“The test of a good funeral sermon is not how successful the preacher is in causing tears, but how successful he has been in drying them.”
I’m not sure who wrote that, but I read it years ago and have never forgotten it.
Preaching and leading a funeral service is difficult, and I have great sympathy for any minister who does so.
But the Christian faith is not complicated.
Christians have a secret weapon in the face of death. It is called the Gospel, and there is nothing more comforting, especially in bereavement.
The Gospel is the good news that the sins of all humanity have already been forgiven through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Salvation doesn’t depend on your performance, but on God’s.
As the Apostle Paul wrote, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins against them.”
That includes you and me, and that is the comfort God intends for every grieving heart.
But that comfort is all but absent in many funerals today.
Rather than focusing on what Christ has done for the deceased, the minister will often focus on what the deceased has done for Christ and for others.
This is called “eulogizing” the deceased, and it is a perfectly natural thing to do.
We can and should speak well of everyone. But at a funeral it is also necessary to say what holy Scripture declares about every human being.
The Christian faith acknowledges that “there is no one righteous, not even one,” and that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
That includes the deceased.
Only those who grasp that awful truth can appreciate the glorious truth of God’s love for all sinners through Jesus Christ.
Heaven is now open to all through the finished work of Jesus Christ, and it is the finished, completed, nature of his work that creates faith in the heart.
The cause of death is sin.
The cause of forgiveness and eternal life is Jesus Christ.
This good news alone brings comfort to those who mourn — even when there is doubt about the salvation of the deceased.
I was at a funeral recently where the minister struggled to find anything good to say about the deceased. But he dutifully did so in an attempt to bring some hope to the hearers that perhaps their loved one was in heaven.
Then he invited others to stand and speak, and the deceased’s son walked to the podium.
The son painted a very different picture of his father, a brutally honest picture of conflict and an on-and-off relationship.
The son then acknowledged his own faith in Jesus Christ, which was virtually the only mention of Christ in the service, then he sat down.
He seemed troubled and uncertain about his father’s salvation.
After the service, I thanked the son for his words and I said to him, “I don’t know how your father felt about the Lord, but I do know how the Lord felt about your father, and that’s what matters most.
“Jesus died for the sins of the world, and that includes your father,” I said.
I confessed to him that the more I look at my sinfulness and the more honest I am about my failures, the more I doubt that I am a follower of Christ.
But the more I look at the cross, my doubts disappear and the more confident I become that I belong to Jesus.
The more I see God’s unconditional love for sinners like myself, the more assured I am that I have a home in heaven.
It’s not my faith that creates that certainty, it’s the certainty of what Christ has done for all people that creates my faith.
I advised him not to focus on his father’s failures, but to focus on God’s love for his father revealed at the cross.
That’s how important the Gospel is, and no amount of eulogizing can duplicate the comfort that the Gospel alone provides.
We should speak well of everyone, especially those we mourn.
But at every Christian funeral, Christ must be front and center, and Christ must be the focus. For in him alone is comfort and assurance for all who grieve and for any who doubt.
The Rev. John Armstrong is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Columbus, and may be reached at gracecolumbus.org.
