This morning at 10:30 we gather at St. John's to commemorate Clarence Gilge, who passed away last Friday morning. Clarence was a good friend of our family, both our church family and my own. Derek always loved to go see "Grandpa Clarence" and Clarence always laughed as he tickled Derek or listened to one of his stories. Clarence tended to make sunshine out of rain wherever he went. It'll be an honor to preside at his funeral service.
This seems a good time to talk about a question that faces every pastor and every grieving family at the time of the funeral: how much do you talk about the person and how much do you focus on God, heaven, and the eternal? Families often have concerns about how their loved ones will be remembered. Pastors always try to walk between those two paths, not falling prey to the weaknesses of taking just one or the other.
I think we've all seen that line walked poorly. You don't have to listen very long before you hear someone talk about a funeral sermon that seemed impersonal or distant because the deceased was barely mentioned, as if the pastor was taking the opportunity to preach at the congregation without connecting to or comforting them in their time of loss...loss which is bound up in the memories of a particular person, which should be honored. On the other hand we've all seen funerals that talk about nothing
but the person, as if the whole purpose was to outdo each other with stories about how well we knew somebody and how wonderful they are and how big our grief will be at missing them. There's an old saying, somewhat cynical in delivery: "Everybody's a saint after they die." Canonizing a person in the funeral sermon divorces us from reality as much as ignoring them does. It denies that people are people, that the miracle of life (and death and resurrection) comes precisely in the moment when we realize they happen to imperfect, ordinary folks like all of us are. Who could ever live up to all the things that are said at these services? You'd crumble under the burden of trying.
Personally I've found the best way out of this conundrum is to ask a simple question then use the sermon to answer it: What has God shown us through this person and their life? It takes a fair amount of faith to even venture this. You have to assume God was active in their life, for starters. You have to assume he was working something good through them. Your job, then, is to play detective and find it, then share it. In a way it's a little like the Children's Sermon that we do each Sunday. You know something is in there. Do you have the faith to connect it to God, the eyes to see how that works, and the words to share it? When someone dies we get to open the box and look at the collection of things they've left us to talk about, finding all the places where they and God intersected.
In most cases this isn't too hard. Often I've known the person and seen the witness their life has been, even if they didn't know they were being a witness. Families always have stories, many of which I may not have heard. Some experienced God through fishing, others farming, others school, others in loving relationships. If you listen you can hear the threads God wove through their lives. The sermon, then, simply points them out and says, "Look at how amazing this is!"
Everybody meets God in their own way. Everybody shows God in their own way. If you can find how a person has done so, even in the smallest and most subtle fashion, then you can be sure God was present, that the relationship with the Almighty was alive, and that God has not abandoned the person in the hour of death. In fact it's almost eerie how closely the ways God supports us and works through us in life reflect his ultimate act of resurrection into heaven, the final miracle for us all. As we suggested in the Easter sermon, the small resurrections we experience in this life all point to the Big One at the end. Once you've seen and recognized those small moments for what they were it's an easy and natural leap to seeing and believing in that final act of grace and redemption.
Pray for Clarence's family today. Pray also that his service will be fitting and go well. Pray also in thanksgiving for God talking to us and working through our lives so intimately so that we might know who he is and be able to tell his story in all the moments of our lives and even beyond.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
