06 Failed Funeral

I've been giving a lot of thought to what I would like them to say at
my funeral. These are the words I would want to hear: "Hey! He's
movin'!" THAT would be THE FAILED FUNERAL which is the
topic of today's sermon based on Luke 7:11-17 where there was one -
the funeral failed miserably! Jesus comes upon a funeral procession
in which a widow's son and only provider is being taken for burial. He
tells the young man to get up - AND HE DOES!
The closest I can come to that in modern times, is to tell you
about Dr. Ritchie, who was a young medical doctor in the military who
himself took ill. They weren't able to save him and they pronounced him
dead . In true military efficiency, TWO doctors declared him dead, but
he woke up in the morgue! However, the most interesting part of his
"down time" (or I guess it was "up" time) was that Jesus took him on a
tour of the many levels of the afterlife - including one place where scientists
were working on some the console of some very complicated machine.
Ten years later, he saw the console as the new atomic submarine was
being pictured in one of our major magazines.
This should change for us the way we look at "heaven" - not as
some place where we sit on a could and do nothing - which would be
hellish in my opinion (!, ), but instead continue exciting lives in which we
learn and grow and develop from where we left off here - figuring things
out - inventing things. It makes me sort of want to go there, but not just
yet! "I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep" as
the poet put it so nicely. And while I travel those miles, I learn from this
story THE most important kindness to practice - compassion. (There
isn't one of us who hasn't ask ourselves how much compassion we REALLY
have when we sit at an intersection, studiously avoiding looking at the
person there - usually with a sign, describing in summary fashion the reason
for his or her plight. You know his real plight may be caused by alcohol or
drug abuse, so you are disinclined to act with compassion for what may
be a ruse and a way for someone to make a very good living by playing on
the very quality the preacher is always telling you to have. Life is not
easy! Darn those preachers anyhow!)
One well known preacher from years gone by, George Buttrick
was hard at work on a sermon while aboard an aircraft. A seatmate
asked him what he was working on, and when he said he was a
Presbyterian minister working on his Sunday sermon, the man said, "I
don't get all caught up in the ins and outs of religion - the Golden
Rule - that's my religion - "Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you!"
Dr. Buttrick asked, "And what do you do?" "I work at the
university," he said, "I'm an astronomer." "Oh" said the preacher,
"I don't like to get caught up in the ins and outs of astronomy.
"Twinkle, twinkle, little star" - that's my astronomy!"
All religions encourage us to be compassionate - like Jesus was in
raising the son of the widow - widows fared poorly in those times. In the
early church, special thought was given to the supporting of the widows.
Now, according to an aunt of mine - "The widows support the church."
(I guess turn about is fair play.)
In any case, compassion is paramount in the philosophies of all
religions. The philosopher, Schopenhauer called compassion "the basis
of all morality."
That's explained by Dr. Walter Brueggemann, a biblical scholar with whom
I almost studied. I missed him by a semester when he was teaching at
Eden Theological Seminary from which I got my most recent degree.
Dr. Brueggemann says that "Compassion constitutes a radical
form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken
seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural,
but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness."
He goes on to argue that we should understand the compassion
of Jesus not simply as his personal emotional reaction but as public criticism
in which he dares to act upon his concern in the face of the numbness of
the society he serves.
We are a society numbed by T.V. and obsessed with celebrity.
Have you checked lately with how many celebrities end up with extensive
coverage on CNN news - on national news?
Have you noticed how they put those stories toward the end of
their broadcast so that you have to wait until then to know what what's
happening - how someone is doing in jail - how they got out of jail - how
they got put back in jail. Celebrities deserve our compassion too, but our
major compassion and our attention needs to go towards being sure that
others are not hurt or maimed because some celebrity thinks they're above
the law and can bread any law and get away with it. Money should not be
able to buy that.
That was the widow's problem - she had no money. In addition
to losing her son - children are supposed to die after their parents, not
before. She lost her security. Her son was the only one available to take
care of her in her old age. Now he was gone. She had no retirement
fund. She had no pension plan, no social security. The loss of her son
meant a life of poverty, hunger, disease and an early grave. This was the
reason for the compassion of Jesus, and Dr. Bruggemann was right. Jesus
HAD to act because society wasn't. This hurt, he declared is not to be
accepted as normal and natural but as abnormal and unacceptable - a
failure - a numbness of society.
Society itself is in a funeral procession - its own. Let's just
hope we hear Jesus' words to "Get up!" We need to move. We need to
have A FAILED FUNERAL. Hey! He's movin'!
A new Board Member of the Counseling Ministry of South Florida
said that she is willing only to work with organizations that can be great -
which I interpreted her to mean - making a difference through their
embodied compassion.
For the church this means raising people up even as Jesus raised
up the young man - taking people from death to life.
Janet Hellner-Burris, now a minister, told of being brought from
death to life as a teenager by Mildred who she calls her "Santa Fe Mama."
She took me into her apartment when I had no place to live, simply
because I was a member of her church and a young person in need.
It didn't matter that she was a middle-aged black woman and I was
a young white hippie. She opened her home and her heart to me.
She adopted me and called me her daughter.
"A few weeks ago," Janet says, "I made a quick trip to
Sante Fe to see Mildred...who had been on my mind a lot these
past few months since her Christmas letter informed me that her
only son, Mike died of cancer. I wanted to see her and tell her "I
love you" in person.
When we visited that evening, she explained in more detail
Mike's battle with cancer. I felt her pain as tears filled my eyes. I
would have moved heaven and earth to take away that pain, but I
knew that I could not. All I could do for her - that what she need
most from me - was to sit and listen to her sorrow."
Jesus calls you today to think of the people around you in your
church in your work in your neighborhood who are bearing grief - grief
over divorce, sickness, disability, unemployment, moving a home, a child
leaving home, the end of a friendship, and perhaps, the death of a loved
one and to listen to them, support them - raise them up!
Allow yourself to be touched by the grief of others. Jesus was not
a professional mourner who was paid to cry for the widow and lead the
funeral procession. He was not a member of the crowd fulfilling a noble
custom of attending a funeral in deference to the family of the deceased -
he was just someone passing by who allowed himself to be touched to the
core of his being.
Christians - the followers of Christ are not those who believe a
certain thing or those who insist that everyone believe as they do - Christians
are those who allow themselves to be touched to the core of their being
by the little deaths that people around them experience on a daily basis.
A kindness extended at such a time can last a lifetime. A kindness at any
time can be memberable.
Let me illustrate as I like to do. Not all that long after arriving here
in the mid seventies, I took the members of our youth fellowship to Channel
10 as a learning experience. I believe it was 1979. When it came time
for Don Noe to do the weather report, we were asked to step out. After
all a group of youth like that could make unwanted noise during such a
broadcast. But Don Noe himself intervened with great kindness and
insisted that we be allowed to stay in the room - which was saying something
to the young people that they so much need to hear - that someone
believes in them - trusts them. Needless to say they were properly quiet
and respectful during the weather forecast.
To this day, I never see Don Noe giving us the weather without
recalling that kindness from decades ago. No wonder he's lasted, not
only because of his skill, and his obvious love for what he does, but
certainly because within himself he has "the basis of all morality" -
compassion.
THE FAILED FUNERAL calls us to have compassion - the
Hallmark of the character of the Christ himself. We remember HIS
compassion - and with our compassion we become memberable.
Let's get movin' and when it's time to be in our own funeral
procession, they're be all kinds of people there hoping to hear these words:
"Hey! He's movin'!"

Sermon Notes(Not edited nor proofed)The Rev. Dr. Garth R. Thompson Pastor, M.B. Community ChurchA sermon is a simple truth told by someone whobelieves it to people he knows and loves (Phillips Brooks)June 10, 2007 10:30 a, m. Luke 7:11-17

"THE FAILED FUNERAL!"May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heartsbe acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.