A week ago, had he been alive my dad would have celebrated 54 years of marriage with my mum. In a couple of weeks time at the beginning of October we would have celebrated his 80th birthday. We won’t do that because just over a month ago, we held a thanksgiving service for the life of my father, Roy Whittall who died on the 21st July 2024. I thought I’d share some of that service here as a way of sharing my thanks.

The readings and the songs were all chosen by my Dad. He chose My Hope is Built on Nothing Less, The Lord is my Shepherd, All I Once Held Dear and In Christ Alone as the songs – and those choices say a lot about the faith of my dad.

For the readings Dad chose 1 Peter 1:3-9; Revelation 22:1-6 & Revelation 21:1-7. He wanted everyone there to know that he died in the sure hope of heaven and that they too could share that same hope of everlasting life because of the death & resurrection of Jesus Christ.

My uncle and sister both shared tributes that told some of the story of his childhood, his calling to ministry, his student years at London Bible College, and his time both as a pastor and a care worker. I then had the immense privilege of sharing the message which was one of the harder sermons I’ve ever had to preach. If you’re interested, you can watch my message here and the full text is below the video.

Firstly on behalf of the family, I would like to add my thanks to you all for being here with us today, both in person and online, to give thanks for the life of my father, Roy Whittall. And to thank all of you who had been his family, his friends, his colleagues, his neighbours – thank you for your part in his life. Dad was grateful for each of you, almost certainly prayed for you and invariably had a good word to say about you. You each played a part, some large, some small, in his having lived a rich life. Thank you.

There’s a famous story that Jesus tells (you can find it in Matthew 25:14-30). Jesus is telling his disciples what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. He says it’s a bit like a man going on a journey and trusting all his property and belonging to his servants. To one of his servants he gives 5 talents (now a talent was a lot of money about 20 years salary for a labourer), to a second he gives 2 talents and to a third he gives 1 talent and off he goes on his journey expecting his servants to put what he gave them to good use. And two of them do just that, so when the man returns the first servant who had 5 gave him that 5 plus 5 more. The servant who had 2 talents gave the man back the original 2 plus two more. 

But the third one just buried the money, didn’t do anything with it. He said his master was unjust and that he was afraid of his master, so what would happen if he lost the money? So he just buried it and here you go, here it is back.  

To the first two servants the man said these words, which I’d like you to remember and hold on to, as we’ll come back to them later, he said to them: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” 

The third servant who did nothing though was not welcomed into his master’s joy, he was cast outside into what Jesus describes as ‘the outer darkness’ a place of ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’. The conclusion is there are two possibilities – the possibility of future joy, shared with the Master or future sorrow without. 

My dad was always something of a bit of an anachronism, he was in a variety of ways a man out of time. The world changed all around Dad and I’d say he struggled to adjust to some of those changes. Now in case you think that was just Dad in his retirement, Dad in his 70s let me correct that view. That was my Dad as I’ll always remember him. Let me give you a few examples.

Dad, bless him, never cared two hoots (as he might say) about fashion to my occasional embarrassment. As the world swapped last year’s fashions for this year’s trends, Dad would wait a decade or two to see if it all came back around again so that what he’d worn in the 1950 or the 1970s was once again perfectly reasonable. Either that or he had become old enough that neither he, nor anyone else cared.   

Dad was also famously inept when it came to technology. So while the world was getting to grips with the internet, Dad was still struggling to figure out the video recorder. There was the occasional strong exchange of words in the house if Dad had inadvertently recorded over an episode of Casualty or Neighbours or was supposed to have recorded Casualty or Neighbours but recorded the wrong channel instead. I secretly think he cultivated this reputation of benign uselessness so that no one would ask him to do it at all. In a digital world I had a very analogue father. 

And for someone who couldn’t swim and was afraid of heights being born on an island was something of a cruel twist of fate. As people in Britain began to discover the world and to travel, not so my Dad. He’d say things like, ‘There’s so many places in Britain I haven’t seen yet’ which was both true and an excuse so he wouldn’t have to go either on a ferry (because he couldn’t swim) or go on a plane (because the sky was too high up). Then as you heard just over a dozen years ago my family and I moved to Sweden so Mum told him they were getting passports and that was final! So Dad in his 70s suddenly found himself navigating airports and new countries and much to his own amazement thoroughly enjoying it.

Lastly, while the world was discovering their emotions Dad’s upper lip seemed to remain remarkably stiff. I remember with some amazement how calm and measured he was when he was doing what I am doing now, and speaking at the thanksgiving service of his parents. If I could be a chip off the old block, now would be a good time, I’ve thought to myself on any number of occasions during the past week. 

But Dad wouldn’t quite know what to do with himself with hugs, and ‘love you’s’ left right and centre. He’d sidle up to you and give you an awkward sideways squeeze. This wasn’t Dad’s way of showing you he cared. They say there are five different kinds of love languages: giving gifts (well he mostly had very little money so that wouldn’t work), as I’ve just said physical touch and words of affirmation were always not his forte (though he was known to write a sweet poem every now and then) and quality time could sometimes be a hard to find for someone who worked by his own admission between 70-90 hours a week for more than 20 years. But the last love language, well the last one he excelled at. For the last of the five love languages is acts of service and I’ve met few people who served so many, so willingly and so consistently as my old man and perhaps one of the most common things I’ve heard people say about him was that he was a good and faithful servant.

As someone wrote to me said, “I always found him kind, loving, caring & such a generous encouraging spirit” which sounds like my Dad to me. Someone else wrote to me and said, “I mostly got to know him in later years…where I particularly came to experience his steady faithfulness, deep love for the Lord and the church, and his calm friendliness.”

Calm friendliness, a generous encourager – Dad was a good man. He cared about the families in his community and he’d write letters to the local papers about issues which he thought would prove detrimental to the most vulnerable families, which were mostly the ones who lived on his beloved Harlescott Grange. He visited the elderly in their care homes even when he was getting pretty elderly himself. He was a governor at the local primary school, a volunteer at a Kids Club, an enthusiastic supporter of a garage that trained local young people, a consistent presence at Causeway meetings which gave people with physical and learning disabilities, like his son Paul, the opportunity to love and worship God in appropriate ways. He cared about people when few others cared about them and he & mum were willing on more than one occasion to have them come and live in their home. And I’m sure there a thousand other things that he’d never volunteer to tell you and time doesn’t permit me to share. But I think it fair to say that Roy Whittall was a a good sport, a good (but not great student), a good citizen, a good neighbour, sometimes a good Samaritan, and all in all a good human being. He was a good man.

He was also faithful to his wife, Chris in 54 years of marriage. He was faithful to his family, to his friends, to his churches, to his communities. You could, in an age of unreliability, I think it is fair to say count on my Dad. He was, good, he was faithful and perhaps most of all as I’ve already suggested he was a servant. 

I can’t remember a time where he wasn’t cutting someone’s grass, keeping their garden, giving them lifts, visiting them in homes, care homes & hospitals. He was a loyal member of a kids club team visiting families and talking with children, young people, being willing to be covered in gunge all so kids could have some free Saturday fun and hopefully they would hear something of what mattered most to him of all: the gospel of Jesus Christ. He served and he served and he served. And so we’d put a film on and Dad would fall asleep Shropshire Star on his lap, because he’d been out serving. Falling asleep in the evenings was something my Dad did for as long as I can remember and this is something I only appreciate now, is because he worked jolly hard without much reward and without a grumble (at least none that I ever heard). There’s a verse in the New Testament that says, ‘Do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Phil 2:3-4)

Dad exemplified that. Lived that out as well as anyone. Admittedly sometimes to his families frustration Dad was out serving others but I guess if you’re going to have a fault, there are far worse ones than saying he served others too much.

Dad served his family, served his local community, served his church and not just because that was how he was brought up, not just because perhaps that’s who he was but most of all because he lived to serve Jesus Christ. If you had asked Dad what motivated him underneath all this service, I’m 100% confident that is what he would have said.

Now I don’t know what you think happens when someone dies. Maybe you think this life is all there is and at the end of it all there is nothing. One day you’re here and then one day, like Roy, you’re not. One day the lights are switched off and that’s that. Or maybe you think there’s a heaven and, if you’re particularly old school, maybe you think there’s an opposite place, a hell. 

But one of Dad’s wishes for this moment, when he was gone, was that everyone here present would take a moment to think about the question, ‘Do you know where you’re going & if you want to go to heaven do you know how you can get there?’

Having read, recently, many of the messages Dad gave at other people’s funerals and thanksgiving services I know that is the question he would want asked because in every one of those, he asked it.

My Dad thought there was a life after this one and he believed that he knew the way to get the good of it. And both of his answers came down to the same thing or should I say the same person. Dad, believed, as I do, that on the third day after he had been crucified on a cross by Roman soldiers, Jesus of Nazareth did something unusual and remarkable. He rose from the dead. We all know, that most people who die stay dead. 3 days after he died my Dad did not get up again. No one in his circle of friends and family said they had breakfast with him (a couple of shredded wheat in case you’re interested), no one said they’d seen him on the road or had a chat with him, no one has said he’s shown them all the marks from his operation. Nope, three days later my Dad was and is very much dead.

But the same cannot be said about Jesus. At the very least, we must reckon with the fact that this now global faith started, survived, persisted and grew on the stubborn claim, and stubborn to the point of dying for it, that Jesus rose from the dead, was alive today and you could know him still. If you asked my Dad how he was sure that there was a life after this one, he would say it was because of the resurrection of Jesus.

But how could he, or you, also have that same everlasting life? How could he, or you, or me, also go to the place where Jesus is – to share in the joy of the master.

And this is where it would be easy to misread that story of Jesus’ the one I mentioned at the start about the servants. You could easily think they were earning their way in by their good stewardship and their good behaviour. But if you asked Dad, if he thought that his being good, his being faithful, his being a servant meant he had earned a place to ‘enter into the joy of his master’ he would have been the first to deny it. In fact he did deny it. He wrote and I quote, “I learned that no matter how good I was, it was not good enough to secure my salvation or a place in heaven (and I thought I was good!)”

He was sure his shortcomings were sufficient to condemn him and that sure his merits were insufficient to save him in fact he was amazed he ever thought that, he said, “How did I ever believe that ‘being good’ I could go to heaven?’

You see before the servants could do anything for the master they had to first accept him and receive from him as their master. Or as the Bible says, ‘We love because He first loved us.’

You see no matter how good, how faithful and how much of a servant my Dad was and I think he was a wonderful example in all of those things he was not perfect, in any of them. No one knew that better than Roy Whittall himself. And that’s why he trusted in the one who was perfectly good, the one who was without sin, the one who could have cast the first stone. That’s why he trusted in the one who was perfectly faithful who was ‘obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’ It’s why he trusted the Perfect Servant, who was ‘pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities’.

Dad, from about the age of about 16, believed that Jesus Christ took his sins and died with him on the cross getting the judgment that his and ours sins deserve. As a result he made a way for our sins (those things we’ve done that we wish we never had that hurt the ones we love – every prideful, angry, impatient, unfair, selfish thought, word or deed – could be forgiven, in order to make a way and a place for him, Roy Whittall. And on the day that he believed that was the day he became a servant of Jesus. He wrote, “I long to be a more worthy servant of God – but praise Him for accepting and saving me.”

In religion – obedience is the ROOT of salvation; in Christianity – obedience is the FRUIT of salvation. And so it was with Roy Whittall. There was a song loved to sing, many of you probably remember it, the chorus goes

Trust and obey, For there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey

But it’s no good having one without the other. What good is trust if you just live as you always lived, what good is obedience if you don’t trust, if you don’t love the one you’re obeying. No, trust and obey – for there’s no other way.

The alternative is darkness, weeping, gnashing of teeth – this picture of sorrow & endless frustration, disappointment and regret without the hope of light to see by. But to those who trust and obey there’s joy in the presence of the one you trust and the one you serve – there’s the opportunity to enter into the joy of the master.

So let me ask you one more time the question Dad wanted asked, ‘Do you know where you’re going & if you want to go to heaven, do you know how you can get there?’ Dad would have answered, trust in Jesus Christ. That was the answer of his life and nothing would have delighted or thrilled him more than to know that even on this day, especially on this day, someone turned their thoughts not to him but to Jesus Christ.

I believe on the day he died, his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who he had given his whole life to serve said to my Dad, ‘Well done good and faithful servant, you have been faithful with little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ I hope one day, for that day will surely come for us all as it came for Roy, that someone will be able to stand and say the same for you.