August 15, 2014                                                                                  All Saints, Wolfeboro

To be 19 years old and in Paris! That experience shaped her life and her sense of herself, her style, her flair. To be in Paris, and to be in love with all things French.  That love was almost as significant to Fenton as her love for Peter. Those loves were almost as important to her as her cherished Book of Common Prayer. Fenton loved this wild and passionate Episcopal Church that is crazy in love with a wild and passionate God. From her childhood through the last days of her life, Fenton prayed the prayers and walked with Jesus. Wearing tiny elegant shoes, she walked with Jesus. In her very gracious and hospitable way she invited others along.

I was one of those she invited to the Feast. She showed me how to hold the holy things at this altar. When I asked what to do if the wine spilled she said  "DON'T". Fenton tried very hard to teach me to arrange flowers. She and Peter talked me into serving on the Vestry then commiserated over a wee dram about the headaches and joys such leadership gave us. And one year, sitting in front of the fire at her house surrounded by laughter and Christmas cheer, I was asked the question that had only one answer, the question that sent me out of All Saints, and to Episcopal Divinity School. Only by being invited to the Feast could I find the way to say yes to our wild and passionate God. Fenton was really good at setting the table of grace and encouragement. Fenton was really skilled at turning a little bread and a little wine into a banquet.

Fenton's church, our church, is a community of people who are travelers on the Way with Jesus. We are the church of Christmas Day. We are a community of people who know that our God comes to us as a vulnerable child. Our God makes a humble home in a land occupied by violence and fear.  God calls Her friends by name, and invites them to a Feast in the presence of those who trouble them and says: love them, forgive them, feed them. Our God invites us to share the Feast of Christmas Day with everyone, with the crazy idea that God's wild abundance will provide enough.

For months at a time Fenton Friend celebrated the coming and the abiding of the Christ as she set up the camels and the crowds of fishmongers and tipsy monks and windblown poets who inhabit the little French village of Santons she collected over the years. This village is now yours. When you see it remember her. When you see it remember that God's love abides. When you set it up again and again, remember that God comes to us as a vulnerable child, again and again. Love those children, the ones abandoned at the borders, the ones stranded on the mountaintops with no water, the ones in your own homes - the little princes and the little mermaids - who are just learning the way, the truth and the life.

Teach them the Way, show them your redeemed life, your version of what it means to be a Saint of God. Tell them the stories of Jesus, who was and is and is to come. Fenton now enjoys the ongoing the Banquet hosted by the Love that is at the heart of the universe.  She has left you a good example of a life of prayer, and gracious hospitality.  You know the Way.  Keep walking.  

AMEN