Passing the Torch

Post Author: Erica Schemper

“Our Cloud of Witnesses” is a venue for exchanging the stories of those who surround us with strength and grace. Some may have gone before us. Some may be journeying right along side us. Some may have spoken to us out of history. Some may be our favorite characters out of a beloved book. Some may be those who are the most unexpected. Tell us who has shed light on your own journey of faith and vocation, and help us to see the many ways we are truly embraced and held up by a great cloud of witnesses. Submissions may be sent to witnesses(dot)ycw(at)gmail(dot)com.

My phone beeped the text message from my husband: “Jennifer Koenig passed away this morning.” I was out of town visiting my family and he knew that, on a morning when I was running around and not paying attention to the internets, this was something I’d like to know, and something I might prefer to hear from him.

I got the message while walking out of the building where my ninety-four-year-old grandpa lives. I’d spent one of those precious mornings chatting with him, the kind of morning where you think about how this could be the last time you see him, or he could live to 100. I was about to get in the car and drive twenty minutes to rendezvous with my mom so we could leave for a three-hour drive to a family wedding. Amidst the mostly good emotional effort of a family wedding, there wasn’t much room for grief, so I decided to blast a Requiem that I could sing along to while I rode down the Eisenhower Expressway. (Yes, I was jamming to Herbert Howells on the Ike.)

Jennifer was the associate pastor for my college (a church college, St. Olaf, where we actually had a church on campus). She arrived there while I was a college student, about the same age as I am now.

To be honest, we weren’t close. I’m not sure it’s fair to count her as a mentor. I attended church during college, but not much else. When I had a little crisis over seminary my senior year, it was the other college pastor who took me out for coffee and talked me down. But Jennifer was one of the first younger women pastors I ever saw on a regular basis.

She had been a dance major in college, and she moved that way. There was nothing clunky about her. She radiated grace from her physical self. It was the first time I realized that a female pastor could be beautiful, and that beautiful could be part of the gospel. I watched her and listened to her every week, and even if she didn’t know it, I was blessed and mentored.

She died earlier this fall, in an obvious affront to the way the world ought to be, after an up and down struggle with brain cancer, not yet fifty years old.

By the time the Requiem was over, I was on Lake Shore Drive, and as I leaned into the Oak Street Beach curve, I caught the briefest glimpse of Fourth Presbyterian Church, where I knew one of my other female mentors. I met Dana before I worked there as a resident pastor. She was one of the women pastors my aunt and uncle, who attend that congregation, wanted me to meet. By the time I worked there, Dana was the executive associate. She was the person who I skittishly told about my “surprise” pregnancy (who knew a couple could get pregnant the month after they went off the pill? I thought it took time) and who celebrated with me (and then offered to let me take naps on her office couch). She taught me the importance of filing prayers for later use, how to be a woman in charge, and to wear fabulous hosiery. When I wavered on my next call after my residency, she reminded me that, “Suburban people need Jesus, too.”

A few years later, Dana died, too. Also, too young. The day of her funeral, I was out of town officiating at a wedding, and the best I could do was to preach at that wedding, wearing some fabulous fishnet stockings.

I’m not one to pick up a phone and call a mentor the minute I’m in a ministry pinch. I have the gift of built-in mentoring from a father and grandfather who are pastors. But there are days when I think of a question I wish I’d asked Dana. There are seasons in ministry where I wish I had her counsel. These women who mentored me, even without realizing it, are gone.

The Requiem I listened to that day was as much for Dana as it was for Jennifer. But the plea to grant peace: that was for me. How could these two be gone so soon? And how is it that I am old enough to have some sort of torch-passing, to find that suddenly they are gone, and women in their 20’s begin to ask me for advice? Am I ready for the torch? Am I really old enough to be wise, or beautiful enough to embody the gospel?

I wish the torch didn’t pass like this. Dana and Jennifer had so many years of ministry that went unfulfilled. And yet, we go on, the church, surrounded by witnesses, part of that great cloud, looking forward to the time when death is no more, and we rest from our labors.

“Be calm. God awaits you at the door.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

Erica Schemper is a Presbyterian pastor and mother, currently concentrating on the mother part, but also working part time as the Director for Children, Youth, and Families at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in San Carlos, CA, where she lives in the with her husband and their two children. Like all women in who live in California, she is older than she looks. She blogs at Don’t Flay the Sheep.