My sister, Jackie Chattopadhyay, left the earth on December 11, 2024, after a 35-year battle with, among other medical challenges, a debilitating autoimmune deficiency that left her confined to a wheelchair and a motorized scooter for the past 20 or so years. A memorial service was held to celebrate her life on January 4, 2025, at the Church that gave her life and purpose, Nativity Lutheran in St. Anthony Village, MN.
I had the privilege to speak at the service. Her son, Rob, asked if I would share a few stories from our childhood. Jackie was one year older than me (actually, 360 days) so we had a lot of experiences together.
So, I shared a couple of stories. I talked about a time when we were three and four, respectively. Our twenty-something parents were occupied running a dairy farm, often leaving us to our own demises and “demise” we did. One day, it was decided (I assume by my sister) that we should bathe in a five-gallon pail filled with used oil from the farm tractors, starting with the dunking of my head in the pail to wash my hair, I presume. It got some laughs, especially from her grandkids.
And I told the story of how we, unplanned, gloriously tag-teamed the humiliation of our bus’s resident bully. As a seventh-grader, the event proved that I apparently didn’t understand that discretion is the better part of valor. The event evidenced my sister’s propensity toward justice. The story was laced with a fair amount of humor that’s nearly impossible to capture in a blog post, so I won’t try (though you can hear it here, starting at 18:00 minutes).
When Rob asked me to share some stories, I told him that I really wanted to talk about my sister as a faithful worker in God’s Kingdom.
As I pondered what I might share at my sister’s memorial service, Jesus’ Parable of the Bags of Gold, recorded by his disciple, Matthew, kept resonating in my mind. It’s one of many parables Jesus told describing the kingdom of God. The parable is a story of a man who was leaving on a journey. While gone, he entrusted his wealth to three servants. He gave the first servant five bags of gold, the second received two bags, and the third a single bag.
The man gave no instructions and went away for a long, undetermined length of time.
Upon his return, the master settled accounts with his servants. The servants given five and two bags of gold apparently invested what was trusted to them, doubling their investment. The third did nothing.
The parable reminds me of a statement I once heard a pastor say, “Two questions will be asked of us at the end of our life: What did you do with my Son, Jesus Christ? And what did you do with the rest of your life?”
We live in a culture that focuses on size – the number of bags of gold we possess, ROI, etc. We live in a culture that tends to lift up, even deify, those with natural and physical abilities. But what of people whose medical challenges strap them physically?
In our culture, such limitations can invalidate one’s role in society. Invalidate and invalid come from the same root. My sister and I talked about this once as we discussed our father’s lot in life, becoming an “invalid” after he suffered a debilitating stroke.
In terms of Jesus’ parable, it might seem that Jackie got a smaller bag of gold, given her medical challenges. That misses the point. What Jackie did with God’s Son, Jesus Christ, we knew – she followed Him. What she did for the rest of her life is inspirational.
Jesus distilled all of Scripture down to two statements: Love God and love neighbor.
Jimmy Carter often told the story of a Cuban immigrant pastor named Eloy Cruz, a man who focused his life and ministry on Puerto Rican immigrants to the United States, people who were among the poorest of the poor. President Carter asked his friend Elroy about the secret of his success as a pastor. Cruz responded in humility, “Señor Jimmy, we only need to have two loves in life—for God and for the person who happens to be standing in front of us at any time.”
My sister had an innate ability to see the person standing in front of her at any time as her neighbor.
When I traveled for my engineering/marketing job years ago, I would run into people in airports who knew my sister (it happened more than once!). It became evident in conversations that these were not mere acquaintances. These were people to whom Jackie had been a neighbor. When my dad was in ICU after his stroke 25 years ago, I remember Jackie always seemed to know someone in the family waiting room. Again, not just acquaintances, but people to whom she had been a neighbor. As I shared at her Memorial Service, it occurred to me that there were people on the other side of the camera at their senior living residence who were likely watching because Jackie had been a neighbor to them.
Back to Jesus’ parable. The third servant did nothing with the single bag of gold, maybe thinking, “What can I do with this small lot given to me?” Jackie, given her medical limitations, could easily have said, “What can I do with the lot given me.” She did not.
Here’s the fascinating part of the parable. The master’s response to the two servants who put their money to work was exactly the same:
The master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”
If I understand the intent of Jesus’ story, I think we can assume that God’s words of welcome to Mary Magdalene, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Mother Theresa, Jimmy Carter, and Jackie Chattopadhyay were all essentially the same:
Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things. Come and share your master’s happiness!
Practical Theology Today 