“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . For 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.”
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Romans 8: 35, 38-39
During the first few years of my ministry I was the assistant at a church with a very gifted Sunday school teacher. She’d been teaching the smallest children, the nursery school kids, for fourteen years, and everyone loved her. She was an exceptionally dignified person and was always dressed in an understated and elegant way. During the peace she’d come in with all the little children holding her hand gripping whatever art project they’d done in Sunday School, and this little procession always drew smiles. She could find amusement in her own mistakes, telling me once that a child had asked her to draw a bird and she said she couldn’t draw a bird, but did so when the child insisted. She handed the drawing over and the little girl took one look at it and said, “But Fay, birds don’t have three legs!”
Sometimes she wouldn’t be able to teach for a week or so, recovering from the treatment for cancer that she’d been facing for many years, until one month it became apparent that she wouldn’t be back. I was faced with the unenviable task of calling the parents of the Sunday School children to tell them that she had died. I’ll never forget hearing the screams of a five-year-old in the background at one of those moments.
At the time it was hard to think of anything more difficult. Everyone was devastated. But it wasn’t insurmountable. I gathered the parents to discuss how we would all handle it. I’d sadly had experience with this in my own life when my husband had died leaving me with small children. It was a moment when the pain of that experience helped me address the pain of this one. I told the parents that it’s okay to cry in front of your kids. It’s okay not to have all the answers. But above all the most okay thing is to assume that your children will be okay if you let them in to the whole process. The death of a Sunday School teacher is a rare occurrence, but death itself is not. All of us will encounter it throughout our own lives. The sooner we understand that it’s part of life the better.
So, I encouraged all the parents to bring the kids to the viewing that we had in the church the night before the funeral, when the open casket would lie next to the Paschal candle. Almost all of them did. For many African-Americans this is a common ritual but for most Episcopalians it’s quite alien. However, Fay was so beloved that everyone got over whatever reservations they had and came to the viewing. One small child left her family to go sit with Fay’s teenage daughter, somehow knowing that having a small warm body cuddling up to you in a moment of grief is infinitely comforting.
At the end of a couple of hours when most people had gone into the parish hall for a reception there were a few kids left, and I stood with them around Fay’s body in the casket. They were not afraid in the least – a few wanted to gently touch her hair or her arm, and they had a lot of questions. It was quiet. While I was doing my best to answer them the organist sat down at the piano and started playing some really lovely music. The children looked at Fay and we talked quietly while the piano provided a lovely context. It was one of the most holy moments I’ve been privileged to experience. And the next day the kids came to the funeral and to the burial as well because Fay’s husband believed that children shouldn’t be left out of these sacred and important rituals, and they grabbed fistfuls of dirt and threw them on the coffin along with everybody else.
A pandemic in the United States never seemed possible; it was as unthinkable as the death of a Sunday School teacher but it has happened. We “shelter in place” and try to do our best day to day. Sometimes we do well and other times we don’t do well at all, feeling as if we’ve reached the end of our patience. We’re frightened for ourselves and for those we love. We’re afraid of death. And yet more is called for. It’s awful. But it’s not insurmountable. We can’t gather and hug each other as all Fay’s mourners did, but we can rely on the same spirit of God that got the children and the entire congregation through that crisis to get us through this one. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay not to have all the answers and to feel all the unwelcome feelings that might arise within us. It’s okay to acknowledge that every now and then we’ll feel despair, an emotion that surely the disciples felt keenly as they walked the road towards Emmaus, never dreaming that they would meet the risen Christ along the way. Though we may not feel or discern his presence in such a dramatic manner as the disciples did then, the Christ who walked with them walks with us now. It is Eastertide, the season of the risen Christ, and nothing can separate us from him.
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . For 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.” .......
Romans 8: 35, 38-39
Easter blessings,
Anne+
