To comfort all who mourn

¹ The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, ² to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, ³ and provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  - Isaiah 61:1-3


On Thursday, I presided over a funeral.  I went over the service with the family two days beforehand, choosing the hymn and Scripture passages to be sung and read, helping them to visualize the moments ahead - helping me to visualize the moments ahead, as this was the first funeral I had officiated at, and I hadn't attended one in several years.  I spoke to the funeral home about the service arrangements the family had requested, met with the American Legion color guard that would honor the deceased at the graveside, stood beside the casket at the end of the service to silently witness their final goodbyes.  I greeted the family at each viewing and spoke a blessing over the reception meal served at the little church next to the graveyard.  I spoke the prayers and Scripture passages with conviction, with hope, with reverence.  In short, I did what I was supposed to do.


But this funeral was different from every other funeral I will ever preside over, in that the family involved was mine.  The man who delivered the eulogy was my father, the family members who read those carefully selected Scripture passages were my sister and cousins.  When I spoke the prayers, I had to resist the urge to refer to the dead man as "Pappap", because the man in the casket was my grandfather.


When I told my friends and various professors that I had agreed to officiate at Pappap's service, the most common response went something like, "Wow.  Oh, my God.  How do you feel about that?"  The honest answer was somewhere between deeply ambivalent and doggedly determined.  I knew that it would be difficult, maybe the most difficult thing I had done.  On the other hand...my grandfather was not a religious man, nor was anyone else in the family, and there were no other obvious candidates to officiate the service.  And the stark reality of the situation was that this - speaking the last blessing over him, walking his son and daughter through the reality of his death and burial - was the last thing I could do for my grandfather.  It's difficult to say no to a dead man, especially one who was famously infatuated with his grandchildren, even making six-hour round trips to babysit them when they were small.  I knew it would be easier on my father and aunt to deal with me than a stranger, that I could anticipate their needs and wants.  And in a very cowardly, selfish way, I knew it would be easier for me - that officiating would allow me to create a small amount of emotional distance from the awful thing that was my grandfather's death, focus on the minutiae of doing a job rather than dealing with the overwhelming flood of grief that threatened to engulf me.


In my last entry, I wrote that part of my job as a youth minister is to allow my heart to be broken by the kids and families I work with.  I am called to rejoice with those who celebrate, to comfort those who mourn, "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor".  Where do the personal triumphs and tragedies of life fit into this call?  Did I make a mistake in allowing my family to claim my pastoral services?  Or did I construct a more meaningful ritual than would have ever been possible with any other officiant?  Did I do my family a service or an injustice by separating myself, even partially, from their grief?


(Postscript: For those who wondered, the service went very well - two of my grandfather's brothers asked me to officiate at their funerals afterward, which gave my dad a good laugh.  On the whole, I think it was as positive and cathartic an experience as it could have been, for everyone concerned.)

Being called into the ministry is kind-of like being diagnosed with a fatal disease.

That’s a joke. Sort of. Not really.

Actually, every major life transition is like dying. Every time we start down a path, at some level, we must grieve the loss of the paths not taken. At some point, every seminarian reads Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 1969 book, On Death and Dying. (In my opinion, everybody should read it.) The five stages of grief outlined in that ground-breaking book are now virtually universally accepted. Some people skip stages, and some people take them out of order. But almost everyone who finds out that they’re dying must go through stages of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression/fear before they finally reach acceptance. Their loved ones experience these stages as well. As with anything, some people move more quickly than others.

All grief follows this pattern, or something very much like it. Whether we’re losing a friend, changing careers, or moving out of the house we grew up in, we simply cannot lose something that defines our identities without grieving the loss. Anyone who denies this is simply stuck in the denial phase, which is not a good place to be.

Nothing defines our personal identity more than our vocation… our life’s calling. Most of us were raised on a lie: “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up.” Yeah. Right. I wanted to be an astronaut. Then I tried to learn math… which, as it turns out, is incredibly difficult for some people. The truth is that God created each of us with a purpose. If we choose a purpose other than the one for which we were designed, we will suffer for it. That’s why so many pastors love the story of Jonah. At some point we all realized that “free will” just means that we’re free to choose to follow God willingly, or we can get dragged along in the belly of a fish. God will work either through us or in spite of us… the choice is ours.

But the choice is nonetheless hard. Saying “Yes,” to ministry means saying, “No,” to so many things. Not just vocations, but lifestyles. Pastors never know what it feels like to get a “performance bonus.” They never know the joy of reading “The Night Before Christmas” to their kids while tucking them in on Christmas Eve. There are many joys… a great many to be sure… But we don’t truly know what ANY of them are at the point when we must answer the call. We go in blind, or not at all.

That’s why we typically respond with DENIAL... which will be the topic of my next post.

In the meantime, let me say that it is an honor to be invited into this blog, especially knowing that I am the only one writing from the other side of ordination. The journey from candidacy to Elders’ Orders took me twelve years. But rather than bore you all with a blow-by-blow of my discernment process, I’ve chosen to start with a series of five reflections (six if you count this introduction) based on the stages of grief. While that may sound like a downer, grief is truly the most fertile ground for personal growth, which ultimately brings us joy.