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| Phyllis Lee Cullers 12/9/48-5/10/21 |
I was privileged to be Phyllis Cullers' pastor for many of the years we were part of the Zion Mennonite Church near Broadway. Saturday I was blessed with the opportunity to speak at her memorial service at the Grandle Funeral Home, as follows:We are here to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of Phyllis Lee Cullers, beloved friend and sister, aunt, and a caring and loving part of the community of people whose lives she touched during her many years as a nurse and caregiver.
I was sad to hear of her sudden passing, so sorry it had to be the result of a cancer that took her life before her time. But as in the words of Ecclesiastes, there is a time to be born and a time to die, just as there is a time to grieve and also a time to celebrate the life work of someone like Phyllis. And then a time to rest, to say goodnight, to ‘lay her down to sleep’ after a tiring day, and to say, as Jesus did at the end of his life, “It is finished,” and to pray, “into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Among the Ten Commandments there is the one that says, “Six days shall you labor and do all your work, and on the seventh day you are to rest, commit everything to God’s hands and cease from your work.” The Hebrew word for sabbath, shabat, literally means rest. And we could paraphrase this and apply it to Phyllis’s life, as if God were saying, “Phyllis, six decades you shall rest and finish all your labor, and in the seventh decade you shall rest, with the simple prayer, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
It was a blessing that Phyllis was able to die peacefully as in a quiet sleep, at rest after a good life’s work. She had finished what God gave her to do. And to paraphrase one of her favorite psalms, The Lord was her Shepherd, so she had no want, no lack of anything. He has taken her by the hand and led her into green, lush pastures and invited her to lie down beside still waters. And even though she walked through the valley of the shadow of death, she feared no evil, for the good Shepherd was with her, his rod and staff protected her. He anointed her head with healing oil, and prepared an abundant table for her. Surely goodness and mercy followed her all the days of her life, and she will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
That’s the confidence we have, that Phyllis is in good hands, in the welcoming arms of the Good Shepherd. She’s spent much of her life caring for others, now it’s time for her to be cared for by God, who is welcoming us all to come home with her, to join her in that great welcome home banquet, described by the prophet Isaiah this way,
On this mountain the LORD of Hosts
will prepare a banquet for all the peoples,
a feast of aged wine, of choice meat,
of finely aged wine.
On this mountain He will swallow up
the death shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
He will swallow up death forever.
The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face
For the LORD has spoken.
And in that day it will be said, “Surely this is our God;
we have waited for Him, and He has saved us.
This is the LORD for whom we have waited.
If Phyllis were able to speak to us today I believe she would want to share with you the words of this song:
Come and go with me to my Father's house, to my Father's house, to my Father's house,
Come and go with me to my Father's house,
Where there's joy, joy, joy.
It's not very far to my Father's house, to my Father's house, to my Father's house,
It's not very far to my Father's house,
Where there's joy, joy, joy.
Jesus is the Way to my Father's house, to my Father's house, to my Father's house,
Jesus is the Way to my Father's house,
Where there's joy, joy, joy.
James Weldon Johnson, in one of his "Negro Sermons in Verse" has God instructing his angel of death to bring a sister Caroline home to himself who, like Phyllis, has been "tossing on her bed of pain."
“...And God said,
Go down death
And find Sister Caroline (Sister Phyllis).
She's borne the burden and heat of the day,
She's labored long in my vineyard,
And she's tired--
She's weary--
Go down, Death, and bring her to me…
And Death took her up like a baby,
…And death began to ride again--
Up beyond the evening star…
On to the Great White Throne.
And there he laid Sister Caroline (Sister Phyllis)
On the loving breast of Jesus.
And Jesus took his own hand and wiped away her tears,
And he smoothed the furrows from her face,
And the angels sang a little song,
And Jesus rocked her in his arms,
And kept a-saying: Take your rest,
Take your rest.
Weep not--weep not,
She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
After the service, Phyllis’s cremains will be taken to rest in the Cullers Run Cemetery, where her parents and her Cullers and other ancestors are buried, but our Phyllis will not really be there. She is here, alive in our hearts and in our memories, and she is resting forever in the bosom of Jesus.
Please join me in prayer, with the words of an ancient Irish blessing:
May the blessing of light be with you--
light outside and light within.
May the sunlight shine upon you and warm your heart
‘til it glows like a great peat fire,
So that the stranger may come and warm himself by it,
and also a friend.
May a blessed light shine out of the two eyes of you
like a candle set in two windows of a house,
bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.
May the blessing of rain--the sweet soft rain--
fall upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean.
May it leave many a shining pool where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
May the blessing of earth--the good, rich earth--be with you.
May you ever have a kindly greeting for those you pass
as you go along its roads.
May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it,
tired at the end of the day.
May the earth rest easy over you when at the last you lie under it.
May the earth rest so lightly over you
that your spirit will be out from under it quickly,
and up, and off, and on its way to God.
Amen. Go in peace.
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