The biting winds blew loose snow from rooftops into eyes and numb faces, but the sun shone brightly over downtown Bethlehem as hundreds gathered in Central Moravian Church JAN. 20 to bid farewell to the beloved bishop and friend, the Rt. Rev. C. Hopeton Clennon.

From the grand old church, family and colleagues recalled a man whose guiding phrase was, “All will be well.”

“When my Uncle Hopeton – or Uncle H – arrived, his presence was felt. He was loud yet gentle, tall yet kind,” said Judene Edwards. “He whisked my sisters and I to the magical land of Toys ‘R’ Us and told us we could pick anything we wanted. What, anything? I thought my Uncle Hopeton was a millionaire.”

He liked making everyone happy, she said, and though her mother edited the gifts from “anything” to “anything that could fit in a suitcase,” the experience was indicative of his altruism.

“He wasn’t just always giving to us. He was giving to everyone. Anyone who was in need. He was living the principle set by Luke, chapter 6, verse 38: Give and it will be given unto you in good measure. I’m confident there is not one of you that would have turned my Uncle Hopeton away if he came to you in need. That good measure he gave was constantly running over in his life, and with it, he just gave more.”

Daughter Danielle Landis, admittedly no public speaker, said her father’s advice will be sorely missed.

“He is the one I would turn to when I didn’t know what to say. He just had a way of understanding someone’s spirit, that could make what’s in your heart flow out of you.

“As I thought about what it was like for me to know him, I struggled to really find the words that aptly capture things like waking me up extra-early on a snow day to tell me I didn’t have to wake up,” Landis said to laughter.

“My dad had a way of exploding perspective - he seemed to hold so many views about people and life that he could discuss any subject in great detail and [you] walked away understanding the meaning of both. As an easy example, I once asked him his favorite color. I think we landed on green, but not before a 20-minute discussion about the value of each color, and how earth tones were clearly superior, and also he went to Calibar.

Landis said, “Over the years what I took from it was it’s important to acknowledge and really examine the good that each person, thing, or interaction has to offer. My dad’s lessons were really that experience was the lesson. He said if you are the same person at 35 as you were at 25, you wasted 10 years.”

Son Andrew Clennon said he valued his father’s understanding, helping him grow when he was a “dumb kid.” He relayed a story of his youth in the Boy Scouts, when he was disinterested in spending time with his father when he could instead be with his friends. When he later searched for the elder Clennon, he was told his father had already left. Andrew regretted that for many years.

“I held onto that until I saw him in the hospital bed, and I kind of knew I had to tell him. I knew this might be the last time I got to talk to him. I felt so much shame and it’s been eating up at me since I was a kid. The first thing he said to me was, ‘What’s important is that you came looking for me.’”

The Rev. Janel Rice, who worked closely with Clennon, concluded the service with a recent recollection.

“On Dec. 17, the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday dedicated in our tradition to joy, the Right Reverend Clennon preached his last formal sermon. Hopeton walked out into the aisle, inviting all of us to see, holding up a picture of a rainbow and said, ‘What do you do when you see a rainbow?’ And we all knew, we say, ‘look, there’s a rainbow.’ And then he said, ‘why do we do this? Because seeing a rainbow brings a sense of joy. We want to point it out; we want to share it with another.’ He lived a life pointing out what we didn’t see in ourselves. He lived a life pointing to a rainbow of joy, to the gifts within us and at the same time the joy we could have within. His own joyful, dedicated, thoughtful living.

“As the psalmist writes in the conclusion of Psalm 16, ‘You have shown me the path of life. In your presence there is the fullness of joy.’”

The service was livestreamed and is available to watch at on the Central Moravian Church’s YouTube page at youtube.com/watch?v=4ZEh0F0xIU4.