A Life Well Lived

Two weeks ago I lost a friend and mentor, the Reverend Bob Gilbert. His death was not unexpected, he was eighty-eight years old and had been ill for some time, but his loss, just as his life had a profound effect on me. I first met Bob in Tellico Plains, Tennessee when I was nineteen years old and working for the U.S. Forest Service. I was young, Methodist, and learning the business of Forestry and Bob was the Methodist Minister of a rural “three-point Circuit. Bob and his wife, Dot, had three sons just younger than I, and after church on my first Sunday in town they invited me to lunch and I soon became their “fourth son.”

We stayed in touch over the years, and when Lynn and I married, the four of us continued our friendship, including a memorable trip by Bob and Dot to our New Orleans home when Bob’s beloved University of Tennessee Volunteers played in the Sugar Bowl. I will never forget crossing Bourbon Street as we showed the Gilberts around our city, and a member of Bob’s congregation shouted out, “hey Brother Bob, how you doing!”

Bob was small in stature, standing about 5’9” tall, but large in faith and courage. As one of his sons said at his funeral, “you would not be around dad long before you heard about Jesus: about His love and sacrifice and about how much Bob wanted you to know Jesus like he did.” I am convinced that I would not have become an Episcopal Priest had it not been for Bob’s love of me and the example of faith and strength and courage he gave to me and all those around him.

Brother Bob preached for over fifty years, but his faith was action as well as words. He believed that all people are children of God and God made no distinction between “Red and Yellow, Black and White.” This was not a popular belief in East Tennessee in 1967.  Not only would Bob tell everyone about Jesus, he was not bashful about telling people and showing people what Jesus would do. He was invited by members of the local Ku Klux Klan to lead a devotional at one of their secret meetings. Bob was met at the designated location, blindfolded and taken up the mountain, off the paved road and into the woods. The blindfold was removed and he found himself surrounded by Klansmen in white robes and masks, a burning cross in the center of the circle.

After Bob was introduced he began to tell Jesus’ familiar story of the “Good Samaritan.” Except: the robbed and wounded man in the ditch was a black man traveling from Knoxville to Chattanooga. “As the Methodist preacher and Baptist pastor drove by on the other side, the Klansmen cheered.” And then: “the third car stopped and out stepped a Klansman, robed and headed to this very rally. He took the man to the nearest hospital.” The crowd booed and hissed and cursed. Finally Bob shouted, “Quiet! Do not interrupt the word of God when it is being preached!” Brother Bob finished the story, was blindfolded, the fire put out and everyone left, without him. He made it to the dirt road, up the hill to the paved road and a hundred yards down the road a member of his church picked him up and took him back to his car.

Last Sunday I baptized a seven month old child, Howard Dewese King. My Prayer for Howard and for you and me was and is: “that we will have the courage, the faith, the sense of humor and the abundant life that Brother Bob had.”

“For we are buried with Christ in his death so that we may live in the power of his resurrection.”