Testify to the Light – A Mass of the Resurrection sermon for Louise Shipps

The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue gave this sermon at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Clemson, South Carolina on March 9, 2024.

Testify to the Light
A Sermon for the Mass of the Resurrection for Louise Huntington Shipps
Revelation 21:1-17 and John 1:1-14

We begin in the dark.

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

Formless. Dark. Then comes the spark of creation and God calls light out of the darkness in these first three verses of sacred scripture.

Our Gospel reading echoes this ancient theme in the luminous prologue of John’s Gospel which retells the story of creation, starting in the same place as Genesis, “In the beginning.” 

The evangelist writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

He goes on to tell us, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

In the moment of creation, light shines in the darkness.

We gather to give thanks to God for the life of Louise Huntington Shipps, who through her art, as through her whole life of selfless service, testified to the light of the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus. The moment of creation is such an apt text for Louise. Trained as a commercial artist, graduating cum laude from Boston University, she knew how to bring life to a blank canvas. Across decades she created drawings, paintings, and collages that gave a window into her perspective on life. She would teach others to nurture that same creative spark at St. Pius X High School in Savannah, the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta, and in hands on workshops at Kaunga, a Episcopal Conference Center in the mountains of western North Carolina. Her reverence of God and love of art were further inspired by her travels around the world bringing Louise to focus solely on the highly structured process of writing icons in the Greek and Russian Orthodox style. 

Beginning in 1987, she took a series of trips to Russia where she learned of theology written in paint in a series of definite steps. She studied for five years with a Russian iconographer who lived in New York, learning to write the images beginning with the darkest tones, working toward the light. 

In 2006, Louise told a reporter from the Savannah Morning News, “When you get involved in Eastern iconography you study church history, art, spirituality and theology. It’s a step-by-step process of enlightenment and inner illumination.”

Enlightenment. This move from darkness to light is wired into creation from its first moments. 

In our reading from Revelation, we move to the new heaven and the new earth. In this text, we find embedded, a different shift from dark to light as the grief we know in our earthly lives is met with the presence and power of the Holy Trinity. We read of the age to come:

God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.

We gather in mourning for the loss of a dear friend, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She lived a very long and extraordinarily full life and yet there is the pain of grief.

After her recent fall, when doctors and nurses were working to return her to health and it became clear that might not be the path this time, I was reminded of an email I received from Bishop Harry Shipps in 2016 as he learned his lungs were riddled with cancer cells from asbestos. He had been a steady correspondent with me for 19 years on the day he sent the email telling me that this would likely end his life. I wrote to Louise’s daughter, Rebecca, who had been a steady daily presence at her side with my recollection of this email. I said, “I recall your father saying something to the effect of given what they are telling me, it is time to turn toward the sunset.”

I was right about Harry trusting in the sure and certain hope he held in Jesus Christ, but I had the image reversed. Harry was married to an iconographer, who knew well that we don’t walk toward darkness, but toward the light. I found his email this week. He wrote of the issues that bear on his remaining time as being, “Quality of life for me and also for dear Louise.” He said, 

“If either deteriorates too far, I will end treatment and walk proudly into this glorious sunrise. 90 plus wonderful years have been given me and 63 years of delight with dear Louise.”

Harry knew death not as darkness, but as light.
Not a sunset, but a glorious sunrise.

This is the theology that supported every icon Louise ever wrote. Shadows moving toward light. Chaos moving toward order. Grief moving toward the enlightenment that comes from knowing that nothing can or ever will separate us from the love of God. This is the rock on which Harry and Louise Shipps anchored their hope.

Here I need to confess, that Bishop Shipps did not like the way I preach at funerals. In many years of sharing sermons, he was not unkind even as he was crystal clear. He said I preach funerals with too much said about the person who has died rather than focusing on the purpose of a sermon in a Mass of the Resurrection, which is to point to the light of the glory of God that we find in Jesus. My words to you today are to be a straightforward proclamation of the Gospel with a slight nod to Louise while the emphasis is on the salvation we find in Jesus and the trust we can have that what we now see is not all that there is. The same God who called light out of the darkness, will wipe every tear from our eyes.

But we gather to mourn his dear Louise and I trust he will forgive me this indulgence of seeing the mark of the creator in the soul of an artist. For in our illuminating glimpse of the Good News offered in our Gospel reading, we see how John the Baptist was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. We are to do this as well. And through Louise’ years of faithful service as a wife, mother, and lay minister, we see how she testified to the light. In her steadfast, loving support of Harry as priest and bishop, she testified to the light of Christ as in her loving care for Ruth, Susan, Rebecca, and David, and their children and grandchildren. In tutoring at-risk kids and volunteering at Emmaus House and many thousands of hours of serving others as if serving Jesus, she testified to the light of Christ.

Louise found a wonderful home here in Clemson – and most especially here at Holy Trinity—when she moved here after her husband’s death to be closer to her daughter. Rebecca tells me you opened your arms to her, and she became one of your own. She also grew especially fond of St. Paul’s, your “mother church” in Pendleton, where she often attended Sunday evenings services. 

And even here, she dedicated space in her apartment for a studio as she continued to create as long as she could, icons that begin with finely ground red clay as a basecoat, covered with layer on layer, seven layers deep until heaven touches earth in 23-carat gold, burnished to shine. 

We gather in grief even as we celebrate a life well lived. But we do so knowing that God will wipe every tear from our eyes. For “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Louise has turned toward the light of the glorious sunrise. In every time of grief and loss and pain, we too can have that inner illumination that comes from faith in Jesus. For we know that the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we too have seen his glory, full of grace and truth. 

We begin in the dark. By the grace of God, we end in the light.

Amen.