“A boy who gave a helping hand.”
This has been a most difficult week for me. A young 15 year old boy was killed on Monday (March 21, 2011) riding his dirt bike on the street. His bike exploded when he was hit by a car. Burnt beyond recognition, his family had no way of seeing his body one last time. The heart of a family and a community is broken. The thin line that separates life and death is crossed. The clock cannot be turned back. A life, a gift of God so full of potential has been cut short.
As a community of faith we gathered this week to provide comfort and support to one another. We turned to God and prayed that God would draw near and lift us up out of the miry pit in which we find ourselves.
It fell to me to plan the funeral service for this young boy. Planning a funeral service for anyone is never an easy task. Somehow it is more difficult when it is a young person.
A funeral, for young or old, provides an opportunity give thanks for the miracle of life. In this respect it is like the sacrament of infant baptism. Life is a gift. It is treasured, both the joy and the sorrow.
When death occurs, we mourn our loss. We give expression to our feelings of grief. Our emotional response to death may run the range from anger, denial, guilt, lament, rage, resignation, and thanksgiving. The purpose of a wake and a funeral is to provide a safe space where we can give expression to our feelings.
In a funeral service we gather to worship God. For the Christian, the funeral service is a celebration of God's love, a love which is revealed in the life that has been given and lived. “We believe that for everything there is a season…and that… God has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3)
Worshiping as the body of Christ, we experience the moving presence of the living God in our midst. The future is open before us. The best of the past is treasured. The worst is forgiven. As we worship God, we are given a new identity as a child of God. In spite of the chaos and confusion that engulfs us when a death takes place we find we are given new roots and raised to new life as we worship together. Worship gives new meaning to our lives. In worship we discover what is genuinely important. The materialistic glitz and glitter, the gimmicks and gadgets, are revealed for what they are.
What is genuinely important takes on sharper focus. Life’s puzzles and predicaments are seen in a new light. We may not always understand them at first. But through time we see more clearly the direction of our lives. We develop a sense of purpose. We come to realize our life counts for something. Worship gives new hope to our life. We begin to see beyond the tragic and the terrible, the sadness and the sickness, as we discover anew the resurrection of Christ and new life in his way. When we enter into regular worship of God, we are no longer held prisoner by memory or sadness. We are reborn into a new life in Christ. We become and Easter people. We become the people of hope.
In John’s gospel there is a wonderful story of a young boy who gives Jesus a helping hand when he shares his lunch to feed five thousand people. This week as we celebrated the life of Kyler Thomas Russell Williams we experienced how God touches us in a life however briefly lived. We experienced in worship how God can raise us up, give us comfort, strength and hope to live life anew. To be sure many tears will be shed in the days ahead. The empty space at the table will be heart breaking. However “in the bulb there is a flower; …there’s a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me. …unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.” (from 703 Voices United)
