"Our church doesn't have enough funerals", associate pastor John Stoltzfus said in his annual All Saints' Day sermon … Such a lack of funerals, says senior pastor Todd Friesen, is a missed opportunity for spiritual formation. A funeral, he says, is like the North Star in the sky, so that a navigator knows where the ship is and how to adjust its direction to get to the destination. At a funeral, "you get these coordinates" to position yourself in life, says Friesen.
We live in a culture that has forgotten how to help people measure their days. Through medicine and science, we know more about death and how to forestall it than ever before. Yet we know little about how to prepare people for the inevitable. The church is a community that teaches people how to live well by teaching them how to measure their days. Put another way, when the church incarnates a culture of resurrection - one that recognises the inevitability of death but not its triumph - it teaches people how to die well.
(quoted from "A Culture of Resurrection: How the church can help its people die well", in pp34-36 CT June 2010, by Rob Moll)
Moll's article reminds us of the lessons the Teacher seeks to pass on in Ecclesiastes. Many discern in Ecclesiastes the voice of despair, how everything one considers as valuable is actually meaningless, and therefore how every effort one considers worthwhile is actually futile. The fact is the Teacher wisely dispenses wisdom on how to live well - the art of living well in the light of the one common destiny that confronts all without exception: death and accountability before the Maker. Living with this destiny clearly in view helps us measure the true value of all things in life, while at the same time recognising the wisdom of pleasing God and looking to him to supply us with the ability to enjoy even this present life!
For Christians living this side of the cross, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus adds greater clarity on the guiding principle for living well - that though death is inevitable, Christ and all who are in him has triumphed over death. Thus while the Christian lives in view of death, he does not live in fear of death. As written by the apostle Paul, "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:55; cf. Isaiah 25:8).
Moreover, how then should we live? Paul continues, "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." (1 Corinthians 15:58). The Christian is able to confidently affirm that our efforts certainly do not count for nothing - if indeed we are doing all things for the glory of the Lord - beginning with the work of spreading the word of the cross of Christ, but continuing into living all of life in the light of his return in glory.
So for anyone wanting to learn the secret of a life truly lived well: don't bother with those expensive self-improvement seminars or courses. Check out a nearby Christian funeral service instead! It will help you fix your eyes on your "North Star"! It'll help you fix your eyes on Jesus!
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