The Funeral of Campbell White McMillan -- 20 October 2008

"Campbell White McMillan"

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

Six years ago, Campbell and Florence McMillan came to see me to discuss their final arrangements. Although Campbell had reached the “threescore years and ten” of today’s psalm, but was only halfway to the further goal of “fourscore,” which he had promised Florence he would live for her(!), it was the loving thing to do, to prepare for the future, especially for their children. Campbell’s original intention was not to let anyone speak about him at his funeral, but simply to follow the Prayer Book service. I agreed with him that a eulogy, which only focused on all the person’s achievements and frequently felt like too much syrup on pancakes, was inappropriate! But I argued that a homily, which tried to speak a word of faith to a mourning congregation and which might tell some of the person’s story but relate it to the Divine story, could be an occasion of grace and inspiration.

I was relieved when Campbell later sent back the typed forms for our files, which included the directive, “an appropriate homily, no eulogy.” Having known Campbell for the twenty-six years I have been in this parish – in fact he was part of the Vestry who elected me rector – I was not surprised by Campbell’s modesty, or by his conviction, or by his willingness to modify his position. He has always been for me, and I know for so many of you, a man whom I greatly admire and for whom I feel deep affection. So I will do my best to honor the implications of Campbell’s request, “an appropriate homily,” although this will no doubt be more about him than he would have wanted. I take this approach with the conviction that to come closer to Campbell is to come closer to grace and with the knowledge that he has no more to say about it anyway!

I am aided in this effort by a gift Campbell gave me, a manuscript reflecting on his college years at Wake Forest and beyond. I found it extraordinarily thoughtful and candid, like Campbell himself, and much of this homily was shaped by his own reflections.

His transparent remembrances reinforced two strong impressions I had already had about Campbell and illuminated them even further. The first is that his life was truly a spiritual journey, a seeking after God with a great breadth of openness and a persistent and undying eagerness to come into closer contact with what he termed the “Power in the Universe Who somehow knows about me, cares about me as well as everything else in the universe, and with Whom I can communicate through prayer.” He arrived at his faith, not only through the love and powerful witness of his parents, whose Southern Baptist commitment and devotion carried them into missionary work in China, but also through his own engagement with the depth and breadth of creation. “I contemplate in prayerful awe,” he wrote, “the grandeur and mystery of our universe, especially all living creatures on earth which range from the likes of green algae to Ludwig van Beethoven (with me located somewhere in between!).”

Reconciling the breadth of the Divine activity in that universe with what Campbell came to see as the narrowness of the conservative wing of the Southern Baptist Church’s position on the inerrancy of the Bible, became a difficulty for him. He certainly considered scripture, as he wrote, to be “a major expression of God at work among human beings,” but he also declared that he found the Divine activity in “the Koran of Mohammed, the houses of Habitat for Humanity, the symphonies of Beethoven, the jazz of Duke Ellington, the comic strips of Charles Schultz, the entire “Star Trek” series on television, the basketball of Michael Jordan, the fortune of Bill Gates, and the leadership of the human genome project by Francis Collins”! He forgot to include bagpipes! Campbell sought and found God in all aspects of life.

This quest eventually led him away from the Southern Baptist denomination, although he always stressed his conviction that “at its best, the Baptist approach to Christian faith is as good as it gets.” When he and Florence could not find an expression of it “at its best” during Campbell’s residency in Brookline, Massachusetts, they were unsure of how they should proceed. In his memoir, Campbell recounted how they lived only a narrow walkway away from the parsonage of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. On a hot September night, he recalled, with no air-conditioning and everyone’s windows left wide open, he and Florence could not help overhearing the rector and his wife argue with each other. In his words, “They proceeded to deliver a veritable clinic in highly Anglo-Saxon expression of contention between a wife and a husband who were, at the same time, unmistakably committed to each other. Well, both of us really liked what we heard and decided right then and there that we needed to check out both the people and the church next door.” That incident fifty years ago, which I am sure the rector and his wife did not at the time consider a moment of grace, did indeed serve as an experience of the Divine for Campbell and Florence and was the catalyst for their joining and subsequently raising their family in the Episcopal Church. That vignette expresses so well the openhearted and persistent nature of Campbell’s spiritual journey, and it serves as an inspiration for all of us to be as attentive and responsive to God’s grace, wherever we may find it.

I said that Campbell’s reflections reinforced two strong impressions I had already had about him. The second is that his deep spirituality and lively faith were not just abstract notions. They motivated him and enabled him to live out daily his love of God through loving others. When he began at Wake Forest, he did so “as a ministerial student with every intention of following in Dad’s footsteps,” including possibly becoming a foreign missionary. He soon switched to a medical track, but it seems clear that during his whole professional life, he applied himself to the care of patients and to the scholarly and teaching and administrative aspects of medicine with the zeal and dedication and love of the most committed missionary. If you were a child who had Campbell McMillan as your doctor or a resident who had him as your attending, you knew the love and the grace and the joy of God. It was simply part of his character and of his soul.

Although Campbell chose the first two hymns for today’s service, he left open the choice of scripture readings. In celebrating the feast of St. Luke, the great physician, a few days ago, Tammy Lee, my associate, could not help but think of Dr. McMillan as she read them. And so, instead of more typical scripture passages read at funerals, we chose the ones today from the feast of St. Luke. Although Campbell, with typical modesty, wrote that “in taking objective stock of my professional career I would give myself a solid `B’”, the patients whom Campbell helped heal and take away their pain, and even those whom he could only accompany in their death struggle, would be more far effusive and enthusiastic than that in their gratitude for his care and his lived out faith.

When Campbell first learned of his fatal diagnosis some weeks ago, he like any mortal being struggled with coming to terms with that reality. Some years earlier he had written, “I am completely at peace with the certainty that when I die, the same God who has cared for me and for everything else in the universe will continue to care for all of us,” but now this inevitable reality was within arms length. We had several honest and probing conversations about death and about healing and about faith and the life beyond. God’s grace continued to heal and strengthen and console Campbell White McMillan in his final weeks and days. At the conclusion of our final conversation, just the evening before he died, his final feeble but gracious words to me were, “Everything is falling into place beautifully.”

The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him and give him peace. Amen.