Elegant. Exquisite. Refined. Rare. – A sermon for Virginia Maxwell’s funeral
The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue preached this sermon at Christ Church in Savannah, Georgia on December 16, 2022.
Elegant. Exquisite. Refined. Rare.
A sermon for Virginia Maxwell’s Funeral
Wisdom 3:1-5,9; Psalm 139:1-11; Romans 8:14-39; and John 10:11-16
Elegant. Exquisite. Refined. Rare.
If you did not know Virginia Maxwell and you heard those of us who knew her and love her talking, it would be easy to see the surface of the words and miss the fullness of their meaning. Of course, no one could describe Virginia without saying elegant or gracious. If someone tried, we would know they had never met her. After all, George, her husband of 62 years loved to say, “Ginny has more grace in her little finger than I have in my whole body.” And we knew he didn’t have that much grace either.
Yet this fails to capture the liveliness of a woman of great depth. With a playful spirit and a great sense of humor, you just never knew what she was going to say. Of George’s call to ministry coming after he had settled well into the family’s furniture business, she said, “We were convinced it was a call from God, because we would have never thought of it.”
She and George were a dynamic duo. The Reverend Cynthia Taylor recalled the lasting impact the Maxwells made on her parents and her family when they arrived at Holy Comforter in Sumter, South Carolina, in the mid-1960s. The low church parish did not know what to do with a Father Maxwell, much less a priest who would show up for a New Year’s Eve Party in a black clergy suit acting as if he did not have a party hat perched on his head. Beside him, Ginny dazzled in the perfect cocktail dress for the occasion. During that time, the Maxwells made a principled, Gospel-based stand, for integration as they took the implications of their faith seriously. Reflecting on the difference they made in her parent’s lives, Cynthia said of the Maxwells, that they paid attention to their lives and the lives of others. They gave you permission to look at your life, which tended to lead to people changing for the better.
Ordination gives one an entrée into someone’s life in important moments. I sat with Virginia after Father Maxwell’s fall, and we talked a long while as it seemed he was leaving the hospital for his heavenly home rather than returning to their house on Calhoun Square. Being with her then revealed to me what y’all know so well, Virginia had a living faith in a risen Lord.
Our reading from Wisdom tells us that, “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God…In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died…but they are at peace.” Ginny knew that her beloved husband belonged to God and whether he lived or he died, he would be with Jesus.
As Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
Paul knew both God’s love and persecution. We know of five occasions when Paul was given 39 lashes with a whip, which was the harshest sentence minus one. Three times Paul was beaten with rods. He was stoned once and shipwrecked three times in his travels. And out of experiencing God’s love in the midst of this, the Apostle wrote that none of these things could separate us from the love of Christ.
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 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.”
Virginia could sit by the beside of her husband of 62 years, not with vague wishful thinking, but with a sure and certain hope founded on a lifetime of prayer, reading scripture, and putting her faith into action. Experience taught her that the Gospel is true—death is real and so is resurrection. For followers of Jesus live not as people without hope, but as those who have in this life glimpsed God’s faithfulness so many times, we know we can trust no matter the circumstances.
Virginia enjoyed the support of a small prayer group that met faithfully for more than 40 years, usually in the home of Bill and Liz Sprague. Neither Ginny nor Liz were from Savannah and so they shared that perspective. The group would sit in four chairs facing one another, drink coffee, talk about what was going on in their lives, often with their children. And Mrs. Sprague told me something I will share just with you, as long as you promise not to tell anyone. They would also share a little gossip cloaked in concern and prayer.
Perhaps no small prayer group has faced division like this one as they found themselves on opposite sides of a fault line that would divide this church. Even as Ginny and Liz’ husbands held to positions that would be adjudicated by the Georgia Supreme Court, the women gathered still. What held them together, their love for each other and faith in Jesus, was stronger than what might have separated them.
And what did Liz see in a friend with whom she shared everything in difficult times? She said Virginia was unselfish. She would do anything she could for you to a greater degree than most of us. And importantly, Virginia made everything more fun.
But her life was not without trials. Virginia’s last years were difficult as they are for any of us whose memories fade. Even when you can meet your beloved daughter as if for the first time, not one of us can be lost as our whole loves are held in the heart of the God who made us and knows us so well. As the Psalmist writes,
LORD, you have searched me out and known me;
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You trace my journeys and my resting-places
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips,
but you, O LORD, know it altogether (Psalm 139:1-3)
Not all is lost. It can’t be as our whole lives live in the memories of God. I join the Apostle Paul in the conviction “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.”
This faith in the resurrection is not just about some glad morning when this life is o’er when we fly away to heaven. Not being separated from the love of God will be evident then. The bedrock trust that Jesus is with us always matters most in the here and now when we face adversity. Christians do not have a Get-out-of-trouble-free card. We are as likely to end up facing tragedy as much as anyone else. What we have is a living faith in a risen Lord. We have the knowledge of who we are because we have come to know whose we are. And knowing that, we know we can never be lost.
George said his Mom became more fully herself in some ways in recent years as with the loss of a filter, she was much funnier more often, as the humor she always saw, but sometimes held back, came flooding out. As so much was lost, Virginia remained.
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”
“I know my own.” Jesus knew Ginny well. She who could see the good in everybody was seeing Jesus in those around her, just as we all saw Jesus in her.
“And my own know me.” Ginny knew Jesus. Her active faith had her pursuing her savior her whole life not just intellectually, but also with her heart in serving him through caring for others. She was, of course, not perfect, but she was willing to be perfected by Christ as she did her best to put her beliefs into practice, usually behind the scenes, not taking a lead role, but making every group she was a part of more effective.
In all this, she had a mature understanding of God through reflecting on how the Holy Spirit had been present with her and those around her. And even as her memories faded, her daughter Anne said, of course she still knew the Good Shepherd who was ever with her.
Virginia Maxwell was and remains Christ’s own, a sheep of his own fold, a lamb of his own flock, a sinner of his own redeeming. And Jesus has received her into the arms of his mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. We know this as we saw in her life, a trust in Jesus that in its simplicity and depth was and ever shall be a faith that is:
Elegant. Exquisite. Refined. Rare.
Amen.