For Nan
Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Squeezed between two teachings about the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ disciples decided to shoo away mothers who were bringing their babies to Jesus with the hope that he would “place his hands on them.”[i]
“Get away! Don’t you know our teacher is much too busy, much too important to be bothered with children?!”
Jesus’ Kingdom has a different view of the world than how many of us view the world. Humility and renouncing oneself are preferred over economic status or political power. Somewhere between being called away from their tax booths, fishing nets, and families and our reading, the disciples had forgotten or missed that Jesus of Nazareth operated in ways contrary to the ways of the empire.
Jesus focuses on the Kingdom of God, fully present through him, inaugurated in his mother’s womb, and yet not fully realized. The disciples prevent children from coming to Jesus while simultaneously proclaiming Jesus as Lord of all creation.
I first met Nan Cooper in the Fall of 2017 as I dropped my son off in Nan’s Sunday School classroom. Like most parents on the first day of school, I was probably more nervous than my son. Our family was new to Mount Olivet. Our son did not know any kids in the church, let alone his new Sunday School teacher.
He stood behind my hip, peering around me to see the person calling him by name.
“Good morning, Camden. Come on in!” Nan called out.
You may not know this by church people tend to act differently around their pastors than they might act around a friend or neighbor. In the back of my mind, I thought, “good job, Nan! Someone must have warned you that we’d be here this morning. Great job rolling out the red carpet for the new pastor's family.”
I hung around the classroom for a few minutes. I thought I might show Nan a thing or two about teaching Sunday School to kids. New pastors tend to be cockier than they should be.
But then Ellie arrived.
“Good morning, Ellie. Come on in!”
Then Grace.
“Good morning, Grace. Come on in!”
Emma.
“Good morning, Emma. Come on in!”
In getting to know Nan over the past five years, I have learned that the special treatment I initially thought my son and I were receiving was just who Nan was to everyone.
Nan devoted her life to making space for children – her own, Larry and Jim; her grandchildren, Danny and PJ; and kids like my son, who she had committed to caring for in a classroom and the community.
What Nan knew and Jesus’ first disciples forgot – and we are often afraid to admit – is that children have the ability to derail what we value most. Redirecting our attention from the priorities of this world to the ways in which we experience the Kingdom of God by laying aside the accolades we cling to in exchange for the declaration that God is God, and we are not. It sounds simple, I know, but the gospel writer shows in our reading how children actually teach adults. Children, you see, according to Jesus, are what grownups are supposed to become.
After all, Nan is a beloved child of God.
You are a beloved child of God.
Before Nan was a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, teacher, neighbor, colleague, or any of the other titles she carried in this life, the title beloved child of God was sealed upon her. She remembered this name in her baptism and celebrated the declaration of beloved every time she gathered around Christ’s table of grace. It is a name she now holds as she gathers with the saints in Christ.
Our grief can seem as though, in death, all is lost. But the Apostle Paul reminds us, “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.”[ii]
Just as death on the cross could not separate Christ from us, so too, in our death, we are separated not from God. For just as in this life when God calls out to us, “Beloved, come on in,” in death, God calls out, “Beloved, come on in.”
I thank God that my child, like so many others, was able to learn about the love of God from Nan – through her words for sure, but especially through the way she lived her life.
And I pray that in our grief, especially Dan, Larry, Rusty, Martha, Nan’s grandchildren, nieces, and friends would know that we too are loved by God, held up, and sustained in our grief by God’s amazing grace.