Please Don’t Say These Six Things at My Funeral | ChurchPOP

Please Don’t Say These Six Things at My Funeral | ChurchPOP


Chad Bird's post on ChurchPOP makes for fun reading about that which we all fear:  funerals.  Like other life celebrations--weddings, graduations--these events have become so scripted and filled with bland assurances that the events--as rituals--have been drained of meaning.  No wonder Donald Trump is doing so well in general election polls:  all the institutions that once underwrote American cultural meaning(s) have been shown to be unloyal, unworthy of trust, and quite corrupt in themselves.  So why not bet all the money on something new that promises a fix?  (That, btw, is a great story in itself; read that here.)

not my image--from the internet

So do funerals matter?  Absolutely--and not, as the old saying goes, for the living only.  The dead, Bird reminds us, still care.  Bird:

 They say the dead don’t care, but I’m not dead yet, so as long as I’m still alive, I’d like to have some say in what goes on at my funeral. And, truth be told, I think the dead do care. Not that they will be privy to the details of what happens at their own funerals, but they still care about the world, about their family, about the church. The saints in heaven continue to pray for those who are still on their earthly pilgrimage, so how could they not care about them?

memento mori reflections, part MMXVI

Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.  

Perhaps such a sentiment, a reminder, is expected these days.  It is Lent, after all.

However, this past Monday I received a much more shocking reminder:  Steve Webb, one of my Wabash College professors, died suddenly on March 5. Steve had taught Religion and Philosophy at Wabash for twenty-five years.  More recently he blogged regularly at First Things, taught at Christian Theological Seminary, and had started a prison ministry.  He had published over a dozen books on topics ranging from Karl Barth to education to vegetarianism to, in what turned out to be his last years, Mormonism.

source: Indianapolis Star obituary

All that production, though, doesn't cover half of Webb's impact at Wabash.  For a time, no faculty member came close to Webb's popularity.  Nobody had more advisees, and nobody taught more students (his courses routinely carried double the maximum enrollment).  Attending a lecture featuring Webb became de rigueur. And within Webb's own department was another prominent, universally-adored and well-published theologian.  At the time--well over a decade--most of us did not recognize the extent of the Wabash Religion department's productivity, and particularly Webb's contributions.

And, above and beyond all that, he was a devoted husband and father.  Steve himself saw the connections because he wrote about them frequently.  Here about soccer, and here about the "dietary celibacy" of dieting food fads.  Steve's mind moved several steps ahead of us mere mortals, being able to find theological reflection amidst the hum-drum routines of feeding the kids or watching them play their games.