Homily at Lillian Campbell Memorial Service

May 24, 2006

St. Mark’s, Glen Ellyn, IL

Isaiah 25: 6-9

Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39

John 14: 1-6

I need to make something clear about what we are doing today – this is first and foremost not a funeral! A funeral is heavy, dark and somber. A funeral is a ceremony of burying a dead person. Lillian was adamant that she didn’t want a funeral service – and her wishes are being honored – because we are not burying a dead person. This is a service of thanksgiving for the life of Lillian. This is an Easter service – a celebration of life and resurrection. We are here today to thank God for and to celebrate the life of a living person – a person who was so alive, so attractive, and so wonderful that it was obvious to all that this saying is true: to know Lil was to love Lil.

I met Lillian in the last hours of her life. I count this as one of the ways that God has blessed my life. When I first saw her, I was struck by her pint size that, without a word spoken, conveyed fortitude, independence and graciousness. I moved closer to her, said hello and introduced myself. She smiled – I believe happy to see a person in a collar, and one from her own St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. We spoke briefly, and then she watched intently as I opened my communion kit, spread a white linen on the wood veneer of her side table and placed the gifts of bread and wine by her side. I read out loud the 23^rd Psalm, and we said together the Lord’s Prayer. She consumed a tiny piece of a wafer and a teaspoon of wine – the gifts of God for this person of God. After a brief prayer, we shared a minute or two of silence, broken by her soft words, “I feel better now.” We talked some more - about Wisconsin and the farm she grew up on. She told me about how her husband, Robert, had died many years ago – and that she had stayed in Glen Ellyn in her beloved home at 210 Sunset. She mentioned teaching P.E. and various travels – and then something humorous, at which we both laughed deeply. It was then time for me to go, because there were other friends to see her, who wanted to share a precious moment of laughter and love with her too. To know Lil is to love Lil. I know that because I knew Lil – and knew her love immediately.

Lillian did not want a funeral because she knew her Scripture and her Lord. “This is the Lord,” proclaims the prophet Isaiah – who prepares a feast of rich fare and wine, wipes away tears and swallows with a large gulp the encompassing veil that clouds and confuses the nations. This is a God of life and restoration, of hope and transformation. This is the God that Lillian claimed as her own, and the God that claimed Lillian as His own. This is not a God who buries, but a God who raises up, prepares and participates in the feast of feasts with His whole being. Her God, our God – is a God of life, who wraps us not in a shroud of death but in the mystery of eternal life made known to us in the love of Jesus.

Lillian knew she was more than a conqueror of death – as St. Paul so persuasively argues in his letter to the Romans. Although a conqueror she was - surviving and striving through disappointment – not having children of her own – and hardship – losing her husband at a young age – she was more than a conqueror in her life as seen in her many friendships, hobbies, accomplishments and associations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Glen Ellyn Women’s Club, and a Friend of the Glen Ellyn Public Library. She had more than conquest – in fact the ultimate victory of surrender to love - because the love of Christ literally infused her – a love that could withstand her own limitations and the brokenness of the world around her, and in spite of these, only grow stronger.

Mary Royer, Lillian’s common law adopted daughter, has told me that the homestead at 210 Sunset is being demolished today. Those gutters that Lillian kept clean for so many years are coming down. The garden that Lillian planted, weeded and admired is being plowed under. On the one hand it is ironic and sad that this is happening on the day that we celebrate Lillian’s life. On the other, it is a profound reminder to us of the foundation of our faith - the way, the truth and the life. Jesus tells us that in his Father’s house there are many mansions, adorned with gutters waiting to be cleaned and gardens ready for tending, bursting with plants and flowers both familiar and fantastic. The disciple asks, “How can we know the way?” Lillian showed us the way, for some of us in half an hour, and for others, over an entire lifetime. Although we expect it to be discovered through a secret passage way or after a long journey to a far away place, the “way” is nothing more than a life grounded in love - a love that Jesus shows us and that Lillian has blessed us with in her life - a life that we can never and will never bury in a funeral – but one that we celebrate and for which we stand in thanksgiving to God.

Amen.