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In Memorium, Rev. Canon Boone Sadler
October 10, 2006
Requiem Eucharist for the Rev. Canon Boone Sadler
Come Holy Spirit: Touch our minds and think with them, touch our lips and speak with them and touch our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. AMEN.
Romans 8: 14-19, 34-35, 37-39
John 6: 37-40
I.
We gather to bid farewell to a giant of our church: a man who founded churches and diocesan camps, who served our church locally and nationally, a man who reached out to those in prison and those who had no home. The Rev. Canon Boone Sadler’s constant prayer and the course of his life were to serve Jesus Christ, and he did so with his wife and life-partner, Mary Maud, as his constant companion. He also knew how to have fun, whether body surfing at the beach or back packing in the mountains or playing with children at Vacation Bible School.
As I was preparing for this service, I ran across this story that was emailed to me some time ago. It is about a businessman from Wisconsin who went on a business trip to Louisiana. Upon arrival, he immediately plugged his laptop into his hotel room port and sent a short note back home to his wife, Jennifer Johnson, at her email address JennJohn@world.net. Unfortunately in his haste, he mistyped the address as JeanJohn@world.net, a Jean Johnson in Duluth, wife of a preacher who had just passed away that day. The preacher’s wife took one look at the email and promptly fainted. It read, “Arrived safely, but it sure is hot down here!” Mary Maud, if you receive an email that seems to come from Boone, I think it will be very different in what it describes. You see, over the last few days, I have imagined Boone’s appearing at our Lord’s heavenly banquet. Our Lord would look upon his servant and note all that he had done: the churches founded, the camp he helped to start, thirty years as rector of St. Luke’s-of-the-Mountains in La Crescenta, five children raised, six grandchildren, two great grandchildren, and sixty-five years as a priest of the Episcopal Church. And our Lord would say, “Not bad, not bad.” But then he would note all the Sundays at Donavan Correctional Facility, all the homeless of Ocean Beach who Boone had loved and for whom he advocated. He would count up all the children who came to know Jesus through the stories that Boone told and the songs that he taught them about our Lord. I imagine our Lord saying, “Now that is what I hoped for…amazing…well done, good and faithful servant…come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
II.
Boone’s extraordinary life was one of faithfulness to his Lord, Jesus Christ. He exercised his priestly ministry through a changing world and within a changing church. He did so with grace and absolute focus on the essentials of our belief. He is remembered for his teaching, for his evangelical focus, and for his service to those in need, the prisoner and the homeless. I imagine Boone would be growing impatient with me at this point for dwelling on him. He would be wanting me to get to the main thing, which is not him, but Jesus Christ. I hope he will forgive me this indulgence, but he has powerfully touched my life in a very short time. And I know you are here to remember him, to celebrate his goodness, love, and faith, and we are here to grieve with Mary Maud and the whole Sadler family.
Indeed, Boone would kick me if I missed the evangelical opportunity of today to proclaim our faith in the risen Lord. Paul tells us of the power of Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection in his Epistle to the Romans:
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
For, we are connected to the love of God through Christ. And we give thanks that even death and the grave are conquered in Christ…that in the end, all will be well and all will be one at the heavenly banquet of our Lord. For we rely on the promises of God to be true and complete as we hear from the lips of Jesus: “This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”
And so, today is to be a feast of the resurrection. Like the life of Boone Sadler, today we testify that “Jesus is Lord.” We proclaim our hope in the resurrection. This is the treasure of our Christian faith that Boone used to form his life and that he proclaimed with every action and every breath.
III.
This past summer, as he has for countless summers before, Boone taught Vacation Bible School. So many children and their parents experienced God’s love and the story of salvation through his creativity and love. After this year’s Vacation Bible School, Boone brought me a gift. As you can see, it is actually a little treasure chest, decorated by the children.
As I understand it, each of the children received a similar chest which they too decorated. Each day would have a specific theme and teaching and the kids would search through the sand for the particular treasure. Here is what they found:
- A heart—for God loves you
- A magnifying glass—for God knows you
- A Gem—for God treasures you
- A Cross—for God forgives you
- A compass—for God is with you
In the last days of his life, Boone pointed beyond himself and spoke to a new generation of the timeless truth of God and God’s treasure. In a sense, this treasure box is Boone’s continual sermon to me and to you.
Today, we give our love to Boone who loved us and we grieve his passing. However, we do what he would have us to do. We allow him once more to be a servant of Christ who points beyond himself to God…a God who loves us, knows us, treasures us, and forgives us….God who is with us.
Boone Sadler, we give thanks for the treasure that you have been to us and for guiding us and so many to the eternal treasures of God found in Christ Jesus. Well done, good and faithful servant.
The Rev. Canon C. Boone Sadler,Jr., 92: Canon for Prison Ministry
On Thursday, October 5th, the Rev. Canon C. Boone Sadler, Jr. passed away at his home on Point Loma following a brief illness. He was 92. Services for Canon Sadler will be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday, October 10th, at 11:00 am. Viewing will take place at the Cathedral for one hour from 9:00 am to 10:00 am. Memorial gifts in honor of Canon Sadler may be made to Camp Stevens, PO Box 2320, Julian, CA 92036, or to the New Church Fund, Diocese of San Diego, 2728 Sixth Street, San Diego, CA 92103.
Canon Sadler is survived by his wife Mary Maud and five children: Rachel Anne Mueller (Richard), Big Sur, Thomas Aidan Sadler (Rosario), Tujunga, Genevieve James, Westminster, CO, Elizabeth Ellen Northam (Jack), San Diego, and Timothy Mitchell Sadler (Marlani), San Diego. Also surviving are six grandchildren: Jeremiah Jeffrey Northam, Amber Noel Northam, Jack Curtis Northam, Tara Lynn Mueller, Charles Aidan Sadler, Ken Tsuchiya; and two great grandchildren: Sarah Elizabeth Northam, and Justin Derek Northam.
Canon Sadler was a 1931 graduate of San Diego High School and received his B.A. from the University of California in Berkeley in 1936.
On July 25th of this year, Sadler celebrated the 65th anniversary of his ordination in the Episcopal Church, having graduated from the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1940. He was ordained that same year in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, San Diego. The following year, Canon Sadler married Mary Maud Mitchell.
Canon Sadler’s ministry was characterized by new endeavors. In 1942, the Rt. Rev. W. Bertram Stevens assigned Sadler to two fledging missions, the first in La Mesa and the second in Bostonia in the El Cajon Valley. At the same, Sadler also founded an Episcopal presence on the campus of San Diego State University. When St. Andrew’s, La Mesa, became a parish, Sadler started a day school there that continues to this day. Sadler also started the mission of St. Phillip’s in Lemon Grove that is today a parish. He was also a prime mover in establishing Camp Stevens, the two-hundred and fifty-six acre Diocesan Episcopal Camp located in the hills outside of Julian.
In 1953, Sadler accepted a call to be the rector of St. Luke’s-of-the-Mountains in La Crescenta, a position he held for thirty years. While there, he started a new congregation in the neighboring community of La Cañada. A life-long outdoor and hiking enthusiast, Sadler created a backpacking program for the Diocese of Los Angeles and, for ten years, led groups of high school students on missionary journeys to the Navajos in Bluff, Utah.
From 1960-69, Sadler served as Secretary of the Convention for the Diocese of Los Angeles. He represented the Diocese as a Deputy to General Convention from 1961-79. Within the National Church, Sadler held numerous positions. He also taught at Bloy House Theological School in Claremont and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity in 1975 by the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, in Berkeley.
Sadler officially retired in 1983 and returned to his native San Diego where he became Assistant at St. Andrew’s, La Mesa. He then founded the new mission of St. Columba’s in Santee, where he served as vicar for four years. In 1988, he became an Assistant at Holy Trinity, Ocean Beach, a position he filled actively until the month before his death.
In the early 1990’s, Sadler was invited to assist in the Kairos prison ministry at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility and subsequently took over the supervision of the program. The Rt. Rev. Gethin Hughes named him Canon Missioner to the Incarcerated in recognition of his work at Donovan. In 2002, the Citizen’s Advisory Committee of the Donovan facility named him Volunteer of the Year. Sadler extended his prison ministry by making regular visits to inmates transferred from Donovan to the Soledad Correctional Facility in Soledad.
In 2002, Sadler was elected to the Ocean Beach City Council where he served a constant voice on behalf of the needs of the homeless. He was also a regular volunteer at the Outreach Diners for the homeless at Holy Trinity, a Life Member of the NAACP, and a board member of the Pasadena Chapter of the NAACP.