St. Charles’ Episcopal Church - Saint. Charles, IL

Requiem Eucharist for William Leroy Johnson

Saturday October 29, 2011 

Wisdom 3:1-5,9; Psalm 121, 23; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26,35-38,42-44,53-58; John 14:1-6

Rev. William R. Nesbit, Jr.

I was a scout when I was a boy, and scouting was an important part of my life. My old troop, 181, met at Central Road school in Rolling Meadows. A quick trip to the internet told me that my troop is no more, along with the Namekogan Scout Reservation, the summer camp I regularly attended. They may be gone, but the impact they had on my life continues. When I came to St. Charles over 11 years ago, one of the things I liked about this place was that it had a scout troop. Little did I know the caliber of the troop, but I learned quickly. And even quicker, I learned the caliber of it’s first scoutmaster. To watch Bill Johnson working with young scouts is to watch a master at work. Bill held them to a high standard of excellence at the same time he would encourage them to learn through their failures. Everyone in the troop hated to fall short of Mr. Johnson’s expectations. I doubt that will change even after his death. (Tuck in your shirt)

Around the church, Bill was a steadfast member of many volunteer ministry groups, including Lay Eucharistic Ministers, Ushers, and Lay Readers to name a few. His faith was important to him, and like a good Episcopalian, he had a fondness for well ordered liturgy, and hated anything that might distract one during worship. Like his scouts, many in the church use him as a yardstick for how well they did on a given Sunday morning. More than once I have heard in the sacristy after a service, “Bill would have been proud of me this morning,” after a particularly difficult prayer, or passage of scripture was read flawlessly. It never bothered me that I wasn’t the Bill they were talking about.

Bill also brought his faith to the troop, connecting the troop to the church in different ways. He offered morning prayer to the scouts on camp outs, as a way to remind them that the twelfth point of the scout law was just as important as the other eleven. He developed a tradition of the troop helping the parish at various clean-up days as a way to show the people of the church that a scout is loyal, and helpful. In this cross pollination he made Troop 25 a better scout troop, and St. Charles Episcopal Church a better church. And now death has taken him from us, and we will have to carry on in his place. The world may be a little darker with the loss of his light, but it is far brighter because of the light he shared with us so abundantly.

And so we gather here not to bemoan death, but to celebrate life, Bill’s life, and our own lives. We do not do this in an attempt to deny death or the feelings we have. Death is a fact of life and the grief we feel is a natural outgrowth of our loss. We gather here to make the cycle complete. Our readings today were chosen by Bill as an echo of his ministry to us. The section from Wisdom reminds us that there is more to life than mere existence, and more to death than the end of that existence. Our hope is full of immortality, and our faith allows us to abide in the love of the Lord, even in the midst of death. In the reading from the first letter from Paul to the Corinthians I was struck by the line, “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” I think steadfast and immovable are a fair characterization of Bill, but even more, he excelled in the work of the Lord. He lived his faith in front of others, passing it on to family and friends. He was regular in attendance, generous in giving, and faithful in ministry. In the Gospel reading from John, Jesus shares with his disciples his vision of the separation to come, and the hope of the resurrection to come. He wanted to give them the peace that he had found, the peace that passes all understanding, the peace that comes from living your life deeply in the precepts of the kingdom of God.

As Christians, we know that death will eventually separate us from our loved ones in this world and that it will be painful and that there is nothing that we can do about it but bear the pain. Yet that does not stop us from loving, and loving deeply. For we also know that nothing can separate us from the love of God, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.” Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In these times darkened by grief, we remember that we walk by faith, and not by sight. And our faith reminds us that this is an occasion for joy in the midst of our sorrow. God knows to the depth of his soul the pain we are feeling now. It is a pain God experienced through Jesus at the death of his friend Lazarus. And out of this pain, God offers us joy. The joy that comes from knowing that death is not the end of the story. The joy that waits for its full expression in the great day of the resurrection. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

That is why we are here today. We come to remember Bill before God, but we also come for ourselves. To thank God for the wonderful gift that Bill was to each one of us, and to be made new again, through Christ, by the gifts of grief and joy as we remember his life and mourn his death.

Amen.