A sermon for the Funeral of Sallie Culbreth
October 16, 2026 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Reading: Matthew 25:31-40
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.” So Jesus’s teaching begins today. The King separates the sheep and the goats. He tells us, “just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” And if we are wise, we take our Lord at his word.
Today we gather to give thanks for the life of an incredible person: A spouse of five decades, a mother and grannie, a friend and community leader, a child of the Most High God who was wise and took our Lord at his word, a sheep of God’s own fold. We gather to commend her soul to God. There is grief in that commendation, for we desired more time. The hardest thing we do is give back good gifts to God. We gather to support the family and all who mourn, today and in days to come. But most of all, Christians gather at funerals because we have a hope that nothing, as St. Paul says in Romans, will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Sallie is God’s child, today and forever. Death cannot take that away from her.
It took me a long time to get my head around everything that Sallie had done. There was just so much. She didn’t tell me all at once. She was not one to boast. She told me first of her time as a missionary’s kid, of her courtship and eventual elopement with Tim. She loved that story. She told me about her family–the most important people in her life. She loved each and every one of you with every fiber of her being; you were always at the forefront of her thoughts. I hope you don’t forget that. She told me about her work with survivors of sexual abuse, often at the hands of authorities in the Church. She told me of her work with dioceses and archdioceses, with priests and bishops and archbishops, of times when she called the powerful to account and helped build better systems that protected and honored the vulnerable. She told me of her work in this community, and most recently at CCMC. Her compassion was nearly boundless, and especially for our immigrant and DACA neighbors. She worried about those neighbors; she cried for them; she lost sleep; she worked hard for them; she created a sanctuary. Time does not permit us to tell of all the ways she has made an impact on countless lives. But this we know: Everything she did was motivated by a love for the people God had made, and especially those who had been discarded, overlooked, taken advantage of, marginalized. Her work did not come from a place of grandiosity, but from a place of deep compassion borne of personal experience, of love borne of pain, of empathy borne of heartache.
Another way of saying this: In her life, Sallie cooperated with God’s will and mission in the world. She freely gave herself to that divine love who calls us to healing and wholeness. Sallie was an instrument of God’s peace. It’s no wonder that she loved the passage from Matthew 25 that we read. It’s all about belief and service, about compassion for the vulnerable and faithful action in the world, about the necessary relationship between faith and good works, which are the fruit of faith. God was active in her to accomplish good in this broken world, to be an agent of healing in the midst of unthinkable despair, to be a light. When Jesus tells us this is how we follow him, Sallie took him at his word and followed, with love all the way.
Today she takes him at his word again, and so do we. I am the resurrection and the life, Jesus says. He says that our life is bound up in his; that our resurrection is bound up in his; that those who are God’s children are never lost, not even in death; that death is not strong enough to defeat the love of God. For ultimately Sallie’s faithfulness in this world was a reflection of God’s faithfulness to us. And when God claims us, we can know that we are heaven’s own forever.
But we cannot stop there. Sallie would not want that. Yes, blessed assurance, Jesus is hers, even today. But we are still here. Hear the words of Jesus: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”
Sallie heard the call. What about you?
