I don't know why I was thinking about this today, but I was thinking about the one funeral I have done in 19 years of youth ministry. It was when I was in Tampa working as a HS pastor. It was for an 18 yr. old girl that I didn't know at all. She was killed in a car accident coming home from a late movie.
She didn't go to our church or any church for that matter, there was really no evidence that she had any kind of faith to speak of, and neither did her family. She was a wild child, she had "lived" a lot in 18 short years. I did the funeral because she was related to a family in our church and they asked for our help. I knew it was going to rough.
The first meeting with the parents was so sad. They were just lost. They really had nowhere to go with their grief. I wasn't a parent at the time, and now that I am, I understand the immense pain they were in, in some small way. The tragedy was, it was pain with no hope. They didn't have any foundation to deal with the pain. They had no shelter to run to. I would be devastated by something like this, but I believe I would have hope. They really had none. It was devastating to watch.
Is there any tougher funeral to do as a pastor? Surely one for someone very old or an infant would be easier, at least from an eternity perspective, or simply that the older person had lived a long life. Yet here was an 18 year old girl, lost in the prime of her life with an uncertain eternity. What do you say?
In many ways sadder still was what I saw as I did the funeral and looked out at all the teens gathered there, they had no hope either. There was no solid ground in their lives at all. I remember listening to them talk after the funeral about leaving there and just getting wasted, that was their only sense of relief, the only way to deal with the pain. My heart broke for them, I wanted to sit with them each individually and say, "It doesn't have to be like this, there is hope, there is a God who loves you and who has conquered death. There is an empty tomb."
In my sermon that day I talked about her story, about God's story, about their story and whether their story was ever going to intersect with God's. It's all I could think of to say. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in ministry. I have preached in front of thousands, spoke all over the country, been in mental institutions visiting broken students, but all that was nothing compared to this.
It was a very disturbing day. Full of despair. Yet in the midst of it these words echoed faintly in my heart, "I am the resurrection and the life, He who believes in me will never die."
I know that my faith in Jesus is not all about getting to Heaven someday, that Jesus is just as good for this life as the next. But on a day like that day, hope was a beautiful thing. Hope of eternity spent with Him.
Thank you Jesus.
While we may not have all the answers, at least we have some kind of comfort that there is something real that we believe in. It just seems like those that don't believe aren't necessarily those who don't want to believe. Honestly, who wants to believe in a belief system with a history book of some people with serious problems like us... well, maybe we do.
Anyways, those who don't believe dismiss it outright or has some kind of strong held ignorance or hate for the belief system. In other words, a blindness. I don't know, I guess I'm too stupid to have to do all the research to belief something that has proven itself to be true before then. Not that I'm not thankful for Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, or anyone else who went from atheist to the most well known apologists. Why I bring this up is that we have a hope in something real that others refuse to believe, despite it being unbelieveable on the bare surface.
In the midst of pain, at the least, there is God. God understands, even when people do not, and God loves, even when people do not.
On dying at the time of life, I would have to say that the easiest (and none of them should be really) would be someone who lived beyond life expectancy (which is about 77). There's no immediate family left behind to take care of beyond maybe an elderly spouse who's in their twilight anyways.
From an outside standpoint, a baby would be next, but the parents seem to wonder, "What if?"
Children under 12 who haven't yet gotten to that age where they are heading towards independence.
Then it's parents of young children, this is harder because even though the child has hopes and dreams, the family hurts worse from losing one of the parents at that age.
The roughest, depending on how it happened, are those who die as teenagers/single adults who are the most likely to be free to do what they want to do to change the world. The first steps of the dreams that have been dreamt are just coming together. Nick Adenhart of the Los Angeles Angels and his friends come to mind, killed by a drunk driver who oddly enough is around his age. I feel for those that were lost, but how can you be so stupid as a driver? That's beside the point to an extent, but still.
As for those left behind, it's why I'm still here doing what I do within youth ministry and want to do more despite the obstacles from others and myself. I don't get how the young people who have the resources to change their surroundings don't and those who want things to change can't do it. Anyways, why eat, drink, and be merry until you die? Seems like a waste. I know why people give up on life, but I also know why I haven't done it.
I hope that you reached some teenagers at that funeral. I also hope that any that attend mine just toss me off a barge or something else cheaper than turning me to ashes or worm food. Go throw a party and serve the community, do something that would make me happy if I was still there. What is unfortunate isn't that those students seemed to just be living for the day, because that's not a bad thing in of itself. Living for the day keeps a person grounded so that they aren't too far ahead of themselves. It becomes a problem when we thing about ourselves only and not about God and what he wants for us and for others through us.
Truly, Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and that was no more true than the day he came back. A day we just left behind yesterday. Celebrate, he is risen!
Posted by: Alexander Wilhelmsen | April 13, 2009 at 02:22 AM