Memorial Service for Emerson and Elisabeth “Libby” Willard

Emerson: November 5, 1921 - July 16, 2023 101 years
Libby: February 3, 1920 - September 4, 2022 102 years

September 29, 2023

First Presbyterian Church

Wilmington, NC 

David A. Shirey

I received my instructions for this homily from Libby and Emerson in Aunt Libby’s handwriting.  After listing several scriptures and hymns, Libby wrote, “We really want the focus to be on worship and not on us. A brief meditation on the love of God is our preference. Psalm 103 is a good reference.”

Hear then a meditation on the love of God from creation to vocation to procreation to election to salvation to consummation, with a reference to Psalm 103 and not a mention of a certain beloved couple’s names … except for once.   

God’s love was revealed first in creation. In James Weldon Johnson’s magisterial 1927 poem God’s Trombones, the great African-American poet wrote,

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely—
I'll make me a world...

“And so God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.  God called the dry land Masonboro Island, and the waters that were gathered together to the east God called the Atlantic Ocean.  To the west, God called the waters The Masonboro Sound and the dry land west of those waters God called Crown Point. And God saw that it was good” (Gen 1:9,10).

Then, continuing James Weldon Johnson’s poem:

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down... in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image; 

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.[1]

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner” … The Lord God brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:18, 22-23).

And so it was that a man of Wilmington, NC, married a woman of Churchville, VA. They said “I do” to each other before their God and their families and they did — they worshipped and served God and they simply adored one another for 71 years. Their love for each other reflected God’s steadfast love for them and for us all. God saw their marriage and it was good. 

As a further expression of God’s love, God put the couple in a good place and gave them good work to do. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Till and keep the garden. Care for creation.  It’s humanity’s original and lasting vocation. Be good stewards of earth, sky, and sea. Be caretakers of “all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,”[2] for they, too, are gifts of a loving Creator.  Be God’s Trustees. Good theology beckons good ecology. Love the earth and all its creatures.

And the man and the woman who lived their lives in love on Crown Point for seven decades honored their Creator’s gift of that hallowed ground.  They held it in a sacred trust, exercising a reverent stewardship over it all their years together. All creatures, flora, and fauna. Chickens and oysters; mullet and trout, spot and bluefish, flounder and puppy drum; osprey and kingfisher, laughing gull, painted bunting and pelican, the Great Blue Heron; live oaks and long leaf pines, Spanish moss and scuppernong vines. Salt and sand and sea spray. Tide and time. Ebb and flow. The man and the woman tilled and kept the portion of God’s garden that was theirs to till and keep, were good and faithful stewards, wasted little, had enough – a gracious plenty, and were grateful for what they had. And God saw their stewardship and it was good. 

And God said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).  “From my love for you and out of your love for each other, let there proceed life formed in love.” And out of their love proceeded two sons who, raised by their parents to know the love of God, learned that love, too, and witnessing their parents’ stewardship of the land and sea, learned to love the waters and land of Crown Point, too, and do to this day.  The man and woman raised two good men.

And God said to God’s own across the ages, “You are blessed to be a blessing.” “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3) “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly” (Micah 6:8) and “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and might and love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). Time forbids me to name all the ways the man and the woman on the Sound quietly, diligently, daily did walk ever so humbly, loved mercy, and did justice. And were blessings because of the kindness of their visage and the grace of their demeanor and the gentleness of their voices. They blessed those of us who knew them and loved them and were loved by them, who were received into and embraced by their hospitality, who experienced the grace that took place upon turning off Masonboro Sound Road into their driveway and feeling an immediate palpable peace in anticipation of being at a place that was healing, wholesome … holy. 

In the fullness of time, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 KJV). And the man and the woman were raised to know the Savior sent by God. When Jesus called his first disciples, he called fishermen who had gotten out of their boats and were washing their nets.  Two millennia later, he walked again beside the sea and called two fisherfolk, boat builders – dories to be precise. Both were cradle Christians. She was born in a Presbyterian manse, he just blocks from where we worship today. Baptized into God’s promises and confirming of their faith, they both “put hand to plow” (Luke 9:62) and never looked back. They were disciples of Jesus Christ in word and deed for over a century each. Two hundred years of faithfulness. Some are Christians by name only, others, as St. Francis put it, “preach the gospel and occasionally use words.”                              

One day, said Jesus, in one of Love’s loveliest images, “They shall come from the east and west, and from the north and south, and shall sit down together in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). What a lovely image – the human family gathered together, the diaspora of sin, separation, and alienation over. As the Easter hymn sings it, “Love’s redeeming work is done.”[3]  The family God – all God’s beloved  – gathered, reunited, reconciled. And to celebrate the consummation of God’s purposes: the Messianic Banquet. All gathered at table in the kingdom of heaven.

And to know that the man and woman on the Sound carried forth a tradition of 125 years, lived out that image of love’s ingathering at table, hosted each year on Thanksgiving an Oyster Roast. Come one, come all. And we came from north, south, east, and west to gather at table.  And after a devotional and a prayer and the baptizing of the burlap bags with copious amounts of water, the gathered faithful would receive the Eucharist of oysters and johnnycake. “O blest communion, fellowship divine”[4] -- a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. 

One day, faith says, we’ll all be gathered at table in God’s kingdom. We can believe that because Love will do what Love promises to do.  God’s love can be trusted, the God whose love created heaven and earth and placed the man and the woman in the garden and told them to till and keep it and be fruitful and multiply and be a blessing and love others and follow Jesus and welcome all to the Table.

Bless the Lord, O my soul;
and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits,
 who forgives all your iniquity,
    who heals all your diseases,
 who redeems your life from the Pit,
    who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
 who satisfies you with good as long as you live
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Ps 103:1-5)    who breathed the breath of life into Emerson and Libby Willard, whose lives exuded God’s love, who are now raised up to new life in Christ to be held in Love’s embrace forever.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, for two lives so well lived;
and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name!

Let all God’s people say AMEN.

[1] From God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson. Copyright © 1927 The Viking Press, Inc.,

[2]  Hymn lyrics by Cecil Frances Alexander, 1848

[3] “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”  Lyrics by Charles Wesley (1707 – 1788)

[4] "For All the Saints.”  Lyrics by William Walsham How (1823 – 1897)