10-When Death Comes
X. When Death Comes OUR MINISTRY IS CONCERNED WITH LIFE AND DEATH with, life in two worlds, and death in this one. And perhaps no part of our pastoral mission is a greater test of what is in us of the spirit of Christ than our ministry to grieving hearts in the time of death. And with death comes the service for the dead, and the ministry of comfort and strength for their loved ones. Funerals are, particularly, a service which must never be for us a common thing. If ever our Lord has touched our hearts with tenderness and thoughtfulness of others, it will be manifest at this time. For a pastor a death means much more than a funeral. It means a service to be rendered from the moment he is called about the fact of death, and extending, in most cases, for many months to come. There is usually no delay in notifying the minister when death has come. Let there be no delay in his reaching the home that is bereaved.
It means much to a family to know that their pastor counts his service to them in their critical hour as something that takes precedence over everything else. It may be that they are not yet ready to make arrangements for the funeral, but they are ready for their pastor’s love and comfort and prayer. The minister should meet them first of all as a comforting friend, not as one who has called to make arrangements for a funeral. Sorrow fills their horizon. We must in no way belittle it. It is not our task to try to explain it away, but to bring them close to God. It is not ours to suggest that things might be worse. It is worse for them. It is ours to let G-od in for them. It is not often that the grieved are rebellious. They are often bewildered, and want, above all, someone upon whom they can lean, in whom they can trust, with the confidence that he understands how they feel, and feels with them.
Phillips H. Lord, as Seth Parker, once told the story of a young widow who seemed inconsolable when, after a few months of married life, her husband was killed in an accident. None seemed able to help her. She would not leave the house. No one could cheer her. She did not want them around. One day an old doctor friend dropped in for a call and stayed the afternoon. The next day she was out in her garden tending her flowers as of old, and the following day she went out to do her marketing. And soon she took up her life in a normal way again in spite of lingering marks of sadness. To her neighbors it seemed as if the doctor had worked a miracle.
One day Seth asked the doctor what he had done to soften her grief when all others failed.
“Well,” said the doctor, “I didn’t try to cheer her up as the others had done. I sat down and told her about losing Mary a couple of years after we were married, and how I’d loved her, and how hard it was to keep going after the Lord had taken her from me.”
“But didn’t Lucy start crying?” asked Seth.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But I moved over next to her, and I put my head down on the table and cried too.” 1 That is what Jesus did. At the grave of Lazarus, Jesus wept with the sorrowing sisters.
It suggests to us our first ministry of comfort, that sorrowing hearts should know, first of all, the depth of our feeling with them. When the bereaved family is ready to talk about the funeral services the minister can helpfully counsel with them, advising with them as to their own wishes, tactfully making suggestions when necessary, and avoiding always any sense of a stereotyped procedure on his part.
It is apparent that some of our funerals still have something of pagan practices about them.
There may be some things that we will feel should be more Christian. But funeral customs in some communities are so traditional that it is difficult to change them. However desirable a change may be, in our estimation, we must be guided by local custom and make changes slowly. When changes are made in customary procedure, it is wise to do 1 Used by permission of Mr. Lord. only some one thing differently that adds to the Christian meaning of the service. And if the change truly does so, more and more people will wish to have it that way, and the old, less desirable custom can be ultimately dropped away.
One of the most desirable changes that has gradually come about is in the direction of brevity for funeral services. A service of from twenty to thirty minutes is not hurrying the last rites for the dead. The solemnity of the service makes it seem longer than it is. It is a long, long period for sorrowing hearts.
Many ministers no longer preach a funeral sermon. Many have abandoned the practice of even making any “ brief remarks” of a personal nature. The custom is growing for ministers to confine themselves to the words of scripture. This has been my own practice for many years. I was led to do this by the frequency with which I was asked to do so. I found in my experience that, when I most desired to make some personal reference to the Christian life of the one gone on before, I was. invariably asked not to do so, while occasionally, when little could be said, too much was expected. And thus for more than twenty years we have acceptably followed this custom.
Any minister preferring this form of service may not be able to introduce it all at once, nor should he try to do so, but he will come upon some who so request it. He thus has an opportunity to reveal how meaningful such a brief scriptural service, without sermon or eulogy, can be.
It would seem that the words of God himself should be the words to use at the time of death, especially as it is so often under circumstances beyond any words of our own. Certainly it is no time for man’s judgment, either upon the person or the circumstances of his passing. We ought to take our cue from Jesus here, who, knowing better than we can ever know, refrained from passing judgment in some astounding cases. We can read the words of God and dare to let them bring their own judgment. We can leave something to the intelligence of men. There is less glossing over the evils of men from saying too little than from saying too much. There are many things that we had better leave to Q-od. And it is well for the minister to remember that a funeral service is not his place to be prominent, that in all things he is merely the instrument of the voice of God, and not God himself.
Making a service truly meaningful in which the Scripture alone is prominent is complicated by the wretched way in which many men read the Scriptures. Here is literature beyond comparison with any other. We call it the Word of God. In it are challenge and demand, hope and assurance, promise and comfort, life and death. There ought to be something in the way it is read that would bring men to the edge of their seats in commanding attention. Instead it is too often their opportunity to sit back in ease and think of something else. The inattention of an average audience to the reading of the Scriptures is appalling. It is neither their fault nor that of the Scripture. It is wholly ours. The Word of God has never come alive to many people because we have always read it as a lifeless thing. “Without question every minister should seek some voice culture and practice in interpretation from competent instructors, until he learns to read the words of God in such a way that they will sound as a message from the Most High. To stumble over and to mumble the life-giving words, to read them as if they were some foreign language, is unforgivable. It is true that no mere elocution is enough. The well-known story of the actor and the Old minister, each reading the Twenty-third Psalm, and the actor saying, after the minister had brought silence and tears instead of applause, “My friends, the difference is that I know the Psalm, but this man of God knows the Shepherd,” touches the heart of it. But it must have been true that the old minister read the Psalm with something of his knowledge of God in his manner and his voice too. The Scriptures always ought to be a personal message for those who wait upon its words. It is a personal message the word of God himself for sorrowing, hungry hearts. And it is tragic that so many times it should fail to reach those hearts because we read the precious words in a manner so unworthy of them. I believe that if I had only one word of counsel to young men about a funeral service, it would be to enrich their experience in the reading of the Word of God. No practice in reading, or expense in private instruction, is too much if we can improve our interpretation of the Scriptures. They deserve an intelligent exposition always; and in the presence of grieving hearts nothing in their meaning of comfort, and their message of faith and hope and love, should be lessened by our poor, faltering interpretation of them. The prayers at a funeral service should, of course, be comforting, and a solace of hope for sorrowing hearts. There can be thanksgiving for the life of the one taken away, and praise for faithfulness of life and service. Such praise should be in sincere gratitude, and not made the occasion of eulogy in prayer. A brief prayer for God’s blessing upon his words of truth may be made before the passages of scripture are read. This will bring home to the hearers the truth expressed by Peter, who said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” No form of service can be laid down for every circumstance. Some people desire music at the service; others do not wish it at all. If there be music, let the minister suggest, as he has opportunity, some meaningful hymns of hope, and trust, and praise. One of the most impressive services I ever witnessed was that of a home missionary in whose service the congregation joined in the singing of “ Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand,” with his widow raising her voice with others in the glory of the thought. Instead of hymns sung, they may be read; and sometimes, after the hymn has been read, the organist might play it softly as the words silently sing in the heart to the accompaniment of the music.
Every minister would do well to gather from many sources different funeral services, poems, hymns, that his services and passages read do not become stereotyped, either for himself or for some who may hear him frequently. Passages of scripture will, of course, be chosen with reference to the particular occasion. There are passages suitable for the funeral of a little child, and others for those of three-score years and ten. “We will need to be prepared to officiate at services for saints and sinners, for those with faith, and those with no faith at all, for some to whom the house of God has been the home of their soul, and for others who have been utter strangers to the church. And sorrowing families will differ, too, in their spiritual experiences. These various circumstances will determine the choice of scripture, and, furthermore, make it clear that no set form of service can serve for all funerals alike. The services at the grave may be varied from the familiar committal form. Many people desire that the committal words be omitted altogether. When any fraternal order is to have part in the funeral service, the minister should meet its representative that there may be a mutual understanding about the order of service. Usually the fraternal service is conducted at the grave and takes the place of the minister’s service. Courtesy requires the minister to remain through the other service, and customarily he is asked to conclude the entire service with the benediction.
Turning from the grave the sorrow is not left behind, nor is the minister’s task of comfort ended. Bereaved hearts will need his help for a long time. Our greatest ministry of helpfulness may be rendered in the days and weeks that follow. We can be of help through counsel not to make decisions as to sweeping changes too quickly.
We can help much by just letting the sorrowing ones know that we have not forgotten. Eecognition in our prayer when they attend the worship service for the first time, a call made upon the anniversary of the remembered day, and anything that shows our understanding heart, will be a ministry of comfort, if indeed it be that our service has not been, as it never should be, a professional one. The matter of fees for funeral services is a real problem. It seems to be increasingly the custom to send the minister some fee for his services, even on the part of his own church members. No minister should do anything to encourage it. It is, however, exceedingly difficult to discourage it.
Even a public statement that no fees are expected seems to be inadequate. When a fee is offered it is embarrassing to the giver if it is refused. He is led to feel that he has done the wrong thing.
Recently I told a young widow of one of my officers that I felt embarrassed by her having sent me a check for the funeral services. She wept bitterly about that, saying that the last thing she wanted to do was to embarrass me. I found that it would have been better for me not to have tried to return it. Sometimes the minister is under some personal expense, and often this is not paid. The fees received may equalize that for him. One can return the gift, if possible, or accept it with a note of thanks, and use it for the church, or the poor, or for some book in memory of the one for whose service it was given. The funeral is, indeed, a spiritual opportunity.
People are eager to believe in something. It is true even of unbelievers. There is nothing very happy about infidelity at any time. And it all comes home with sharper reality in the presence of death. Even Eobert G. Ingersoll, by the side of his brother’s grave, spoke of “the rustle of angels’ wings.” A minister’s presentation of eternal truths, his own confidence and assurance, and his sense of spiritual values, can bring to the shadows of death the light of a world unseen. At this time ears are attentive and hearts are open. This is our opportunity to lift a whole company of people into a fresh sense of God’s nearness and reality, and help to invest their daily life with a new and finer meaning as the values which are imperishable are brought home to them. And out of this ministry to others in bereavement and death some strength and faith and blessing should come into the pastor’s own life. Leslie Weatherhead says that one of Ms friends, passing through deep sorrow, said to him, “If I could have my life again, I would include that experience of sorrow because it taught me so much about God and about life.” The true minister has not only his own sorrows, but those of others upon his heart. They too can teach him about God and about life. And God and life must be very real to him if he is to minister to men in any way whatever, whether in joy or in sorrow.