PROPERS: BURIAL OF THE DEAD
TEXT: ROMANS 8: 14-19, 34-35, 37-39
PREACHED AT FUNERAL FOR MARILYN HOLLEY AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 2023.
ONE SENTENCE: God’s vision, which we are called to emulate, views the imago Dei in each person.
Last Saturday I was with a group of some 400 Episcopalians from the Dioceses of Alabama and the Central Gulf Coast on a swelteringly hot day in Hayneville, Alabama. We were commemorating the 58th anniversary of the martyrdom of Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniel. The anniversary of his death is on the Episcopal Calendar, and this was the 26th annual observance of that day by these dioceses.
At a base level, I could observe that you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a bishop. Bishop Glenda Curry from Alabama was there, along with our own Bishop Russell Kendrick.
Bishop Kendrick celebrated at the Eucharist in the Courthouse. Bishop Phoebe Roaf of the Diocese of West Tennessee was the preacher. She is every bit the sister of her brother, Willie Roaf, the Hall of Fame offensive lineman from the New Orleans Saints.
She spoke of her experiences growing up African American in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her words were not bitter and resentful. She grew up in a close, loving family. The lessons of those experiences informed her love of and perspective on the Gospel.
Her solid foundation led her to Harvard University, Princeton and then to law school at the University of Arkansas. After practicing law for a few years, she perceived a call to seminary – and she went to Virginia Theological Seminary.
She had not lost her love for the Gospel. After several years of serving congregations in the Diocese of Louisiana, she was elected and consecrated as Bishop of West Tennessee. The transformative love found in the Gospel and life of Jesus Christ comes through in her words and manner in a meaningful way.
Her sermon in Hayneville was in the form of a dialogue with Bishop Glenda Curry. Bishop Curry asked her about her understanding of the Gospel and how it informs relationships between races, classes, and people of different perspectives.
Bishop Roaf did not speak about social justice, economic, or political issues. She spoke, instead, about vision – specifically, how we see each other. The example of Christ is for us to see in one another not a race, or a political perspective, or an economic class. Instead, we are to see the image of Christ in each other. Not race, not politics, not class – just the image of Christ.
It struck me in that moment how profoundly simple that is. It strips away the layers history and displaces human limitations with the eyes of our Lord.
This past week, as I visited with Marilyn’s daughter Sharon, she told me of her mother’s simple view of the many different people she encountered over her 92 years. During her years of teaching, nursing, and relating to many different people, she was always able to see them, not as someone different from her, but as kindred spirits – people with whom she had much in common. Brothers and sisters, all.
She saw students, fellow nurses, attendants, colleagues, people like you and me – all as people created equally… and equally deserving of love and respect.
I think how much more simple my life would be… how freed of burdens I would be… if I had the simple, Christian vision Bishop Roaf described, and Marilyn lived. Maybe you have that wish, too.
The second reading today is probably my favorite passage in all the New Testament. Writing to the church in Rome, Paul expresses the hope he so firmly embraces:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Marilyn, our beloved sister in Christ, managed to live her life recognizing that nothing would obstruct the way she lived her faith. Nothing. And she did so without pretense. Gently. Lovingly.
She was able to realize the aspiration of paraphrased words from a Robert Burn’s brief poem:
“O wad a powerful gift he gie us,
To see others as God would see us.”
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