Sermon preached at Bill Faellaci’s funeral on March 22, 2013 at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Raleigh NC. 

As I thought about the last few weeks that I had the privilege to spend with Bill and his life as a whole I thought of the story of Moses and the burning bush.  According to the book of Exodus, Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro.  He led the flock beyond the wilderness to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God.  The text says that an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the fire.  When he turned to look at this bush that was blazing but not consumed, the voice of God said from the bush, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5 NRSV).  There is an important distinction here.  An angel or messenger, what the word angel means, appears in the flame but it is God who speaks from the flame.  I think this was true of Bill Faellaci.  He was an angel, a messenger of the Lord whose loving, quiet spirit incarnated the voice of God.

Bill was a generous man.  When Bill and Pat would visit Pat’s daughter Kathryn and her son Ian, Bill would always give Kathryn money to cover the cost of the food.  One time he forgot.  Remembering as they were leaving, he stopped the car in the street and walked over to Kathryn who was pulling out of the driveway to take Ian to school.  When she opened the window, he simply handed her the money, turned and went back to his car.  Ian asked why Grandpa had done this.  Kathryn replied, “Because he’s a generous and loving man.”  Ian answered, “Perhaps he wants you to buy me toys.”

Bill’s generosity was seen in his calling in life – teaching.  He taught in the class room and on Navy ships for more than 40 years.  He told his students that if they ever had a question about their homework first to ask their parents, then their classmates, and, if they still couldn’t solve it, to call him.  One of Bill’s few regrets was that he didn’t go when some of his former students who were at a bar home from college called after midnight saying they had a math problem.  Bill tutored many students outside of the classroom.

Julie Brown wrote about her daughter Hollis’s experience with Bill’s tutoring.  “Hollis was very shy with Bill at first.” She wrote, “She started out meeting once a week, then twice.  Eventually when she started driving herself, she started calling him and setting up appointments on her own, in between his tennis games.  Many times when I would take her over there, I would wait on her in their living room while they worked at the kitchen table.  They would argue over problems, bickering like two school kids over who was right or which way to approach a problem.  They were very funny together.  If you heard them, you would never know that there was seventy something year age difference between them.  Pat and I laughed so often over the relationship.  They were both very stubborn and tried to get their points across, sometimes it got heated and sometimes with laughter, regardless of how it was done, she learned a lot.  But most importantly she gained confidence that she could think through the problems and come up with the answers on her own.  Bill gave her the confidence that she needed in math and he gave her his friendship.  She never thought of him as an old curmudgeon, but as a friend.”

“I loved Bill Faellaci for always taking the time to help my children.  You see, he never got paid for this service; he would not take any payment.  He did it for the love of math.   Over the years, he has helped hundreds of students; understand what they didn’t think that they could understand.”

Bill liked to say that he was lighting candles.  I think this is all the more impressive because Bill’s father told him he would never amount to anything.  If you define a life by the difference that you make to others, Bill’s life was an incredible success. 

While Bill was a well-educated mathematics teacher, holding a Master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the secret of his success, I believe, was his caring spirit.  Bill loved his students, his family and his friends.  He stayed in touch with many for years.  When Bill could no longer play tennis during the last year of his life, he still got together once a month for breakfast with his tennis buddies, passing around a bottle of brandy under the table while the police sat at the next table.  Bill’s memoir of his life is punctuated with the phrase “Good times.”  He had many good times with his family and friends.  He loved life and lived it to the fullest.  He told his children to work hard and to play hard every day.

Bill had his faults like the rest of us.  He had a temper among other things. But to his credit, he grew over the years.  When he married Pat, they agreed that he didn’t have to learn choral music and she didn’t have to learn to play tennis.  They had a loving, close relationship, a relationship built on respect for one another, a relationship where each kept his or her own identity.  His last words to Pat were “I love you.  Shut up.”

Bill was not a religious man in the second half of his life.  After his divorce from Mildred, Bill stopped attending church.  He had been very active teaching Sunday School and serving on church committees.  He liked sermons that made him think.  Bill didn’t attend any longer because, he wrote in his memoirs, Mildred and her new husband attended their church.  Nonetheless, Bill, I believe, was always a man of faith.  He still participated in his children’s Sunday School and he supported Pat’s participation at St. Michael’s.  He had a good time at choir parties.  Who wouldn’t have a good time at choir parties?  I always felt welcomed by him when I talked to him at a party or visited him in the hospital.

Yesterday I attended a retreat with the other Episcopal clergy from the diocese.  Bishops Sauls, our key note speaker, talked in his meditations about Matthew 25.  He said that in this chapter the righteous persons are not religious and that the unrighteous are religious.   The righteous are the ones who fed the hungry and clothed the naked and visited the prisoners.

Bill was a righteous man.  He taught people who lacked self-confidence to believe in themselves, to appreciate the gifts and abilities God had given to each of them.  Ultimately, I think, Bill challenged his students to hope for a better life and a better world.

At every funeral we light this large candle called the paschal candle.  It symbolizes the hope of the resurrection, because it is also lit during the Easter season to symbolize the resurrection of Christ.  We light it at baptisms, too, symbolic of a person’s dying and being raised to new life in Christ.  Our deacon Meta lights a small candle from this flame, gives it to the newly baptized person or the person’s godparents, and says, “Be the light of Christ for the world.”  This flame encompasses the whole of a person’s life.

In the flame of Bill’s life – his generous, compassionate spirit - we can hear the voice of God.  This flame can never be put out because ultimately this flame burns in and through the love which is the God that we see in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.