A TRIBUTE TO REV. DR SAMUEL LEE VARNER,
by Yvonne Morland (Iona, Scotland)
‘I’m still concerned, and I still have great love and admiration for what the Community has always stood for … the Community influenced my thinking about issues, about the Bible, about theological reflections on the Bible, and also the political witness that pastors should make.’
Sam Varner, speaking in 2004 when being interviewed for Iona Community’s history archive
It was a rare privilege to meet Sam Varner, who was, from 1963 until his death on 22 September, 2009, aged 71 years, the only African American Member of the Iona Community. I was lucky enough to do so in 2004 by the happy chance that he lived very close to my sister in Virginia Beach, USA and someone was needed to interview him for the Community’s history archive.Having heard many anecdotes and tales about George MacLeod, it was notable to hear Sam’s memories and reflections of him.
It was as a thoughtful, committed scholar in his second year of seminary that Sam struck up a correspondence with George, after being given and reading in a single sitting his book We Shall Rebuild, and having been inspired by the famous passage about Christ being ‘crucified on the garbage heap’.
‘I was fascinated by George MacLeod’s thoughts and ideas and reflections, theologically, and his biblical knowledge and information. And that famous quote! So after that I wrote him and told him what I thought, and we carried on a two-year trans-Atlantic communication about his book and about his work.’
The fact of the correspondence amazed a professor acquaintance of Sam’s, who had sent groups of students to Iona. He was even more amazed when George wrote to say: ‘Sam, if you’re so excited and so interested in what we’re doing, why don’t you come to Scotland and study with us for a year and join the Community?’
The professor gave Sam his full support to make the trip, and he arrived in Scotland in 1960, aged just 22. He planned to spend a year working with the Community – but ended up staying five years!Sam told me that he felt that this time away from home saved his life. Literally. Many people in his community in Alabama were being badly beaten up or even killed. Sam, who as a child had witnessed the lynching of four black men by white mobs, was active with Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, young as he was, and knew that every day could bring tragedy to one’s door.
When he arrived on Iona, the Community was in the throes of the preparation for the 1400th anniversary of the coming of St Columba, and the arrival of the New Men to start their training coincided with the June Community Week and the celebrations. George MacLeod conducted an open-air communion service – a huge ecumenical event that brought many guests to the Abbey and island.
Once work started, it was necessary for the New Men to make several trips across the Sound to collect granite for the rebuilding of the west range, a task that Sam played full part in. Community member Jack Laidlaw recalls:
‘Sam managed to get to the bath in the Abbot’s House before any other of the New Men, who on at least one occasion threw cold water over the partition to hurry him up!’
Jack Laidlaw again:
‘Soon after Sam started his time on Iona, the Wynant Volunteers arrived and Sam was confronted with affluent, middle-class white Americans. They learned from him a little more about the struggle for civil rights going on in their own country. For many it was the first time they had met and listened to a fellow American who was black. There was the moment when Sam was leading worship in the Abbey and froze because, as he explained later, all he could see was a mass of white faces, and he experienced a flashback to an angry mob at a civil rights demonstration when he had been attacked.
‘He did tell us about one time when he had been imprisoned and the treatment he had to endure when, without water to drink, the only moisture he had was the guards’ spit soaking his shirt.’
Of people in the Community, George MacLeod obviously made the biggest impact on Sam. But in our interview he also spoke of Ralph Morton, Donald Rennie, Cameron Wallace and David Jarvie.
He worked as an assistant parish minister with Fergus MacPherson in Greenock, until Fergus was called away by Kenneth Kaunda to be his Minister of Education in Northern Rhodesia/Zambia. Sam was asked to stay on in sole charge for two years, and then stayed for a further two years with Donald Rennie after he took up the charge. He said in our discussions that in Scotland he did not feel he was discriminated against because of his colour, on Iona, in Greenock or anywhere else. He was told it was more of an issue which of the ‘Old Firm’ teams he supported!At the time of his arrival in Scotland, Sam was a member of the Zion Methodist Church, one of the protest Churches from the time of slavery. For most of his ministry, though, and till the end of his life, he was a pastor in the United Church of Christ.
The obituary posted on the website of the funeral home in Chesapeake, Virginia included the following about his life’s work:
Sam was a retired UCC Southern Conference Association Minister, retired Clinician with the City of Chesapeake, adjunct professor at Thomas Nelson Community College, and Seminary professor at Regent University.
Having asked him in 2004 to describe his current work, he told me:
‘Well, my work now is somewhat like a bishop. I have fifty-six churches … Twenty-five or twenty-six of these churches are predominantly African/American churches, and thirty of these churches are predominantly European/American churches, and one of the churches is the Filipino/American church. And my job is to be a counsellor and a pastor to the pastors of these churches, and to assist them in their work … I preach in a lot of the churches, I participate in all the Ordination Services, all the Installation Services … These are the kind of things I’m doing right now.’
Sadly, although he kept up teaching, preaching and counselling for as long as possible, Sam’s health, early on affected by severe asthma, presented him with continuing and debilitating challenges. He became more and more immobile and his sight deteriorated, until he was registered blind. He was lovingly and well cared for by his family: his wife, Ruth, daughter, Elizabeth, and sons Seko-Benjamin and Daniel, who gave him six grandchildren to also continue his considerable legacy.Sam was never able to fulfil his wish to return to Iona and Scotland. As we all know, though, he did witness the election of the first African American President of the United States, and he must have felt vindicated for all those years of struggle.
Speaking to him by telephone on the day of the Inauguration, Sam was animated and excited, and when I referred to the long hard grind to reach such a significant point, he responded as though his life had just been a ‘walk in the park’!
His faith in the power of the Holy Spirit was immense and he was an inspiration. I shall always be grateful for the chance to meet him and to make a personal connection with such an important history of justice and peacemaking, which Sam continued to embody throughout his long ministry.
