Photo Courtesy of Eric Folkerth
Bill McElvaney
The Rev. William K. McElvaney
The last time I saw my friend and mentor, the Rev. Bill McElvaney, I sensed that the end of his earthly life was near.
Bill had made a great effort to attend the social justice luncheon in early June at the North Texas Annual Conference, where he received yet another honor for his tireless advocacy. He was a study in contrasts that day. His body looked thin and frail, and his skin had taken on the waxy yellow cast of late-stage liver cancer. Yet within that afflicted body his spirit burned as brightly as ever.
Everybody attending the luncheon seemed to want a photo taken with Bill. Though clearly fatigued, he posed patiently and cheerfully for every camera and smartphone pointed in his direction.
I wasn't among the picture-takers. I didn't want a photo because I didn't want more than a memory of his physical decline. After we greeted each other with gentle hugs, I think we both knew that capturing an image was unnecessary, when long ago our souls had been linked through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We were both enraptured, and had been for many years, by Jesus' message that God's boundless love for us individually demands that we love others just as unconditionally. When souls speak to one another with such depth, further word or image becomes unnecessary.
As has been mentioned many times in other accounts, Bill was unfailingly kind to everyone, even people with whom he deeply disagreed. During the time we worked together in opposition to the George W. Bush Presidential Center being built on the campus of Southern Methodist University, I never once heard Bill utter a harsh word against President Bush as a person. He wrote and uttered stinging, biblically based rebukes of all the policies of the Bush Administration, as well as of the United Methodist South Central Jurisdiction and SMU leadership's pandering to moneyed political ideologies. As far as the people themselves, however, Bill held them in the esteem due those for whom Jesus died. I cannot say the same of myself, and the memory of my failing to follow Bill's example pains me yet.
What people sometimes overlooked in the warm glow of Bill's tenderness – he once broke down weeping before me as he described prejudice against LGBT people – was his razor-sharp mind. Years ago I had the rare privilege of watching him debate theology toe-to-toe in a casual conversation with Dr. Billy Abraham, arguably the top conservative theologian in U.S. Methodism. They spent no more than 10 minutes arguing their opposing perspectives amid a swirling lobby crowd of lecture-goers, but it was clear than each scholar gave as good as he got. When they parted with respectful nods and smiles, their expressions showed how much McElvaney and Abraham relished their intellectual sparring.
Bill was also a joy to work with as a writer. He had a gift for putting words together in transcendent expression that needed only the lightest of editing. Whenever he consulted me, as he did with his last book, "Becoming a Justice-Seeking Congregation," he mostly needed my technical publishing expertise, such as where to find certain sources or how to go about this new world of self-publishing via the Internet. He invariably made our collaborations mutual and collegial. Seeing his phone number on my caller ID always caused a frisson of anticipation, because Bill's calls ceaselessly brought new and challenging missions. Every time he cited one of my articles in his books, I felt that I had really "arrived" as a religion writer.
In the days to come, there will be thousands of words written and spoken about the spiritual giant we knew as William King McElvaney. People will remember his gifts as a pastor, a preacher and an educator. Most outstanding will be all the moments when he stood up for those on the margins because he saw in them the image of Jesus, who he loved with all his heart. From his earliest effort to bring desegregation to the Mesquite, Texas, school system, to his final act of ecclesiastical resistance in officiating at the wedding of long-partnered gay friends, Bill McElvaney gave his all for others in imitation of Christ.
Of my beloved friend and spiritual exemplar, I can only echo what Albert Einstein once said of Mohandas K. Gandhi, India's great spiritual and political leader: "Generations to come … will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.”
A professional journalist for 41 years, Cynthia B. Astle serves as coordinator of United Methodist Insight. She is a member of St. Stephen United Methodist Church, which the Rev. Bill McElvaney founded in 1959.