Funeral Service—August 20, 2005
"Do we begin again to commend ourselves?
Or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you? Ye are our epistles, known and read of all men..." 2 Corinthians 3: 1,2
Introduction
My first contact with Dr. Mann was freshman orientation in September, 1949. He challenged the incoming students with these verses: Ye are our epistles! It was my introduction into a challenge to excellence in every phase of life and living. The "ENC way" was to be a no-compromise pursuit of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That first contact 56 years ago began a relationship that culminated with the privilege of being Dr. Mann's pastor; a relationship on my part of profound respect. What can I say to God's glory about E. S. Mann? I will use some of his own texts:
There is a lad here . . . John 6:9
Dr. Mann was a great story teller. He never committed the sin of delivering a boring sermon.
One of his sermons epitomized Dr. Mann's passion for recruiting young people for ENC and for the Lord's service; he made the parable of the loaves and fishes come alive, and he highlighted the fact that Andrew, Peter's brother, found a lad with something to give, and brought him to Jesus. "Is there a lad in your house? There are four in mine! A lad in your church? ..."
Looking back, Dr. Mann's sermons were like a homiletic course to me. They were masterpieces of focus; they always had three points on one theme: we need your partnership and support at E.N.C. in your young people , your prayers, and your money. Every church got a representative and a quartet every year. And the president himself was leading the way.
Dr. Mann put a face on Eastern Nazarene College to the hundreds of churches from Nova Scotia to Ohio, and he taught others how best to do just that as well. He found many a lad and lassie for God and for the church across the years. But Edward Mann found and recruited many people in many other ways, and they almost always benefited from his challenge to serve. [ I know I will miss many- but here are]
Some of the people Edward Mann tapped for service on his team at ENC and who themselves were blessed and had opportunity to became blessings in many ways: E.S.Phillips, S.W.Nease, Kenneth Pearsall, John B. Nielson, Alvin Kauffman, Donald Young, James and Ruth Cameron, Lowell Hall, Timothy Smith, Donald Brickley, Lyall Calhoun, Charles Acres, Lambert Brandes, Ken Sullivan, Lawson Saunders, Frank Bowers and Donna Bowers, Paul Wells, Claude Schlosser, Dorothy Zink, ________________, and I know I am making glaring, even unforgivable omissions. But Dr. Mann was a team builder.
Now concerning the collection . . . 1 Corinthians 16:1
No matter how profoundly he soared in poetic rhetoric, Dr. Mann always had a very practical goal in mind, and at least one approach to reaching that goal. A favorite transition after a challenging recruiting message would be a comment on how Paul could go from the sublime of 1 Corinthians 15 to the very practical of 16:1.
With the encouragement of his lifelong friend, Wesley Angell, he saw the erection of substantial buildings on the campus of E.N.C. He knew the dreams of the early pioneers and founders who moved to Wollaston in 1918, and Memorial, and Schrader, and Williamson, and Spangenberg and the Nease Library, and LaHue, and, fittingly, Mann, and Angell and Young were the living proof of those early prophecies, added during his strong leadership. And while the Wollaston Church was built both in 1950 and 1980 with the local congregation carrying the great bulk of the load, they both had a hand in the first two phases of the erection of the sanctuary of the Wollaston church as well.
Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called (Ephesians 4:1)
This text from Ephesians was one Edward Mann used in one of his many baccalaureate sermons addressed to a graduating class. That year he also gave his personal testimony:
"May I conclude my brief message with a word of personal witness? In the Canterbury Chapel on this campus, I one day stood to my feet and made a decision. I had been struggling with the demands of conscience and the problem of how and where to invest my life. Summoning all the moral courage I could muster, I made the determination of my life- I chose Christ. "
I learned early to take my intellectual questions to Him and to trust Him implicitly. And in the Canterbury Chapel, once again, I answered a call to serve. The wisdom of that decision has been substantiated every day since that moment . . .by the fullness of joy and peace which accompany obedience.
He was no cardboard cutout of a saint. He was a man's man, and he often arranged the fall schedule of church visitation so the quartet boys would bring home the school car after church while Prexy went off to a hunting camp with Maine ENCers. The epistle according to Mann says you could be a Red Sox fan and a sanctified Christian. It says in bold print that you can love the great old hymns of the church, but that sweet barbershop singing has its place, too. (He really liked Aura Lee!)
Ed Mann was a poet that resonated with a Vermont that somehow was clean and pure and challenging, long before so many flatlanders came, and way before Ben and Jerry's. I'll never forget snatches of classical songs, and sometimes Gilbert and Sullivan and the long trips back to ENC; games of "Schlopsky" and serious conversations and even stopping to fish a stream. I recall hearing Dr. Mann quote Bryant's Thanatopsis, and it could be a fitting close to this meditation. Tennyson's Crossing the Bar is also in my mind as I think of a life so well lived.
CROSSING THE BAR
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me !
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep.
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark !
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I know I'll* see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
*Tennyson wrote "I HOPE to see my Pilot" But I keep thinking about rockslide over in the state just to the east- when a few years ago the profile that was that state's signature, the Old Man of the Mountain, that had been there forever, one day was gone. Dr. Mann's passing is somehow like that to me.
Edward Stebbins Mann was for many of us the face of Eastern Nazarene College, as well as the signature profile of a generation the world at large did not know, but we know to be giants of the faith. That profile is gone now, but we will carry it with us as long as we live. And by God's grace we will be true as well.
Thank God for Edward Mann!