Memorial Service for Joseph M. Mackey, Jr.

I'd like to welcome you here today. You pray with me. God of all grace and glory, we remember this day our brother,.

Father,.

Husband, and friend, Joe Mackey Jr. We thank you for giving him to us to know and to love as a companion in this life. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn. Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life.

So that we may in quiet confidence continue our pilgrimage here on earth until we are reunited with those who have gone before us. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

For those of you who I have not had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Jared Mackey. Somebody told me this morning that I have a striking resemblance to my father. It only happened once though, so they might be wrong.

Like to begin by saying whatever your experiences have been in a place like this, a church, you are accepted here just as you are. And this time and in this place and this moment for this man, you are welcome here just as you are.

I believe that that was the posture of Jesus toward those who are worn out and burnt out. Those who are tired of trying hard and those who are tired of failing too often. He was in fact called a friend of sinners.

And that's what I believe that our father was. I believe his hope was that to be to every person a welcoming presence in the house of God. We often joke that dad's second career should have been a Walmart front door greeter because Joe Mackey never met a stranger.

Joe only met friends. And maybe that is where you and I will see him next. As the front door greeter to the new heavens and the new earth. Welcoming us with his smile, talking to us at length and making sure that we did not leave without a hug.

We are here to celebrate the life and grieve the loss. For many of you, a pastor, a friend, for some of us a father and a grandfather, for one a brother and one a husband. So thank you for being here.

We're going to spend some time in song in the scriptures and in stories. The author Frederick Buechner writes, the story of any one of us is the story of us all. So I would invite you in this time and this place to reflect on the gift and story of your own life.

Of those who you love. And most of all, I would like to invite you to be present to the one who is most present to us.

Let's all sing together now. My faith has found a resting place. You will find the words in your worship guide. The refrain is in the bold print and we'll sing it every time after each stanza. I know Joe was fond of singing every stanza of every hymn that he sang.

And that's what we will do. So I'll play the introduction and would you sing with me? My faith has found a resting place.

Faith has found a resting place now I trust the air, this which for me shall plead, I

We will sing face to face with Christ my savior. What a wonderful message. Face to face.

Resurrection Life in Christ

I'm using the program you can follow along. This was a passage our dad wanted us to read all of chapter six, but we decided to pick a few verses and summarize, otherwise I would not get through it. So I think he really wanted multiple sermons in this service.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Joseph M. Mackey Jr. was born on October 20, 1941 to Joe and Harriet Mackey. Joe was born a few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entering World War II. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, where his grandfather, Ray Mackey, was a prominent businessman and the founder of the YMCA.

And his great-grandfather, as Mackey legend has it, gave Sam Houston the white horse that he rode on during the battles for the Texas independence. It was just three days after Joe was born that Walt Disney released an animated film about a flying elephant called Dumbo.

Joe spent his childhood alongside his two sisters, Charlene and Betty, in San Antonio and then in Prescott, Arizona. Joe's affectionately known by his family and friends as Skipper. When he was 10, his family moved to Lake Worth, Florida.

And Joe's lifelong claim to fame of living in Florida was that his family lived across the street.

From Herb Skor.

Herb was the rookie of the year in 1955 in the American League and would forever be dad's lifelong baseball hero. Joe enjoyed playing baseball and basketball in school more than focusing on his academic success.

He was constantly in detention for talking too much at school and inherited a Mackey trait that he kindly passed on to his children. One of Joe's teacher referencing his love for cards and words affectionately called him Motormouth.

Joe made the high school basketball team his senior year, but in his own words, I decided it would be cool to try my first taste of liquor on senior skip day. When the basketball coach who was in his father's Sunday school class confronted Joe about drinking on the trip, he told the truth and he was kicked off the team.

Joe graduated from Lake Worth High School in 1959. It was the same year that one of his favorite musical artists, Buddy Holly, would die in a plane crash alongside other greats, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens that we had the pleasure of listening to our whole childhood.

But Joe would have to wait two months before he received his high school diploma from Lake Worth High School because he had several detention hours to complete. So with those detention hours completed, his high school diploma in his hand, his family would move two months after his high school graduation from Florida to Oklahoma.

In Oklahoma, Joe attended his first semester of college and accomplished a GPA of 0 .0028. In his defense, he said that during that year, he learned how to bowl, shoot pool and play ping pong and won a ping pong tournament trophy, he noted.

Joe enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1960 with a friend who convinced him it would be a good way to get away from home. He would serve two years in both Taiwan and the Philippines at the beginning of the Vietnam conflict.

In some ways, it is only because of God's great protection and great mercy that Joe's story does not end there. He returned after serving two years overseas and was stationed at Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico.

While stationed at Cannon, he began attending a local church and met Marilyn Qualls, who was born and had grown up on a farm outside of Clovis. She was a striking young woman who shared the love of music playing the clarinet in her high school band.

Joe and Marilyn were married on October 12, 1963 with their parents and their families there in attendance. That year, 1963 was pivotal in the history of our country as both the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the infamous speech by Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream.

Joe and Marilyn would move to Oklahoma. Joe would return to college. This time, he graduated Central State College in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1969 with honors. But Joe graduating with honors was not the only landmark event of 1969.

1969 also had the Apollo 11 landing on the moon, but most significantly for Joe and Marilyn, they celebrated the birth of their first daughter, Sherry Jolie. Joe's love of baseball and music would continue, but now he was playing in the church softball leagues and leading music at churches as well.

One of his great moments was hitting a home run in a church softball league so far that many proclaimed they had never seen a ball hit so far in their entire life. Joe's ministry would be rooted here, Sunnyside Baptist Church, where he would serve on different occasions for over 12 years.

Joe would coach basketball for the Christian school here and lead choir tours of the Missionettes. He would also force young men to wear baby blue tuxedos. In 1973, while the US was in turmoil about the Watergate scandal, the upheaval for Joe, Marilyn, and Sherry was the birth of their son, Jared Ray.

And it was here at Sunnyside, just down that hallway, that Joe would leave one Sunday morning locking the building after church, driving their brown wood-paneled station wagon out of the parking lot, leaving his son locked in the church alone.

His son never recovered, and thus has spent his entire life in churches. Joe and his family would move from Oklahoma to Texas to attend Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth from 1975 to 1977.

That bicentennial year of 1976 would contribute cultural icons of the first Apple computer, the movie Rocky, the $2 bill, but most importantly, it would offer the birth of their third child, Angie Renee.

Now a family of five, the Mackies would return to Oklahoma, and in 1978, while the world was amazed with the release of the first mobile phone, Joe and Marilyn were amazed at the final addition to the Mackie family.

They saved the best for last. Let's be honest. Robin Leanne was born in 1978, and Joe's family was now complete, but the adventures had just begun. Joe and his family moved to Greeley, Colorado in 1981 through the invitation of his lifelong friend, John Mark Perdue.

He was ordained as a minister of the gospel at West Greeley Baptist Church, and his parents, Joe and Harriet, would visit Greeley on occasion, and I remember one summer when they were there for the Independence Day Rodeo, they were awestruck at their children's and grandchildren's ability to put on a backyard parade.

In 1983, the Mackies moved from Greeley to Aurora, Colorado. The home in Aurora had a steep backyard, which made mowing in the summer difficult, but in the winter, when it was covered in snow, it was inspiring.

Joe, an avid garage sale shopper his entire life, had purchased a pair of wooden skis and fit along with broomsticks for poles, made his way to the top of the backyard slope. The image is forever ingrained in each of his children's memory.

Dad crests the top of the hill and comes down full speed. He is completely out of control, and skis directly into a steel metal swing set that knocks him head over heels. It mostly would have knocked anyone out, except for Marilyn is shouting at him while he is laying there in the snow, "'Joe, get up, you are scaring the children.'".

Joe would serve on the staff of several Southern Baptist churches in the Denver metro area over the years there. At one of the churches, First Baptist Aurora, he would conduct the Aurora Symphony in a Christmas musical, Merry Christmas, Aurora, and it was one of his proudest moments of his musical career.

Whatever church Joe served at, he would quickly befriend those who had been overlooked or maybe left unseen. His motor mouth made hundreds, if not thousands, of people feel welcomed in worship. Joe and Marilyn would live in Aurora until they saw their four children graduate high school and go on to college.

Joe was proud of the work that his children were involved in, in business, in international missions, or in the local church, but Joe was profoundly thankful that each of his children were rooted in a relationship with God.

His children would marry and have children of their own, and Joe and Marilyn would be the grandparents to nine grandchildren. Mary, Celia, Cora, Mabel, Mackay, Eli, Kenna, Aiden, and Sam. In 2018, Joe and Marilyn would make their final voyage together, moving from Oklahoma to Florida.

They would complete the full circle back to the ocean shores where, in many ways, Joe's story began. The friendships with neighbors in the retirement community in Port Orange and the Bible study group from First Baptist Daytona Beach would be a blessing to Joe and to Marilyn, providing care and support over the last year of Joe's life.

In January 2019, Joe told several people from his Bible study about planning the service. He said, I'm so sorry that I'm going to miss it. I would have really liked to be there and talk to all of those people.

Joseph Mackay, Jr. passed from this life and went to his heavenly home on Sunday, March 17, 2019. Poetically, the remade version of the movie about the flying elephant Dumbo was released 77 years later this weekend.

Joe's last breaths were with his wife, Marilyn, who he had shared 55 years with, holding his hand in prayer. One of those prayers was the Lord's Prayer. So would you please take the hand of one you love and together pray the prayer that Jesus taught those he called brothers and sisters and friends.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Knowing Christ Through Philippians and Romans

That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Philippians 3, 10, 11.

The words of the Apostle Paul from the book of Philippians inspired a song written by a young couple in this church in 1972. He was a young minister. She was a new mother with a three-year-old daughter.

They were just beginning their life together. They wrote those words. He had 47 years of life still ahead. Three more children, nine more grandchildren, many more churches to serve and lead, thousands of songs to sing and scriptures to read.

But of all that would lie ahead of him, I believe that those five words written and sung in this church would be the chorus of my father's life. That I may know him. To know God, to be known by God was the desire of our father's heart.

So in these moments, I'd like to reflect on what it means to know God and ask how do we respond today? We all want to be seen, to be heard, to be known, to be loved. I believe it's the desire of every heart.

I have lost count times, the number of times that my daughter, Kenna, has said to me, daddy, come look. It's said for the creation of a blanket fort, a new Lego build, a handstand. But in Kenna's innocence, she proclaims what all of our hearts hope, know me.

Regardless of our age, our success, our marital status, the number of friends that we may have on Facebook, or the followers that we have on Instagram, we want to be known. Romans 6, one of dad's favorite chapters, as Angie alluded to, in all of scripture, it proclaims the power of God over the forces of sin and death.

Paul uses many words in Romans, which may have been why dad enjoyed Paul's writing style so much as it reflected his own sermon style. But in the book of Romans, he methodically walks through the implications of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus and how then we are to live in response to that.

Never again will death have the last word. Sin speaks a dead language. God speaks a language that you hang on every word. You're dead to sin, you are alive to God. But yet I think it's Paul's words to a church that he loves in the book of Philippians that are the chorus of my dad's life.

Because Paul's words in Philippians are the relational expression of the endless and eternal implications of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He writes simply, that I may know him. And that knowing that Paul wrote about that mom and dad would sing about and that resonated as the chorus of my father's life is beyond a cognitive, objective, at a distance sort of knowing.

It was knowing from experience. It was knowing from failure. It was knowing from heartache. And it was knowing from hope. My family knew Colorado had mountains before we moved there in 1981, but it was not until our family moved there that we really knew them, until we experienced them.

And all of our experiences in the Colorado mountains are held together for me in two distinct scenes. The first is a camping trip. Our first camping trip, as I recall it, and we are out on a hike and we are caught well under prepared for a severe Colorado mountain, severe thunderstorm.

We are cold and we are wet. The rain is relentless. There's lightning and the thunder, feel the thunder and the lightning, and the thunder. And then dad calls out, here, come stand underneath this big tree with me to keep dry.

And it may only be in my imagination that this is how the events unfold, but I picture our family huddled together underneath a tree in the middle of a mountain meadow in a lightning storm. And I imagine the audience of heaven with grins and eye rolls about this little family from Oklahoma that is just getting to know the mountains of Colorado.

The second scene is that we are driving down through the big Thompson Canyon from Estes Park. We've been up at a church concert. The only kind of music that was allowed in our home, church music and Elvis music.

This was the church kind. It's not raining, it's snowing. The roads are icy and dad is driving our baby blue VW bus. And with icy roads, he pushes in the clutch to downshift when suddenly the baby blue bus begins to swerve.

And he loses all control of the van and it spins across lane to lane. And all of it ends very suddenly. The van is violently jerked to a stop. And there's this concave hubcap with a dent in it where it has hit the beginning section of guardrail just before our little van would have fallen and creamed off the road into the canyon below.

And I imagine now the audience of heaven with deep breaths about the guardian angels who must have been present in that moment. And this little family from Oklahoma is once again getting to know not only the mountains of Colorado, but getting to know the saving mercy of God.

Billy Graham said, most of us know about God, but that is quite different from knowing God. Most of us know about God, but that is quite different from knowing God. The difference of knowing, not just knowing about makes all the difference.

In our cultural moment, we're able to know about almost anything. If you wanted to this morning, it's as easy as Google to find out about the famine in Ethiopia, about the refugees fleeing from Venezuela or the ongoing genocide in Syria.

Our globalized society and our ever advancing technological realities allow us to know about those who suffer, those with disease, those who experienced death and loss. But knowing and truly knowing is far more relational, will move us to respond.

Because when someone we know is sick, when someone we know has been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, we know differently and we respond differently. It's December 12th, 5 .35 AM, according to my phone, when Robin sends a text to Sherry, Angie and I.

Often she forgets that she's on the East Coast. Hey guys, that was my best Robin. Hey guys, was wondering what you all might think about the four of us siblings heading down to Florida for a couple of days to be with mom and dad.

We knew about the lung disease that dad had recently been diagnosed with. But what we knew in the way that Paul wrote, the way that mom and dad sang about was far deeper. We knew that we loved our father, we loved our mother and it compelled a response.

And so the four siblings flew to Florida to be with mom and dad. I believe the last time that it had been just the six of us is when we had drove from Colorado to Oklahoma to drop Sherry off and Shawnee to attend her freshman year at OBU.

There may have been a dinner here or there, but my guess it had been 30 years since we had spent three uninterrupted days together. And those three days were a gift. It didn't have to be that way. Plenty of families have too much distance, too much conflict, too much life in the way that keeps them apart.

But for three days, we were able to sit together, share together, laugh together, eat together, drink together, cry together, remember together and love each other. It was our love that compelled the response, not fear, but love.

And you too, you're here today because you knew something. More appropriately said, you knew someone. And by knowing him, it compelled a response. You knew Joe, you loved Joe. And your response to be here today was compelled by love, for love, to love.

This is what compels us. This is what compels us to know God and to love God. How do we know God? I think it's best been said, if you want to get to know God, get to know Jesus. Paul writes in Colossians 1 .15, he, speaking of Jesus, is the image of the invisible God.

And Jesus says of himself in John 14 .9, to see me is to see the Father. So to know Jesus is to know God. And it is the prayer of Jesus that we would get to know him, not just know about him. Just before his death in John 17 .3, in the last discourse, Jesus says to his friends and followers, now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Did you miss that? Jesus says, this is eternal life, that they may know you. I believe eternal life did not begin for my dad on Sunday, March 31st, when he took his final breath. I believe eternal life began the moment that dad responded to the love and the grace of God and the invitation to know him and to follow him and to love him.

It's true that we will only fully know God's love and fully be known by him in the new heaven and the new earth, but I believe what Jesus says, that this is eternal life, to know God. And that reaches from eternity into today.

Jesus's prayer that your kingdom come, your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven was an invitation for us to live here and now a kingdom life. His prayer was not for us to spend our days and lives waiting for a life to come, it was to respond today to the invitation to know and to love, to be known by and to be loved by God.

Knowing him, being known by him, it's what Paul wrote about, it's what mom and dad sang about, and it's what Jesus prayed for. And I believe it's an invitation that we're invited to respond to today. I'd like to close with just two ways that the saints over the centuries have responded in knowing God.

The first is that we would know him through the sacred scriptures. Spend time with the stories and the words of Jesus. The truth is the way that we know Joe.

Is through all the stories.

The way that he lives on with us is through the stories that we will continue to tell. And it is in the stories of Jesus and the words of Jesus that we get to know him. My practice is each morning I read the words of Jesus from the gospel of John.

It's 18 sentences that remind me each morning that I am known, that I am loved, and that I'm invited to respond to the endless love of God with my day. On that Sunday morning, the final day of dad's life, I went into the bedroom and sat beside his bed and prayed those 18 sentences as his breath moved his chest up and down.

They were sacred words of Jesus and it was a sacred moment with my dad. Because we not only get to know Jesus through the sacred scriptures, but we get to know Jesus through the sacredness of our own lives.

Augustine wrote, help me know myself that I may know thee. What does it look like to take a few minutes in the morning or in the evening to see God in your day, to review your day, to ask God to allow you to see him in your day?

God speaks to us through the everyday of our life. Some days it's dramatic, dented hubcap, which you recognize his presence. Some days it's the warmth of the Florida sun or this beautiful Oklahoma weather.

No question why mom and dad moved to Colorado, is there? Maybe it's the crashing of the Florida waves. Maybe it's the invitation of your child. Daddy, come see. Maybe it's seeing family or friends that decades have gone by.

Maybe it's hearing a song that was written 40 years ago in this room. Maybe it's simply holding the hand of one that you love today. God speaks to us through the everyday of our life. He wants to be known.

He wants to know us. The invitation compels a response in love and by love and for love, to be loved, to be known. I believe it was the course of my father's life that I may know him. So as we close, I would invite you to take a breath, to trust that each breath is a gift from God.

Maybe close your eyes and listen to your heart. This is what Jesus says. This is eternal life, that you would know him. So how do you want to respond today? Would you please pray with me? Father, you're kind, you're good.

We thank you for giving us the gift of Skipper, of Joe, of brother Joe, of dad, of papa. May we recognize not only the sacredness of his life, but may we recognize the sacredness of our, may we respond to your love, to be known.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be, world without end.

Amen.

A Life Marked by Friendship, Scripture, and the Hope of Resurrection

12 one says, help Lord for the godly man ceases to be. And I believe that I speak for most, if not all of you, in that whenever I got with Joe, whether it was on the phone, at Village Inn, no matter how long it had been since we had seen or talked with each other, no matter the miles, there were two things I could count on.

We were gonna talk about Jesus and the Bible. And it probably wasn't gonna be short, you're right. But it was always the fact that Joe challenged me, encouraged me to something more, to knowing Jesus.

And I'm forever grateful for that. He was the brother I didn't have, just a great friend. And Jared didn't mention that in that invitation to come to Colorado, when we were there, the Mackeys were in Oklahoma, one of my perks for that move was the fact that the wind never blew in Colorado.

Now that's a relative sense, and it's kind of ironic today in that that wind out there is like that. But Joe was a great friend, and you know that. And I'm thankful that I was his friend. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for Joe and for his family, for Maryland, kids, just what they've meant, not to Sue and I and our family, but to each one here.

And we thank you for the time that we had with Joe. We thank you as well, just as Jared mentioned, the fact that the aim of Joe's life was to know you. We thank you that in times like this, we have the assurance and the confidence that Jesus is victorious over death and the grave and sin and pain.

And we thank you that Joe is able to enjoy you for the rest of eternity. We thank you that we have that promise ourselves. We thank you that you love us and that you'll continue to be with, to strengthen, to encourage Maryland, Sherry and Jared, Angie and Robin and their families, that you will be near and dear to them.

We thank you for that. Thank you for all that you are to us. Thank you that again, we've had the privilege of having a friend and a husband and a dad like Joe. And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Would you please stand as I pray the prayer of benediction over us. May the Lord bless you and keep you. Make the Lord, make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his face to you and give you peace, both now and forevermore.

Amen.

As you leave, may the peace of Christ go with you.