what we think, while convictions are what we know. Opinions are conjectures or guesses, while convictions are firm beliefs founded on evidence. An opinion is something that we may change, but a conviction is something that changes us . . . one will die for a conviction, but never for an opinion.”
It’s refreshing, in the day and age in which we live, to hear someone get up and not just say I think this, or I assume this, or I imagined this, or I guessed this, or I supposed this, or even I believe this, but to say, I know this. Job was that kind of man. Every time you hear the name Job you can’t help but feel a wave of pity come over you. You talk about a man who knew trouble. He lost his family, he lost his fortune, and he lost his friends. In the little cemetery behind his house lay the graves of all 10 of his children. His big bank account was now full of IOUs. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong.
Then out of the black cloud of his life, came a silver lightning bolt of truth that was so marvelous and so wonderful, that he wanted to make sure that what he had come to believe and know to be true, would be written in stone. What Job is about to say he wanted to be preserved. Job wanted his words to be published. And he wanted them to be perpetuated. Well, God granted Job’s request, and we find these words inscribed in Job 19:23-27.
23 “Oh, that my words were recorded,
that they were written on a scroll,
24 that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead,
or engraved in rock forever!
25 I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes – I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
This is one of the passages of Scripture that seems to have Bill written all over it. Bill knew this wasn’t just essential, it was eternal. It’s not just important, it’s immortal. Folks, listen to me, when it comes to the time of your own death, you had better know the things that Job and Bill knew to be true.
Job Knew His Soul Had Been Redeemed
Verse 25 says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives…” Job was a redeemed man. Bill was a redeemed man. He was a man bought by God who had been redeemed from the slavery of sin. Notice that Job didn’t say “I know a Redeemer lives,” or “the Redeemer lives,” but “MY Redeemer lives.” You may not think that’s a big difference, but I tell you that one little personal pronoun means the difference between heaven and hell; it means the difference between being lost and being saved. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus is a Redeemer. That’s true. In fact, Jesus is THE Redeemer. But, friend, in order to go to heaven Jesus must be your Redeemer.
Sometimes we do a disservice to the gospel. We mislead others and can be misled ourselves. We talk – in a general sense – about Jesus being the Savior of the world, and He is. But listen closely, the application of that salvation, the effectual nature of that salvation, the result of that salvation is only realized if you believe in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The forgiveness of sin spoken of in the Bible, the peace of God, the joy of living in relationship with Christ is only experienced by those that trust in Jesus.
Can you honestly and genuinely say (in your heart) with David “the Lord is My Shepherd?” Can you say with the Apostle Paul “He is Christ Jesus My Lord?” Can you say today, with Job, “I know that My Redeemer lives?” Friends, that’s what makes all the difference.
Job Knew His Savior Would Return
Job 19:25 continues with these words, “And He shall stand at last on the earth…” The Apostle Paul writes these words in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, as he’s speaking to the Church about the resurrection of Jesus and our own resurrection, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
As you travel to other parts of the world, you find that certain people don’t think like we do. They don’t have the same worldview. They don’t even have the same view of history. Many people believe that history is cyclical. That is, it’s just a series of events repeated over and over again ad infinitum. Well, the Bible says history is linear; it is a straight line, and my friend, at the end of that straight line you find Jesus Christ. This world is on a collision course with Jesus. Make no mistake about it, when your time on earth is over you will meet Jesus. For some that will be the sweetest moment – to hear Jesus say those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant…” But for others, Jesus will say, “Depart from me, for I never knew you.”
When Jesus comes back to planet earth He’s not coming to take sides, He’s coming to take over. Every king will relinquish his throne, every general will surrender his sword, and every monarch will lay down his crown when Jesus comes again. That’s why He’s coming; to take His victorious stand on the earth. Job knew that. And Bill believed it too.
Job Knew He Would Be Resurrected
Verses 26-27 say this, “And after my skin is destroyed this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me?”
This is an unbelievable statement of faith. Disease had wracked Job’s body (just like Bill’s). Death had wrecked his home. Job knew one day he would also die. But he said, “In my flesh I shall see God.” Job was not only concerned with life and death; Job was concerned with life after death.
Remember, it was Job who first asked the age-old question in Job 14:14, “If a man dies, will he live again?” Well, God answers the question right here, and God tells Job exactly what he needs to know about death. He said that death is simply the destruction of the body. It’s simply the death of the flesh. That’s all death is; just the flesh coming apart.
I’m preaching through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, here on Sunday mornings, and last week we were talking about Paul’s prayer that he be strengthened in the inner man and I told our church, I’ve finally arrived at an age where my children remind me I’m not the man I once was. “Hey dad, your hair keeps falling out and clogging the drain. You want me to sign you up for Bosley?” “Hey dad, you need some Copper Fit clothes, or some of that Icy Hot that Shaquille O’Neil advertises?”
I realize more and more that I’m just a dying man preaching to dying people. But notice that Job spoke of the destruction of the body, not the soul. You see, death is the end of the body, but not the end of the soul. My outward man is decaying Paul said, but my inward man is being renewed day by day. Death kills the body, but it cannot kill the spirit, it cannot kill the soul, it cannot kill the self.
I heard about a preacher who was preaching the funeral of a godly man (much like I am now), and he looked down in the open casket at the body of that man and said, “Now folks, what we have here is the shell, the nut has departed.” (That may be true in more ways than one with my friend and yours.) But it’s true. Death is the destruction of the body, not of the self.
But also notice that Job, even though Job recognized his body was being destroyed, says, “In my flesh I shall see God.” Job is talking about a resurrection. He’s talking about a new body, an imperishable body, an immortal body, an incorruptible body. Bill has a new body, folks. The Bible tells us – as unbelievable and difficult to comprehend as it may be – that we are going to see God. Job says that in that resurrected body, with literal resurrected eyes, he will see God, “Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
Jesus proved the hope of the resurrection. And if Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior, then one day, in your flesh and with resurrected eyes you’re going to see God; with resurrected ears you’re going to hear God; with resurrected hands you’re going to touch God; and with a resurrected heart you’re going to love God.
My friends, Bill wants you to be in heaven. I hope you know that. We get there because of what Jesus has done for us. And Bill wants all of you – people he loved – to be in heaven. So, as I conclude, I believe that if Bill were here today he would want to say, “Please, please, come to Christ. Give Him your heart. Give Him your life. Give Him your everything. Trust Christ. Serve Christ. Love Christ. Honor Christ. Die with Christ. And rise to new life with Christ.”
Benediction
Heavenly Father, at a time when we’re acutely aware of death, we thank You for Your living presence with us. Your unfailing company with us gives us comfort for today and courage for tomorrow. In Your Son, Jesus Christ, You have revealed Yourself as a God of grace and a God of glory. Through the life of Jesus we’ve been blessed; through His death we’ve been redeemed; and through His resurrection we’ve been filled with vibrant hope.
Lord, in our sorrow help us to look to the risen Christ. Help us to truly believe that what You did for Him You will do for us. You raised Him from the dead to give Him eternal life. Remind us that You have promised eternal life to all who believe in You through faith in Your Son. On this difficult day, lead each of us to a deeper level of resurrection faith.
We thank You, O God, for Bill’s life and the opportunity to share it with him. We’re grateful for his faith, witness, and influence upon his family, friends, church and community.
We pray especially for this sweet family. May they feel Your comforting presence with them and know Your perfect peace. May they experience the reality of Your sustaining strength. May they realize our love for them and be encouraged through our prayers for them each day.
And Lord, once again, we’re reminded of the brevity of life today. Help us to live each day with a deep sense of gratitude for Your blessings, a deep commitment to Jesus Christ, and a vibrant hope of eternal life through faith in Him. This we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.