The Sherry After the Funeral

They put the trays out at about three, once the sandwiches have gone round twice, and there are two of them, and one has the small glasses on it, and everybody knows they are coming because it is what has always happened in that hall.

Peggy has been to a great many of these. She is seventy one. This one is for Cynthia, who sang next to her for nineteen years and whose alto was the reason Peggy could ever find her own part.

The church hall has the same trestle tables it has had since the seventies, and the urn that takes twenty minutes, and a serving hatch, and about ninety people in coats who have not taken them off because church halls are always cold.

She is tired in a way that is not about sleep. She has been up since half five. She read at the service. She has said the same four sentences to eleven different people and meant them all, and she will say them another thirty times before four o'clock.

And at three, the trays come out.

It is not a large thing. Nobody would call it a large thing. It is a small glass of sherry in a church hall in the middle of the afternoon and half the room will not touch it. But Peggy has less left today than she has on almost any other day of her year, and the two things are going to be in the same room at the same time, and she has known that since she woke up.

Quarter to three. The urn has just come to the boil.

You know that afternoon. It might be a funeral tea, a hospital corridor, a family sitting room after bad news. The room is hard and the day has already emptied you, and the two things have arrived together, which is how they always seem to arrive.

You are covered by a shadow that belongs to the Almighty, and you were never being asked to cast one of your own today. The psalm says he that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty, and a shadow is thrown by the one standing in the light, not by the one sheltering in it; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that real in a cold hall at a quarter to three.

Under the shadow of the Almighty

Let me say the true thing first, the way I would say it to you across a table.

It is not the sherry. You have walked past a hundred trays. It is that this is the day of the year you have the least in you, and it happens to also be the day with a tray in it, and that combination is the one nobody plans for. A person can be ready for a hard room on a strong day. Nobody is ready for a hard room on the day they buried a friend.

So here is the psalm, and I want you to notice how much of it is about location.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.Psalm 91:1

Dwell. Secret place. Abide. Under the shadow. Every one of those is a word about where you are, not about how you are doing. There is nothing in that verse about strength, effort, alertness or performance. It describes a person sitting somewhere, and it describes what is over them while they sit.

You are somewhere rather than something today, and you were never being measured on how much you had left. That is what stands written in Psalm 91, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a location out of a verse for a woman who has been up since half five.

And now the shadow, which is the whole of it. A shadow is made by somebody standing between you and the sun. You do not make it. You could not make it if you tried, and on a day like today you certainly have not got the arms for it. All a person in a shadow is doing is staying where the shade falls, and the size and the strength of it belongs entirely to whoever is casting it.

You are under a shadow the Almighty casts, and you were never the one keeping it over your own head. Scripture calls it the shadow of the Almighty, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that shade land on a trestle table in a hall with an urn that takes twenty minutes.

And the secret place. That word means a hiding place, a covert, the sort of spot a small animal knows about in a hedge. It is not grand. It is close, and it is quiet, and it is out of sight, and it is available in the middle of ninety people in coats without anybody knowing you have gone into it.

You have a hiding place you can be in while standing behind a tea urn, and you were never going to need to leave the room to get to it. The written word calls it the secret place, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman be in two places at once on the hardest afternoon of her year.

And the plain things I will say to you the way I would want them said to me. You do not owe one soul in that hall an explanation, and at seventy one you have long since earned the right to say no thank you and nothing else. Sit down when you need to. Go and stand in the porch for five minutes if you need to. And if the friend, the doctor, the counselor, the group in the hall on a Thursday is what carries you through today and tomorrow, use it, because that is God's kindness with a face on it, and there is no age at which reaching for it becomes a weakness.