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Pastor · Sunday Schedule · FBC
News
2001
From the Pastor
IN THE FACE OF DEATH
In less than a week period I took part in three funeral services, two church members and one family member. Strangely, these funeral services have not focused my attention on death but on life.
As I prepared each eulogy and meditation my thoughts were on the living person, the person being honored. The one person had been an educator, the other a deacon emeritus in our church and the third person a beloved aunt in my wife's family. To so designate these people, however, is only to identify them, neither describe or define who they were. Who they were was so infinity more that all our attempts pale with whatever is said about them. Just as they each possessed a unique fingerprint so each of their lives was a unique expression of who they were in themselves.
As the Apostle Paul says of all Mystery, "Now we know in part," so I say of each individual. The wonder of each life is so vast, but, this doesn't stop me from at least speaking a word or two of the memory I have of the person as I knew him or her. Underneath my words, however, I am shouting, "Oh, that we could see all this person was."
This season of Lent, through these persons' death, has brought me close to death, but it is life I find myself affirming. It is for me a faith perspective. I believe as I do about each person because I believe as I do about God.
I believe God loves each person, wholly, completely, as though that person were the only person in the world. To speak the memory of that person in a funeral service is in some small way an attempt to explain how God saw that person. It is a feeble attempt but at least, hopefully, it affirms the uniqueness of that person as loved by God. It begins to help me understand the great love out of which God sent His Son to earth.
In truth each eulogy, though perhaps focus on the person, is an affirmation of faith.
In speaking of the life of the person I am also affirming through that faith, that nothing known of that person is lost, for all is known by God, and what is known does not die or fade from memory but is lifted up into the presence of God. I do not speak of what was when I speak of that person, but what is, for in Christ and through Christ we are lifted into eternity in all the uniqueness of who we are as God has always seen us.
Thus, though I stand at the threshold of death, the door I see open is life. It is a door Christ opened for all of us in His resurrection. When Christ walked out of the grave on Easter morning He walked out for all of us and it is expressed for us in that great acclamation, "Christ lives and so shall we."
Sometimes we become side tracked in our lives and forget, momentarily, the preciousness of each person and the eternalness of God's Love for each of us, but never can it fully be forgotten because always before us will be Good Friday and Easter to remind us how God sees us in all His Love for us and how God sees life. It is forever.
I hope you will join me as we reaffirm this faith in the services of Holy Week and on Easter. You are uniquely you. You are loved by God. Christ is risen!
Dr. David W. Andersen
          
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