EASTER MATTERS...BUT WHY?
Thank you for all the kind words, texts, emails, and phone calls since you read Monday's message about my great aunt's funeral. It was a joyful celebration of God's grace through our shared lives together. The day could not have gone better. However, it was not the only funeral/memorial service I attended this week.
Tuesday, I was in Fort Worth with my dear friends DeAndrea and Aaron at a memorial service celebrating the life of their son, Anderson Maxwell, who was stillborn after 28 weeks. Ever since she let me know late last Tuesday night, my heart has been heavy because Erin and I know the pain of not bringing a child to a home and a nursery that has been lovingly prepared for that particular child, filling the rooms of the house with joy and love in hopeful anticipation of the new life that has become part of their parent's journey. It is a pain that no one can understand unless they have journeyed down this truly horrific road.
Having had to preach this kind of service myself, my thoughts and prayers went out to her senior pastor (for DeAndrea is on staff at Arborlawn UMC in Fort Worth), for there are no words that can possibly make your infant's memorial service 'good.' However, Ben Disney did a masterful job of focusing the conversation on celebrating God's grace shown to us all through Max's life, no matter that it was much shorter than any could have imagined.
As I drove back from Fort Worth Tuesday night, my mind was on these two services less than 24 hours apart, and on the continuation of our Wednesday Night study last night, where we explored Romans 8, which is one of my favorite chapters in all of scripture. Paul's words towards the end of chapter eight (emphases mine):
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Easter matters because we attend the funerals of 93-year-olds who lived a lifetime of faithfulness to Christ and his Kingdom as well as the memorial services of those who existed in the womb for 28 weeks and never got to the nursery that mommy and daddy so lovingly prepared for them.
Easter matters because when we attend funerals and memorial services, we know, by God's grace and the witness of the empty tomb, that death does not have the ultimate power in the universe. When Christ arose from the grave, the death that was defeated on Good Friday showed its triumph through the risen Lord.
Paul wrote of his conviction of the power of God's love through Christ - stronger than anything else in all creation - as the only source of our hope.
As much as we want to get to Easter Sunday, we are kidding ourselves if we think that Easter is in its proper perspective without going through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Without Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, we are really celebrating nothing on Easter Sunday.
Without Easter Sunday, funerals and memorial services of 93-year-olds and 28-week-olds are simply ritualistic gatherings of people without hope.
May we always be people of hope, convinced that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. May we live in such a way that we embrace that love fully, exercising our free will to run towards Christ and not away, so that when we do attend funerals and memorial services, our tears are accompanied by the joy of resurrection.
Grace and Peace, Lamar