Life, Marriage, Death, Baptism, Life

This past weekend, my wife, Lynn, and I went back to the city we consider our second hometown: New Orleans: The Big Easy, The Crescent City. A city whose motto in French is “Lalissez Le Bon Temps Rouler.” “Let The Good Times Roll. New Orleans is a city that prides itself in living life to the fullest and in every moment. This includes all of life, from birth to death and beyond, from Mardi Gras to Lent to Easter and beyond. 

Our reason for the trip included all the above! Thirty years ago, I met a couple in my first week as pastor/rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church. He was fifty-nine and she was thirty-nine. They met in the parking lot of their apartment building and wanted to be married on St. Andrew’s Day, November 30, because the bride’s maiden name was McKenzie. The bride knew she would likely be a widow for a long time. As it turns out, she died this past December leaving her almost ninety-year-old husband widowed. Friends of Nancy’s from all aspects of her life: broadcasting, Caledonian Society, University Education, and St. George’s Church, planned and organized a Memorial Service and Time of Remembrance for her and asked me to participate. What an honor and a pleasure. We prayed, we read scripture and told stories, ate her favorite Petit Fours, and drank her favorite wine. Truly in life there is death and in death life as seen in the following scripture which was read at her memorial.

 

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:6-9) Rest in Peace my friend.

On the next day, Sunday, as we visited St. George’s where I had been rector for twelve years, we received even more confirmation of God’s presence throughout our earthly lives and beyond. Eliza, nineteen-month-old daughter of a young family was to be baptized and receive the sacrament of new life. Baptism, whether of an adult or child is always a joyful event, a time for all of us to renew our own Baptismal Covenant, and Eliza’s baptism was no different: until it became different, and even better! As we left the church building, we were met by a Jazz Band and led in a “Second Line” around the block on which the church is located.

A word of explanation for those not familiar with the “Second Line” and its importance in the life of New Orleans. The “First Line” is the slow, solemn, and mournful jazz procession to the cemetery. The “Second Line” is the joyful, life affirming procession away from the grave with dancing and waving of handkerchiefs and umbrellas celebrating life and resurrection. In New Orleans the Second Line has come to be a celebration of life on almost every occasion. What better way to celebrate Eliza’s new birth into the death of Christ so that she will be raised with him in his resurrection.