One of the things the United
Methodist church is known for is that it will do a funeral for anybody. A
person does not have to be a member of the United Methodist church. A
person does not have to be a member of any church. A person does not even
have to believe in God or have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. In
fact, the United Methodist Book of Worship even has a specific part of its
section on funerals titled “At the Service For a Person Who Did Not Profess the
Christian Faith.” If anyone, or their family, wants a United Methodist
church and a United Methodist pastor to perform a funeral, we’ll do it.
No questions asked.
So, as we continue our sermon series
“Why Do We Do That?”, today we ask the question, why will we do funerals for
anybody? Why don’t we require a person to have been a member of our
denomination, or at least to have been a Christian, before we’ll do a funeral
for them?
And before we go any farther I want
to say again what I’ve said at other points in this sermon series, which is
that my goal here is not to criticize other denominations. Each
denomination has its own rules, and there are reasons why other denominations
have the rules they have. My goal here is not to tell other denominations what they should do. My goal here is to tell you why we do the
things we do as United Methodists.
But I have to tell you, this is one of the things that makes me
proudest to be a United Methodist. To me, one of the best things about
the United Methodist church is that we are willing to be there for people and
for families who are not of our faith and maybe are of no faith at all.
We are there for them, and we will help them through what is one of the
hardest things we have to go through while we’re on this earth.
So why do we do that? Well, there are a few reasons.
For one thing, there are all kinds of passages in the gospels and in
Paul’s letters about not judging people. We read one of them today, from
Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul tells us, “Who are you to judge someone
else’s servant? To their own master they will stand or fall.” In
other words, people serve God. Or they don’t. But as the old song
says, you got to serve somebody. And people may serve God, or they may
serve someone else, but they don’t serve me. And they don’t serve you.
So it’s not our business to judge them. God will judge them.
It’s our job to love people, not to judge them. And one of the
times we are most in need of love is when someone we love passes away.
Paul goes on to say, “why do you judge your brother or sister?
Why do you treat your brother or sister with contempt? For we will
all stand before God’s judgment seat...we will give an account of ourselves to
God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment upon one another.
Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in
the way of a brother or sister.”
You and I don’t need to judge anybody. Our church does not
need to judge anybody. God will judge them, just as God will judge us.
And I can tell you that God is a whole lot better at this judgment stuff
than I am. And God is a whole lot better at this judgment stuff than you are, too.
And you know, when you think about it, you and I have no ability
to judge someone else’s faith even if we want to. You and I don’t know
what’s going on in someone else’s mind or in their heart. We certainly
don’t know as much about those things as God does. We may see some of the
things someone does, and we may hear some of the things they say, but that’s
all. Almost everybody, even people we know pretty well, has a side to
them that they rarely if ever allow anyone else to see. God is the only
one who sees that side, and God is the only one with the ability to judge them.
And even if we think we know someone really well, we still don’t
know what may have been going on in their mind or in their heart in their last
moments of life. It could be that, shortly before the end, God entered
their heart, and they came to believe. You and I have no way to know.
Only God can know that. So we should let God handle it.
In fact, it could be said that if we were to refuse to perform a
funeral for someone, if we were to refuse to be there for someone who’s lost a
loved one and who is hurting, we would be doing exactly what Paul says we
should not do. We would be putting stumbling blocks and obstacles in
people’s way. We’d be making it harder for people to find faith.
Think about it. There are people who’s only contact with a
church is when someone they care about passes away. What they see from
the church and its people at that time is going to form their entire impression
of who the church is and what it stands for. And people see the church as
acting on behalf of God, what they see from the church and its people at that
time is going to form their entire impression of who God is and what God stands
for.
Now, put yourself in the place of that person. Someone you
love has passed away. Maybe your loved one was not part of a church.
Maybe they did not even have any particular religious faith. Maybe
you don’t even have any particular religious faith. But you’re hurting,
and you need someone. And even though you don’t particularly believe, you
feel like giving your loved one a funeral in a church is the right and proper
thing to do.
So you contact a church and a pastor. That’s probably not an
easy thing for you to do in your situation, because you really don’t know them,
but you do it. And you’re turned away.
How would that make you feel? To be hurting, and in need,
and to have taken a chance and reached out to a church, and then have that
church tell you no, we won’t give your loved one a Christian burial.
What’s your impression of the church going to be? What’s your
impression of religious people going to be? What’s your impression of God
going to be? That could become a huge stumbling block and a major
obstacle to faith.
If someone is hurting and in need, we want to be there for them.
We need to be there for them. God tells us to be there for them.
Every time I’m asked to do a funeral, I am aware that there are probably
people who will attend that funeral who have not been in a church in years.
Maybe they’ve never been in a church. They may never have met a
pastor before. What I do as a pastor, and what we do, all of us, as a
church, is going to form their impression of the church and of God.
If they feel acceptance, if they feel love, if they feel God’s
people reaching out to them and helping them in every way we can, well, who
knows? Maybe that will stir something in them. Maybe that will lead
to them giving the church a chance. More importantly, maybe it’ll lead to
them giving God a chance.
Maybe not--there are certainly no guarantees--but people are
certainly more attracted to love and acceptance than they are to judgment and
condemnation. Jesus recognized that, too. Jesus ran into all kinds
of people who lived questionable lives. Those are the “tax collectors and
sinners” that we hear about so much in the gospels. Jesus did not offer
those people judgment and condemnation. He offered them love and
acceptance and salvation. Sometimes they accepted it, sometimes they did
not. But that was their choice. Jesus still made the offer.
Jesus still treated them with love.
There are few things that can make us feel more vulnerable than
the loss of a loved one. There are few things that can make us feel more
lost, more alone. There are few things that can make us search for
meaning in life more than the loss of a loved one. When someone is
feeling those things, that is not the time for the church to turn its back on
that person. That’s the time for the church to come around that person
and embrace them in love. That’s the time for the church to support them,
and help them, and love them with our love and with God’s love.
So, why do we give a funeral to anyone who asks for one?
Because we believe it is up to God to judge people. It is up to us
to love them. That’s what Jesus told us to do. It may make all the
difference in someone’s life. Or it may not. That’s up to that
person and to God. But either way, we will know that we have shown God’s
love to someone who was hurting. And there is nothing we can do for God
that’s more important than that.
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