CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter--ALL ALONE AT THE GRAVE [F, 4-21-23]
I’ve probably written about this before, but I forgot about it until something prompted me to tell it in a recent EZ Club meeting.
EZ stands for Evening Zoom. That’s when Helen and I meet, every other week, with friends of yore who live too far away to see in person. Talking with them brings up stories of long ago.
Like the time I did the funeral of a homeless, nameless hobo in Bloomington, IL.
I suspect that the sheriff didn’t want to ask a real minister to do a funeral for a nameless hobo. I wasn’t real. I was a campus minister, the lowest of the low in the clergy pecking order. Especially in those days of Civil Rights and Viet Nam, when campuses were in turmoil. The sheriff was right: a homeless dead man and a campus minister received equal measures of respect.
I hadn’t always been a campus minister, though. I’d been the pastor of congregations for eight years before campus ministry. I had done plenty of funerals. But at all those funerals, there had been other people there besides me and the corpse.
I went to the cemetery at the appointed time. The sheriff and undertaker were standing beside the hearse, chatting. I had sort of assumed we would do a little procession from hearse to grave, the usual way, but the sheriff handed me a check, gestured toward the grave and went on talking to the funeral director. Didn’t even say “hello.”
I wandered over to the grave of the man passing through our town, the man with no name, who happened to die while there. It was a sunny day. A little before noon. We were all alone, the nameless one and I. I could tell that the sheriff and funeral director were eager to get done and back to lunch. So I stood there, by the grave, and read aloud every word of the funeral service from The Book of Worship.
I think God understood.
John Robert McFarland
When I was a teenager and / or a young man, I used to worry about dying and having no one go to my funeral. Now that I am older, I don't worry about this. Maybe it is because when I got older, I cared less of what people think of me. Sometimes, I do things by myself. Afrer I do something by myself, a buddy of mine often says to me that I was not alone, that Jesus was with me. He is right. Jesus said, "Lo, I am with you always. Even unto the end of the world. Amen (Matthew 28:20 KJV)."
ReplyDeleteThanks, David. Good understanding of the gift of the resurrection. But I do hope you have a crowd at your funeral!
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