Scripture Reflection, May 6: Dungy’s Gift to Grieving Parents

Scripture Readings
Acts 14: 21-27
Psalm 145
Revelation 21: 1-5
John 13: 31-35

This week I was reading an article about a 51-year-old truck driver from Iowa (Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated, April 30, 2007, p. 86). This over-the-road driver, Mark Lemke, lost his 19-year-old son in a motorcycle accident in 2006. He told the reporter, “The hardest thing for me is, I sit in that truck all day, and all I do is think about him.” Lemke is a former athlete and an avid sports fan. So he was quite surprised when his phone rang last October and the caller said, “This is Tony Dungy. I am just calling to offer my condolences to you and see if there’s anything I can do to help you.” Lemke at first thought the call was a prank, but he soon realized that the caller was in fact Tony Dungy, the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League. Dungy was calling because he had heard about this man’s loss. You may remember that Dungy himself experienced the loss of a child at Christmastime in 2005, when his 18-year-old son committed suicide.

The author of this story, Rick Reilly, goes on to report that since the death of his son Tony Dungy has taken it upon himself to reach out to many parents who have suffered the loss of a child. Since that initial telephone conversation, he and the Iowa truck driver have apparently struck up a friendship and have stayed in touch through calls and emails. Dungy invited Lemke to the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami. Lemke found a load that needed hauling to Florida and one that needed to come back to Iowa, and he drove down and attended the Super Bowl as the guest of the head coach of the Colts. Lemke commented: “I’m awfully grateful to him. He helped me keep my faith, He taught me that he and I – we’re not alone.” Rick Reilly concludes his story with these words: “Tony Dungy stands as a reminder to every parent who’s grieving right now that there is a way through the pain. And that way is through each other.”

It seems clear that Tony Dungy has turned the heartbreaking tragedy of the loss of his son into a learning experience. This experience has taught him to reach out to others in compassion, even to other people whom he has never met. In Christian terms, it appears that Tony Dungy has learned better how to love through this ordeal. Perhaps we can remember situations or events in our own lives which were very difficult but through which we have been trained in what it means to love. We have endured ordeals through which we have been gifted with a deepened and refined ability to care for others, especially for those in great need.

In the Gospel for this Sunday, we hear familiar words of Jesus, words spoken in his final conversation with his disciples before his betrayal and death. Jesus gives his disciples a commandment that he calls "new," the command to love one another as he has loved them. Followers of Jesus will be identified by a unique willingness to love, a love inspired by the love Jesus had for his own. I think that all of us know how vague the word “love” can be. It is used for just about anything in our society. But Jesus puts flesh on those words by his own life, through his compassionate ministry to others and his tenacious fidelity to his disciples. Right before these words in the Gospel of John, Jesus has taught his disciples about the meaning of love by washing their feet. And his new commandment of love is spoken to them immediately after Judas has left the room to set about his action of betrayal. These are words that are spoken on the threshold of his passion, his own moment of darkness and trial. Jesus educated, he trained his disciples in the meaning of the commandment he gave them. He trained them in what it means to love one another by his own gift of himself for them.

In the month of May, we Catholics make special memory of another parent who lost her child in death – Mary, the mother of Jesus and our own mother. We honor her for her faith and her courageous willingness to fulfill the will of God in her life in good times and bad times. I believe that sometimes our image of Mary is illumined so brightly with heavenly light that we forget that she was a young Jewish woman who had to negotiate all of the challenges of working families in first century Galilee. I suspect that her hands were rough from everyday, hard work and her face was weathered from the hot, near eastern sun and because of her deep concern about the destiny of Jesus, her son. Through all of that, Mary learned what it meant to love from through her response to God’s word and by becoming the most faithful disciple of her own son. Her expertise in loving became apparent as she stood beneath the cross of Jesus and, after the resurrection, joined his disciples in their new life of faith and their proclamation of the good news of Easter. Mary, too, trains us in how to love.

Jesus’ command that we love one another as he has loved us stands before us as an abiding challenge. You and I are painfully aware of the ways in which we fall short in living out this command. We struggle to shake our old habits of selfishness, impatience, and prejudice. But the risen Christ continues to train us in how to love, just as he educated his disciples in the meaning of this new commandment. If we are open to his presence in our lives, we realize that Christ acts in our lives through people and events in order to expand our capacity to give of ourselves to others. Sometimes this “training in love” comes to us through people and situations that bring us great delight and fulfillment, as in the goodness of friends who love us faithfully. But Christ even brings good out of the evil we experience by educating us in how better to love through the painful events of our lives, as in Tony Dungy’s tragic experience of the loss of a teenage son. Even in terrible moments like that, Christ continues to demonstrate his faithful love for us and patiently shows us how to care for one another.

Rick Reilly suggests that Tony Dungy has shown grieving parents that there is a way through the pain, and that way is through each other. Jesus told his disciples that the way people would know they were his disciples was if they truly loved one another. As we come to the table of the Lord this Sunday, we make memory of Christ’s salvific self-gift in his passion. Christ, crucified and risen, has shown us how to love. May we allow him to teach us each day what it means to live his new commandment of love.

Robin Ryan, CP