Friday,February 28, 2003

By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

One of the earliest memories I have is sitting in my mother's lap as she read Bible stories to me. From her, I learned of man's fall in the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood of Noah's day, and of David's victory over Goliath. Because of her, there was never a day in my life that I didn't believe in God.

I can't recall when we began walking, as a family, to Golda Memorial Methodist Church, which was high on the hill behind our house, but I must have been young. For some reason, we stopped attending when I was eleven years old.

When I was fifteen, I was invited to attend the youth group at another church a couple of miles from our house and my church life started over. After a few months, Mom and Dad began attending as well. The church, which, at the time, met in a small, white, wooden country-style building, was over a hundred years old. Under a new, dynamic pastor the congregation grew rapidly and plans were made to build a new, modern facility.

I loved the church, the youth group, and the pastor. But abruptly, some months before the new building was finished, my parents stopped attending. I was permitted to attend, however, and continued in my relationship with that congregation until I left for the Marine Corps at age nineteen.

I never knew the reason my parents quit going to church until years later. It seems that, one evening, a layman, who was a leader in the church, visited my dad at home and expressed a need. "Bill," the man reportedly said to my father, "we need your help in building the church." The man knew that Dad worked as an electrician inside the Tennessee Eastman Corporation, and said, "We want you to wire the new church. It will save us a lot of money." Dad then explained that he would be willing to help but that he couldn't do all the electrical work since he was an industrial electrician and wasn't licensed in the city as a commercial electrician.

The story goes that the lay leader, a big "muck-luck" (a Tennessee term for someone high up in the pecking order) at the Eastman, threatened Dad with the loss of his job if he didn't cooperate. Dad, never a man to be intimated, bodily threw the man into the front yard. He kept his job but, with the exception of weddings, funerals, and my ordination, from that day in the mid-1960's, neither he nor Mom never set foot inside a church again.

Dad's faith turned inward. He retained his belief in God but lost his faith in people, especially church people. When I began to study for the ministry, he tried to discourage me, warning that the people in the church would only bring me heartache and pain. Even when I served as a pastor of a church less than five miles from their home, Mom and Dad never came to hear me preach, although they would, years later, profess to enjoy listening to my sermon tapes.

For Mom, a spiritual coldness began to set in. After several tragedies, including the death of her mother, the Bakker/Swaggart scandals, and the lingering death of my father, Mom quietly declared herself to be an atheist. I never believed it, but she wouldn't discuss it with anybody.

Before Dad died in 1996, he said to me, "Son, I've made peace with God and am ready to go, but I'm worried that I will never see your mother again. Promise me that you will help her return to God." I promised and, a few weeks later, he died. Mom's spiritual coldness grew even worse and no one was allowed to talk about God to her.

She became bitter, angry, and unapproachable. She asked that I quit sending sermon tapes. Even though many people were praying for her, I knew that I would not be able to fulfill my promise.

About a year or so ago, my oldest son, a police officer, was visiting my mother. As they were sitting together on the sofa and looking through old photographs and laughing, Jason suddenly began to cry, which is not a thing he does easily. Shocked, Mom said, "Honey, what's wrong?"

Between sobs, Jason said, "I'm afraid that if you die Mamaw, I'll never see you again. I love you so much and I want to be able to see both you and Papaw again."

Mom's spiritually cold heart began to melt and she started to cry. They held on to each other and, a little later, Jason led her through the Scriptures and my mother repented of her sins and confessed Christ as her savior. She began to read the Bible again and, although she was too ill to leave the house and go to church, she asked to receive my sermon tapes.

On Tuesday night a week ago, about 10:30 p.m., I performed "last rites" for her. On Thursday morning, at 6:30 a.m. at Indian Path Hospital, serving as my mother's priest, I administered the Sacrament of Holy Baptism and brought Thelma Kathleen Luster Epps into covenant with the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church." On Monday at 4:40 a.m., with my brother, Wayne (who promised her that she wouldn't be alone when she died), and my youngest son, James, by her side, she passed quietly to rejoin her husband and all those who "die in the Lord."

Last night, I preached her funeral and, this morning, on a cold Friday on the last day of February 2003, I will lay her beside my father in the frozen, snow-covered ground on a hillside in East Tennessee and pray the final prayers. My middle son, John, will take sand and mark her casket with the sign of the cross as she "returns to the dust." Even now, as I shed tears of joy and not sorrow, I marvel at the faithfulness, grace, and mercy of a God, who said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you, even until the end ..."

My mother abandoned God and fled the Church, but he never abandoned her. And, in the end, he sent the only person that she could have listened to, her first grandchild, to take her by the hand, and bring her back home. Thanks be to God!

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church which meets Sundays at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. in new facilities on Ga. Highway 34 between Newnan and Peachtree City. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com.]

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