Funeral Homily for Selina Johnson

 Funeral Homily_Selina Johnson

April 15, 2023

 

        Selina Johnson was a force to be reckoned with.  She was someone that you never wanted to cross, and I know that there are a few people around here who were more than a little bit terrified of her.  She could give a tongue lashing that could peel the paint off the wall, and she had high standards that she expected to be maintained.  And boy, could she cuss!  She was wickedly funny, fiercely maternal, demanding and exacting, and she had a real gift for growing things.  I understand from her children that she was not an easy person to live with. 

        Selina was both stern and sweet; and she was a strong force for good in this world.  Because you know what Selina did?  Selina saved people.  She saved people. 

        From being the scrub nurse on the first four open heart surgeries in the 1950’s; to caring for convalescent and chronically ill children at a residential Episcopal home in rural Virginia; to teaching illiterate diabetic patients how to monitor and regulate their own blood sugar within 5 days of meeting with her; to running the Candler ER, Selina saved people.  (Of course, when she was running the Candler ER, it was in a rough neighborhood.  Selina would frequently have to contend with drunk people showing up at the back door of the ER wanting to sell blood.  If they got too rough, Selina had a leather thong with a crab sticker on the end of it, and she’d whack them with it.  Depending on how much damage she did, she’d bring them inside and stitch them up if they needed it, and then she’d put them back out of the loading dock to recover and sleep it off. 

        She saved granddaughter Elizabeth’s life—when she recognized post-op complications that turned out to be aspirate pneumonia.  Her long-time yard man also testified that Selina saved his life through Unseen Guest Ministry.  And there’s just no telling how many people in this life have tasted the literal fruits and meals of that life-giving ministry that she founded and was the driving force behind for so many years.  (She was an authentic Mama Bear before Mama Bears were cool or even a thing.)

        Her life was not always easy. But she overcame so much through her fierce determination and an abundance of hard work-- no matter what or who she was working for, she worked hard.  She once told me a story about how she’d been given a whole wild hog that someone had shot for Unseen Guest.  Now mind you, this wasn’t that long ago—probably when she was in her 80’s?  She got someone to load it into the trunk of her car, but when she got it home, she realized she couldn’t get it out. And the clock was ticking before the thing went bad in her trunk.  So, she hurried into her house, pulled out all her cookbooks until she found one that taught her how to butcher and dress wild game.  She found her best knives, and then she went back outside and butchered that wild hog out of the back of her car trunk because she was determined not one bit of it would go to waste when it could be used for meals for Unseen Guest. 

        It will come as no surprise to you who knew Selina that she planned this funeral service.  What I love so much about it is that all three scripture readings she selected are about the hope of the resurrection:  “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;  and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God” from Job; to the vision of Revelation of how all those who have come out of the great ordeal will feast at God’s heavenly banquet where they will never again know hunger or thirst or sadness; to the gospel reading from John when Martha gives Jesus a statement of her own quiet faith that he is the way to resurrection for us all.  Selina wove the hope of our faith throughout this service for us in her last act of maternal care.  She pointed to the promise of Jesus, the one who saves us, as her last gift and reminder. 

        So today, we gather to give thanks for this fierce, loving, and determined woman, for the ways that she used her gifts for healing to save people.  We gather to mourn the loss of her light in this life, and we gather to remember the hope of our faith—that death is not the end but a change; that through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has proven once and for all that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything, even death.

        And we give thanks that one day, we will all feast with Selina again at God’s heavenly banquet.  And don’t you know, that if heaven isn’t already just right, Selina will have it all straightened out for us by the time we get there!