One memorable day the builders laying the foundations of the Church's new building downed tools and left the site. They had found human remains.
A very detailed plan of the graveyard the Church had between 1845 and 1854 (after which it was closed) exists. However it has no reference point, just lines of named graves. If you could find Mrs Jones you could possibly find Mr Smith a few feet along but there was no way of fining either of them. Tales were told of a line of headstones that once formed a kind of fence down the side of the property next to the car park. The assumption was that they had been moved in some previous building enterprise. They exist no longer. Plainly Baptists are a lot less careful about the dead than the Church of England who seem to have graveyards of antiquity well-kept around many of their churches.
The coroner however did not question my predecessors' carelessness in respect of their predecessors remains. Instead he declared me entirely trustworthy - 'as priest' - to judge the remains as old and to 'reinter them with suitable dignity'. I suppose this conjured up the idea of the churchyard sexton doing the honours with a robed vicar overseeing with prayers.
Baptist Colleges, though useful in many ways, help little with the really scary things of church life like baptising people without drowning them, dedicating infants without dropping them or marrying people without embarrassing them. Failure in such common practicalities indicates the total unpreparedness most Baptist ministers would feel at standing on a building site with a builder in a suit holding a black bag full of unearthed bones of former members and the Church Administrator standing nearby watchfully. I duly felt unprepared. The coroner's trust weighed heavily on me as the builder turned the sack over and a pile of old bones fell at my feet. This action did not lend itself to great dignity, any dignity really, though I was wearing a jacket and tie as a start.
The plot of land where Mrs Jones and Mr Smith and the others would end up would be hidden under the path and entry way of the new building. The temptation (had I been alone) to leave the pile intact would have been strong. A sort of old Baptist ballast. My onlookers and the distant brooding instruction of the coroner ('due dignity') led me to attempt a certain dignified reconstruction.
Suppressing the part of me that wanted to burst out in despairing laughter, I began the task of placing the parts of Mrs Jones and Mr Smith in reasonable order - two leg bones, two legs, two hips, the middle bit (if the reader is unfamiliar please rewatch the earlier YouTube). I laid these ancient Baptist remains with admirable dignity given my internal sense of the bizarre. But like any old jigsaw from before 1854 there were pieces missing - most alarmingly a shortage of skulls which created special problems as it was not a lack that could be hidden from the beady-eyed builder in a suit. There were too many legs as well though that was easier to deal with by some clever positioning as I learned my new trade.
Quite what parts of Mrs Jones and Mr Smith ended up in what order I shall never know and I trust the Good Lord to sort matters out on the Great Day. I reflected that it was the one experience of Christian Ministry when I had the most authority over Church Members and even then I couldn't get them into order . . .
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