Burying Friends

December 4, 2019

When I started out in ministry fifty years ago, one of the first funerals at which I officiated was for a stillborn infant. Linda and I were newly married, and the parents of this precious baby girl were about our own age. It was not an easy start. If there was any saving grace to it all, it was that we had only known this couple for a year or two; we hadn’t had time to forge the deep bonds of friendship that make these events so difficult. However, most of the people I buried were old; it wasn’t hard to rationalize that they had lived their lives and it was their time to go.

Fifty years later, I’m not burying old folks; I’m burying friends—people I’ve known, loved, and worked beside for nearly forty years. I don’t like it. Some might say it’s because in burying them, I have to face my own mortality. I don’t think that’s the issue. My mortality looms before me with increasing clarity with each passing day. I have no trouble grasping the fact that there are far few years ahead of me than are behind me. And while I have no desire to leave this world before my time (and hope that time is years in the future), I’m not afraid of it. 

What I don’t look forward to is saying goodbye to friends and family. I don’t like it when they leave the world (and me) behind, and I don’t like the prospect of leaving behind those I love. Parting for me is not sweet sorrow. It is sorrow, plain and simple. But it is not without hope.

The Gospel is crystal clear about the future of those who claim Christ: we will be with him, and it will be good. Many of the details are disputable; we don’t know what we’ll look like, but we know we’ll be recognizable. We don’t know how God divvies up rewards, but we know he will judge rightly. When I say, “we know,” it’s a knowledge born of faith, not of scientific certainty (which is not always as certain as we think). I have not seen with my eyes the risen Christ, yet I believe in his resurrection, and its derivative, my own. Although it is a matter of faith, I can declare that this faith has changed my life. It’s quite possible that much of what I believe about the afterlife is not quite true, but I know it’s true that without Christ, my life would be far different than it is, and it wouldn’t be good. But my life IS good because confessing and following Christ has brought me a goodness I would not otherwise have known. So if life with him is as good as I know it now, being with him in greater measure after death will be even better. 

In the past seven months, I’ve buried two dear friends. No doubt, there are more to come, and though I don’t like it, I cannot escape it. It is the way things are in this fallen world we call home. The Good News is that this is not our final home. We look to a new heavens and a new earth, a place Jesus has been preparing for us for the past 2,000 years. Considering that it only took seven days to make this one, that one should be a beaut! Best of all, Christ promises to gather all his children around his table, at which will be no empty chairs.