November 5, 2011, 10:00 AM
Sunset View Mortuary, El Cerrito, CA
Call to Worship
Our Lord is preparing for us a new heaven and a new earth. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
On behalf of Ruth Chan and Ed Chan’s daughters, Sue, Barbara, and Beverly and their many family members, I welcome you here today to this service of the celebration of the life of Edmund Chan who was born on May 16, 1930 and returned to the Lord on October 27, 2011. Ed Chan was 81 years old. When someone whom we have known in life and who has been the catalyst of many events to gather people together for fellowship and fun such as learning how to ballroom dance and sing karaoke, we come today finding time from our busy schedules to remember a life well-lived and dedicated to the Lord. In so doing, our prayers are that your life would be blessed for you have borne witness to how God our creator is present with each of us in both our living and in our dying.
Since Ed Chan has been an active and faithful member of Sunset Ministry and First Chinese Baptist Church, we have Dr. James Chuck who was the senior pastor at FCBC when Ed first became involved in the church; Rev. Larry Jay who was the founding pastor of Sunset Ministry where Ed and Ruth were married, and we’ll have Rev. Jerry Mann who will give our grace for the memorial meal following this service today. Each of them may also offer some personal thoughts about the life of Ed Chan.
Let us pray. Almighty God, your home is among mortals like us—both living and dead. As we come today to entrust our loved one, Edmund Chan into your tender care, grant us assurance that all our endings and beginnings are in you. Wipe the tears from our eyes, and fill our hearts with hope, knowing that you are making all things new. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Amen.
Hymn Great Is Thy Faithfulness
Scripture Readings Psalm 23 James Chuck
Biography Larry Jay
Words of Remembrance
Beverly Chan
Elyssa Cumming
Barbara Chan
Open Sharing
Share Sue Chan’s Words
Message Unique Don Ng
When someone refers to a person as being unique, you’re not too sure if that’s a compliment or a criticism. Being unique means that it is one of a kind. There’s no one else in the world that is just like this one. Sometimes, being unique gets one into trouble because one is not conforming to the group and often stands apart. But being called unique is also an affirmation of God’s wondrous creation of making each one of us special, one of a kind, no one like you in the whole world, unique. I think we can call Ed Chan unique.
Many of us have already shared the many gifts that Ed Chan had in life. He was truly an inventor and a builder. Somewhere in time, we stopped referring to people as an inventor. In the days of Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin, we would call these famous people inventors. But in recent times, very few people would put in their resume that he or she is an inventor. But Ed Chan could. Ed would always be inventing something that would be better, simpler, cheaper and would last longer. He would come to you and ask you what you think the contraption does. And when he has stumped you with that twinkle in his eyes, he would show you how he could make this world a better place to live.
Ed loved to build things. He built a tree house but thought what a great idea to have a tree growing right through the house. Instead of chopping down the tree to build this backyard structure, he just built the house around it! When I first saw it, I asked him what happens if the tree died, wouldn’t you have this big hole in your roof? He joked that this was really a “tree” house. It didn’t matter if it was good fung shui or not, he just liked to build things—model airplanes from raw materials not those balsam wood ones you get at the 5 and 10 store, a big cooler for the church picnic and one time at Yosemite, he came up with this sophisticated set of florescent lights powered by his camper so that we can see roasting our marshmallows over the campfire. We asked him to turn them off because he was ruining the ambience of singing around the campfire. Ed was a unique inventor.
I like to read to you Psalm 8 because the psalmist must have been thinking about Ed Chan when he wrote it.
When God created all the heavens, the moon and the stars, God was mindful of creating Ed too. His giftedness and talents are amazing that God made him a little lower than himself, a little lower than the angels. Then God crowned Ed with glory and honor. As one who just likes to tinker and invent things that no one else has, God gave him the works of his hands and put all the things in this life for his use. One time, my wife Joy asked him to invent a sheet music turning mechanism so that she wouldn’t have to use her hands. What he came up with didn’t really work. Now, I’m sure he will have the rest of Paradise to come up with one that works. Today, we can praise God’s majesty in all the earth because God created Ed Chan who is and was unique.
Ed Chan lived a full and active life and probably thought that he can prolong his good life with Ruth and his daughters, Sue, Barbara, and Beverly for a long time. In his 70s, he was still doing 200 push-ups. But he was increasingly aware about being a finite being and will eventually die and return to the Lord. I knew Ed as one who was always ready for the next challenge in life. He would let go of the past and get on with the future. He lived life fully, cherished it, enjoyed it, and helped many others to do the same when he taught ballroom dancing, taught people how to ski, sang karaoke until his heart was content and always welcomed people to his home to share his abundance with others.
Ed Chan lived a life that was truly unique but also very common and familiar with all of us here. You see, not only was Ed’s life unique, all of our lives are one of a kind, the only one in the whole world, unique because God created each one of us too. There’s no one just like you. Just like how Ed Chan lived his life in God’s love, we too are to live our lives in faithfulness to God through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Let us pray.
We praise you, Creator God, for making us in your own image and all the stages of our lives, from birth to death and beyond death. We praise you for the freshness and the innocence of our childhood, the exciting trials of adolescence, all the right and faithful choices we made in our maturity and ask for your forgiveness for making so many wrong ones. And in our later years, we thank you for the satisfaction for teaching us sometimes painfully, how to give more and expect less in return. And we praise you for as many sunset years as you may have in store for us: passing on of wisdom, promising future of grandchildren, and the courage to face our own mortality strengthened by the promise of a more perfect life, thanks to the love and willing sacrifice of your blessed Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Thank you, Father God, for the life of your unique creation, Ed Chan, ended here, resumed with the Lord. Amen.
Expression of Appreciation & Announcements
The family of Ed Chan thanks you for your presence today. As we all know, Ed’s life in his faithful marriage to Helen and then his devoted marriage to Ruth have formed a lovely blended family of caring and loving people. I venture to believe that an important part of Ed’s lasting legacy will be for you as family members to remain as a larger blended family. Life is always too short to stop being loving family and good friends.
In his life story found in the first volume of Chinatown stories, he said, “I like to have parties in my house so that people can enjoy themselves and get to know each other. I try to mingle the church group with my other friends—dance friends, ski friends, and singing friends—so that when they are ready for church they will feel comfortable coming to ours.”
Immediately following the service, you are invited to be the family and friends that Ed Chan would have liked to see by coming to the Memorial Meal at the Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant in Emeryville. We’ll mingle and get to know each other.
If you have brought a picture of Ed and perhaps with you in it that you would like to share or a memory that you have written down, the family would be happy to receive them to add to their the album that they are creating about Ed Chan. They would treasure these mementos to remember the fascinating life that Ed Chan lived.
In Ed Chan’s memory, the family has listed four organizations that you may want to make a contribution. Please see the bulletin for this information.
After you have come forward to offer your last respects and to greet the family, you will be given two small envelopes when you exit. The white envelope contains a piece of candy to symbolize sweetness in a bittersweet situation. The red envelope contains a coin for you to buy something on your way home to suggest that you will continue to prosper and to have a healthy life.
Benediction
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)
Brothers and sisters, God has promised to bless us and keep us in this life and in our new life with the Lord. The same God whose face now shines on our friend, Ed Chan, has promised, through the Lord, to forgive us and to shelter us throughout eternity. May you find comfort and peace in these gracious promises of a loving God.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord makes his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.