Dead Body, Grieving Body

John died thirteen days ago on a Wednesday from Leukemia, a disease he had been battling for the last ten years. He was fifty-five years old with a wife, a son and a daughter. I didn’t know John, but I had prepared music which his family selected as “some of his favorites” for me to sing at his funeral the following Monday. I spent some of the morning rehearsing the unfamiliar music and as I sat occupied in the front pew - reviewing the lyrics in my head, humming to myself to warm up my vocal folds, and glancing at the bulletin to see when my turn would be – it was only slowly, with sporadic awareness, that I noticed where I was, that this was not merely another gig or performance.

The ushers gathered the extended family into the front two pews and Pastor Rich welcomed us with reverence and grace. He read slowly some scripture passages, pausing occasionally as he choked back his tears. John must have been a close friend of his, I thought. I stepped forward, slipped my guitar over my shoulders, touched the strings, and began to sing: “I can only imagine what it will be like when I walk by your side.”
As I sang I opened my eyes and saw mourning family and friends looking to me. And suddenly I was not singing anymore, but they were singing through me words they themselves needed to hear. I was carried by their grief to sing the song with new life and hope with strength I can only attribute to the Spirit of God. Their eyes were asking me, “Is there hope?” and by the Spirit my song cried, “Yes indeed!” I returned to my seat as a grieving friend.
A funeral is a unique place in which we together come face to face with the real possibility of resurrection. We peer through a dim glass to see whether the dead rise and at once see a reflection of ourselves. What stories will be remembered at my funeral? Who will be present? What would I have them say of my life, of my faith, or of my salvation? In the end, these are minor details that, although important, will be different from funeral to funeral.
What is present at every funeral, whether in a vase or a casket or in the awareness of our minds, is a dead body. We see the casket and it really could be holding any one of us. I become aware that all of my desires to make something of my life will at one point be halted and thus rendered futile. At a funeral, a coffin is for all of us either a dead end or a threshold to new life. And you look around through teary eyes at other teary eyes that all want desperately to believe, to see through the glass and know. The miracle of at a funeral is that a dead body might bring hope to grieving bodies longing for resurrection.