Hello,
When I was 30 I looked like I was 16….maybe 18.
It was when I was about 30 that I was a pastor in Toledo, and in my ministry there I found myself doing a lot of funerals for people I had never met. So it was one day that I was asked to do such a funeral. My practice for these kinds of funerals was to meet with the family at the funeral home before the visitation was to begin in order to get to know the relatives, how they were dealing with the death, and learn a bit about the one who had passed away. As I came to the door of the funeral home, I was met by a short, stocky man whom I didn’t know.
“I am Pastor Nuernberger,” I told the man, “and I will be doing Louie’s funeral. Is Louie’s wife here?”
I wondered if he heard me….maybe he had a hearing defect….because there wasn’t any reaction to my question in his face. He just kind of stood there looking at me.
So, I repeated my introduction, “I am Pastor Nuernberger, and I will be doing Louie’s funeral. Is Louie’s wife here?”
He sort of grunted as he waved for me to follow him into the funeral home. He led me into the visitation room where about a dozen people where sitting in the wooden folding chairs that were lined up for services. A small, fragile woman was sitting in the front row to whom he led me.
He trudged up to her as if he was trudging through 10 inches of heavy snow and he said with a gruff voice, “Stella, I hate to tell ya, but this is the pastor.”
Well, as you and I walk up to the Christmas manger there’s a gruff voice from the world directed at us that says, “Folks, I hate to tell ya, but this is the savior.” After all…it is just a baby…a baby born in a dinky little dirt roaded town….a baby born in a remote mid-east country at a time in history when people knew little about the composition of the universe and what they knew we now know was wrong…..a baby of a tribe of people whose religion dealt in animal sacrifices and offerings of grain.
Just like that elderly man who looked at me and saw a wet behind the ears, “16” year old, clerical collared kid come to do a funeral for his sister who was deep in grief and thought, “You have to be kidding me.”, there is a natural tendency for people in our day (maybe including you and me) to see a diaper dirtying, manger laid baby born of simple minded people heralded as the savior of the world and say, “You have to be kidding me.”
In many ways, that disappointed man who greeted me at the funeral home was right. I was young, not as young as I looked, though. What did I know about the struggles of life? What did I know about tragedy and loss? What did I know about emptiness and grief?
I hope that I knew enough. I hope that I knew enough so that I could help that widow as she walked through the valley of the shadow of death, facing a life ahead of her that was completely unlike the life she had lived for decades, wondering if the hole in her heart would be a drain to empty her of any joy. Even though I may not have looked like it, I hope that my time with that family at that funeral proved to be what they needed and hoped for out of a pastor. I hope that when she shook my hand and with tears in her eyes said to me, “Thank you, pastor,” that her words were heartfelt.
I guess that it is the same thing with that Bethlehem born baby, heralded as the saviour of the world. Did the words that this baby spoke in his adult years to the outcasts and unloved have the power to redirect the river of hope to the hopeless? Did the hands that he stretched out to lift of those who the world had kicked and beaten down have the strength to push his way through the judgments of the world and stand up those who continue to be crushed by the mighty? Did the arms that were nailed to a cross have the capacity to gather up all the failures, the disasters, the guilt, and the shame of all who have stumbled through life and lead them through the darkness of death.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself…speak of whom this one who was Bethlehem born has walked into my life in a way that may not have been as visible as my time with that grieving wife in the funeral home, but just as present….and all I can say with heartfelt truth as I sense his loving embrace, “Thank you Lord.”
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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