Tracy Panttaja Funeral Sermon

Several years ago, Tracy wanted to run for vestry at St. John’s. (That’s kinda’ like being on the Board of a non-profit). And if you’re running for vestry, the first thing you do is write up a little bio to share with the church so everyone else could know who you are and why you want to serve.

Tracy was fretting about what she should write, and I got this email from her:

I was mulling over how to approach it and was in the car with mom. She suggested I start with, “I have red hair and I’m pretty.” We both had a good Laugh My Ass Off on that one.

And that, my friends, is probably as good an introduction to Tracy as any other – 1) that she would be so tickled at such a notion and 2) that she’d want to share it with her priest.

Tracy was quirky. Certainly. And she did love to laugh – to laugh with a kind of “milk coming out your nose” laughter.

And, as her friend, Susan, would say: “She was straight forward, with very little filter. I like that in people. You know where they stand. And while there can appear to be a ‘rough edge,’ there’s usually a generous heart within. I was not wrong about Tracy.”

Of the many things Susan and Tracy bonded over, food was a highlight. She was a good cook and a generous cook – always eager to share meals with those in need. She often worked in restaurants and bars (she was a bartender at one point in her early adult years). Most recently, many knew her from the cheese counter at Met Market, where you could always count on her to make a good and knowledgeable recommendation. “Tracy, this is what I’m serving for dinner. What cheese should I pair it with?” And she was never wrong.

And then, all of a sudden, Tracy was gone. She was here and then she wasn’t. Not two days before, I’d received a thank you note from her and then tossed it away, not knowing to appreciate its worth – that it would be my last connection with her before a heart attack claimed her life.

The cascade of blue fabric on the altar was put there for last Sunday’s service when we remembered the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, the moment that launched his three-year ministry before being crucified. Jesus’ ministry was one of healing people from their diseases. It was a ministry of setting people free who were oppressed by evil spirits. And it was a ministry of proclamation: “This is what God is like…” And that God he was revealing was a god of justice and compassion and forgiveness – especially for those this world wants most to overlook. And this God, through Christ, was calling us to join in living such a life.

And as we were getting ready for today’s service, I went to remove the fabric, but an impulse said otherwise. “Leave it there for Tracy.” For she was a follower of this Jesus. Not only in word, or in dutiful church attendance, but in spirit. She, too, was baptized with Christ and into the way of Christ.

Tracy was baptized with her family in 1966 (when she was eleven years old) and confirmed the next year. And, always, at St. John’s (where she’d been a member for nearly thirty years) her heart and spirit were drawn to this Jesus-like compassion for the outsider and the vulnerable and the overlooked.

That’s why she wanted to run for vestry in the first place: to represent the team of people who were wanting to grow St. John’s love for our most vulnerable neighbors. Her last act of service in the church was just a week before she died. St. John’s was hosting a member of the Puyallup Tribe who was here to teach us about the history of the Puyallup people – both the richness of their culture and the atrocities they experienced with western expansion. Tracy hosted a reception afterwards as we gathered to discuss what we’d learned. She was so enthusiastic about what we might do to grow our community’s awareness and compassion for the Puyallup people. And for the last several months of her life, Tracy regularly drove Cindy Saunders to church. Cindy was one of St. John’s longest living members. Her health was fragile. She needed an oxygen tank to breath. Most folks were understandably anxious about driving Cindy – that her fragility put them in uncomfortable position of responsibility while she was in their care. But, whatever concerns Tracy may have had on that front, she did it in anyway. It’s possible (I’m not sure, for certain, but I suspect it may be true), that Tracy’s unexpected death meant Cindy never came to St. John’s again – this church where she’d belonged her entire life. We went to see Cindy after that, to bring St. John’s to her. But Tracy was the last one who brought her to us.

I always sensed that the complexity of human relationships was somewhat perplexing to Tracy. What seemed so self-evident to her didn’t seem to be self-evident to everyone around her – as if she and others were moving through life to different soundtracks: in the same film but each hearing a different tempo and tune.

Her emails were often written without any capital letters – a kind of stylized affectation she attributed to the poet e. c. cummings. “[But] I DO know when to capitalize or not…& other rules,” she once wrote. And then, in the same letter: “clear communication is what is really needed.” It’s such a telling insight into her mind – as if to say, “I DO value relationships and clear communication. I know the rules.” And yet, at the same time, “I DON’T follow the rules – for there are rules beyond the rules that attract and persuade me.

Years ago, Tracy sent me a message: “Thank you for being so patient with this sometimes tempestuous soul… I think I’ll have a marker where I’m sprinkled that says, ‘It’s not fair!’ That seems to be my mantra when viewing people in this word at our worst.”

No, Tracy, it’s not fair. This world is full of unfairness. And cruelty. And abuse of power.

Tracy was often bewildered by this world and the unfairness she perceived in it. But in the face of it all, she believed its opposite to be more true – that kindness and mercy and generosity were the truer realities in which to hope and live towards. She once quoted C. S. Lewis to me:

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[1]

Tracy’s Christianity was not merely a hope for her own salvation when she died; it was the hope for a truer way that she and this world could live in true charity with one another. That is why we read the Beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount earlier in the service – perhaps the most distilled passage in the Bible of Jesus’ teaching and revealing of God and the way of God:

Blessed are the poor…

Blessed are those who mourn…

Blessed are the merciful…

Blessed are the peacemakers…

…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

…for they will inherit the earth

…for they will see God

…for they will be called children of God

It’s not to say she lived it perfectly. She struggled, as we all do, with fears and despair and crankiness. As her friend Jo would say: “She was quick to jump to conclusions (sometimes correctly and sometimes not).” Conspiracy theories were not foreign to her. And “she was kind and principled.” She turned – again and again – to this deeper hope of partnership with God and to God’s way of compassion.

Tracy’s greatest virtue may also have been her greatest vulnerability: She was generous, to a fault. She always wanted to do right with whatever resources she could muster. I can’t tell you how many times she’d reach out to me – concocting some plan to help others, scraping money together she barely had so she could to do some good and generous thing. It might not always have been the most well-conceived campaign, but it was always done with good intent.

In fact, the painting we’ve placed behind the altar today was a gift from Tracy to the church. It is a painting she herself received as a gift years ago from a priest when she was living in San Francisco. In many ways, it’s a painful image. “Madonna of the Cross” it’s called: Mother Mary holding her toddler son in such an unnatural, uncomfortable posture that anticipates his death by crucifixion. And Mary, too – on her girdle and by Christ’s shadow – has signs of the cross blazoned across her.

For Mary, too, in saying “Yes” to God’s call to bear the Christ-child, was making a costly, foolish (you might say) commitment of faith, to be part of God’s plan to love this violent, “unfair” world.

And so, Tracy – like Jesus and Mary before her – sought to find her place and calling in this suffering and beloved world where she belonged, and where she was loved. She was loved by her co-workers at Met Market; by her community at St. John’s; by her neighbors. And certainly, by her family: her brother Dean and his wife, Kelly and their kids, Braydon and Shelby, for whom she was “Crazy Aunt Tracy;” and by her parents, Bill and Mona. To them she always was and remains “Pumpkin” and “Cho-Cho San” (Little Butterfly).

That name, of course, came from the many years – through Bill’s career in the U. S. Army – that their family lived in Japan. In fact, Tracy’s most formative years (aged 3 to 15) were spent there. She spoke Japanese and always had an affinity with Japanese culture and sensibility. Though her family was Christian, it was a kind of “Christianity with a Buddhist slant.” Her earliest spiritual memories were of visiting Shinto and Buddhist shrines, with their enticing smell of burning incense and a stairway leading up to a big Buddha.

And perhaps, you might say, she always was climbing those stairs – seeking the way of truth and enlightenment, wanting to make sense of this world and her place within it.

And now this journey has reached its, so far as we can see from this side of the grave. When the service has ended, we will carry her ashes, along with those of her parents, into the Memorial Garden where they will be interred together. And our prayer for them will be to Rest in Peace and Rise in Glory, when God in Christ shall complete this work of redeeming, when all suffering and division will cease and all will be joined…as one…in peace. Amen.

[1] Lewis, C. S. “Is Theology Poetry?” 1945.