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Death is rearing its ugly head. Over the course of the day I will have presided at a funeral and talked with three other families about three different funeral arrangements.
And I will be exhausted. Death has a way of sucking the life out of people.
In seminary, I took a preaching class on funerals and weddings. We covered funerals first. Each of the students got to pick the circumstances and then preach a funeral sermon. There were 27. We listened to them all in one day. That’s a lot of funeral sermons.
And we were overachievers too. Of the 27, eight were suicide sermons, one mass shooting, and a bunch other odd funerals. There were a few “normal” funerals too. They were actually a pleasant reprieve from the heaviness of us overachievers that wanted to challenge ourselves.
Listening to 27 funerals was a challenge. By the end of the day, we were exhausted and drained. But at the same time, we heard the promise of God over and over again. It was undeniable.
I feel that at the end of the day today, the same will be true. Death sucks, but it is not the end of the story. It is not the end of our story. It is the time in which we get to hear about God’s promises for us. We get to hear the reality of death in our midst and the hoped for promise of resurrection.
These messages are important. We shouldn’t ignore death or pretend that death hasn’t struck. Instead, we need to acknowledge that death is in our presence. But death doesn’t have the final say. Jesus made sure of that. And that means that there is more to this day than just sadness. We mourn because the person we cared for and love is no longer alive and walking with us daily. But we hope for a promised future in which death will be no more. A future when pain will be more. A future where God has transformed and renewed not just us, but all of creation, and come down out of heaven to dwell with us forevermore.
When I conduct funerals, I love to use the passage from Revelation 21 that speaks to this. It is one of the most hopeful passages of Scripture. It paints a picture of what eternal life will be about – timelessness with the full presence of God. And God doing what God has always done – God coming to creation yet again. We don’t escape creation. We are transformed and renewed with creation and dwell with God forever.
Death sucks, but the promise of resurrection gives us hope. That doesn’t take away the pain and mourning. Death means there is separation between loved one. But in resurrection we look forward to a time when we will be reunited. Thank God for this.
I will be holding you up in prayer for strength in dealing with the challenges before you this day. Blessings to you in attempting to share the hope of our resurrection!
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Thank you!
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Matthew, death does suck. But then I remember that Jesus, in his resurrection, overcame the ultimate power of death. We, too, shall experience resurrection!
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Yes we will. Thank God for that.
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“The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart. Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation. These different feelings incessantly urge his soul to the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither. Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no less natural to the human heart than hope itself. Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect, and a sort of violent distortion of their true natures; but they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments; for unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind. If we only consider religious institutions in a purely human point of view, they may be said to derive an inexhaustible element of strength from man himself, since they belong to one of the constituent principles of human nature.”
– A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol.1, ch.17
(From my academic reading of the past month.)
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Interesting. Thanks for sharing David. I haven’t seen this before, or maybe I don’t recall reading it. I’ll have to go back to this tome and read it again. I’m sure there is great insight that would be applicable today .
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