(My comments at Wes’s Celebration of Life, November 21, 2022, Memorial Road Church of Christ, Oklahoma City, OK.)
I first met Wes Harrison the summer of 1967. He and David Rivoire, both transfers from York College, were joining our campaign team to do mission work in the NE United States for twelve weeks before starting our junior year at Harding. The summer of 1967 was tumultuous: race riots in Florida, NJ, Milwaukee, the Vietnam War escalating. LBJ was a very unpopular president, and the 6-Day War between Israel and the Arab world changed the landscape of the Middle East, the consequences of which we still live with.
When I met Wes in 1967, Wes was focused on one thing only: helping people by telling them who Jesus is. About a month ago, my wife Sherrylee and I were visiting with Wes and Glenna. We heard all about his teaching a class, and serving the Afganis, and working in the international ministry and…….and Wes was still focused on one thing: helping people know who Jesus is.
Fifty-five years! Much has changed since the summer of ’67, but the fact of darkness in the world and the need for the Light has not changed. If Wes was anything, he was tenacious. He had a calling to be a teacher… and nothing distracted him from that task.
We did not know in 1967 how intertwined our lives were going to be. By the end of that summer, our friendship had grown, so I invited him to be my roommate the next year. We were in the same social club, we competed against each other, playing tennis, handball, basketball. Wes played everything! He was fit. He was strong! He wanted to win. And no one worked harder than Wes to accomplish their goals.
The only person who could give Wes a run for his money was….Glenna. Oh, Wes loved Glenna—but she was way out of his league. That fact did not deter Wes in the least. It was during their sometimes stormy courtship that Wes introduced me to Roy Orbison, and we would play songs like “Crying,” and “Just Running Scared” over and over again to deal with the ups and downs of their courtship. And they found a way to become “Wes and Glenna”—which is the only way any of us who have ever known them can talk about them!
Wes and the rest of us graduated from Harding in 1969, but there were several of us who had worked on Campaigns Northeast together who decided during our senior year to form a mission team and go somewhere together. Two years later, the Rivoires and Woodwards got on the plane for Germany, but the Harrisons had not succeeded yet in securing their support. Did I mention that Wes was tenacious. He and Glenna continued to knock on that door when others would have quit! A little over a year later, Wes, Glenna, and 3-month old Janean joined us in Munich. God had blessed their faithfulness and sent them to complete our mission team.
They served in Hannover, they served in Kaiserslautern, they served in Portland, Oregon, they served in West Virginia, and they served in Oklahoma. They taught Laotians, they taught Koreans, they taught Burmese, they taught Chinese, they taught Afghanis, they taught their children Wesley and Janean, they taught other people’s children at Columbia Christian, Alderson Broaddus University, and Ohio Valley College, Wes taught his grandsons whom he adored Jackson, Harrison, ….Wes was called to teach, and he did it with love and compassion, with conviction, with humor, and did I say, conviction!
As every good teacher must be, Wes was a student. He read and studied and poured over materials. He delighted in teaching you something he read yesterday. My strongest memory of the time when we roomed together is of him sitting at his desk, making detailed notes of what he needed to learn. He might get up and walk on his hands for a while to get the blood circulating again, but then back to studying!!
When God took Wes home, Wes was sitting at his desk. How appropriate. Wes had been looking into the mirror darkly, but now he is seeing Him face-to-face. He lived his whole life for that moment. That’s what we are celebrating today!
And now I want to share just a brief word to Glenna, Janean, Wesley, and the rest of us—as, I’m pretty sure, Wes would have done. I believe with all my heart that Jesus died to wash away our sins, atoning for us and redeeming us. But the death of Jesus accomplished even more:
Hebrews 2:14-15 says, “14 Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death
Just think about all we do in our culture to avoid death : our culture of youth, of beauty, of health and fitness—everything to try to stave off death and dying. Our world is captured and held slave by the fear of death
Here is what I believe Wes now knows and would want you to know: The Devil holds the power of death—and so we die—as did the Son of God in flesh and blood when he took on the SIN of the world. BUT the minute HE died, Death and the Devil were defeated eternally, because Jesus was not dead and in that tomb. His body was there, but Jesus was alive and preaching! And the power of LIFE eternal was so strong that on Sunday morning, that Body came alive—transformed but alive. Jesus was the first, and those like Wes who have been crucified and buried with Christ, will be raised with Him also to Life Eternal.
This is Good News! I used to think that what the Hebrew writer meant by saying that we were freed from slavery to the fear of death, that he was just saying, we don’t have to be afraid of dying any more, but I believe now it is more than that. Glenna, we also do not have to be afraid of what death can take from us. Death has a sting. That is why we have tears today. But Death has no power to take Life or Love from us. Death is defeated. We are FREE at last from Slavery to the Fear of Death.
I don’t know why Jesus was weeping at the tomb of Lazarus. For Lazarus? For Mary and Martha? Because everyone was? For the Pain of Death in the World?? But he wept, and so do we. In just a moment, however, we believe we will hear the voice of Jesus calling loudly, “Come out of that grave!” And Wes will rise up, and we will meet Jesus and finally and completely be free, replacing tears with joy and praise—forever. Come, Lord Jesus!
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