In an e-devotion last Spring I used a chapter in historian David McCullough's set of essays, "Brave Companions." In that chapter, McCullough describes travelling with a noted Midwestern photographer, David Plowden, as he went south from his home, a suburb of Chicago, to the prairies that lie two hours south of there, "South of Kankakee" (the title of the essay).
There are a lot of little towns dotting the prairies south of Kankakee, McCullough (author of the popular Truman biography) notices. One of them my wife grew up in first, Gilman. She and her sister are in Gilman today, on its only Main Street, to see the funeral director and plan my mother-in-law's funeral.
The photographer, Plowden, loved taking pictures of the cornfields and little towns of east central Illinois. He and McCullough particularly liked Gilman (this was thirty years ago). McCullough writes, "Half an hour later we are in Gilman, again on the Illinois Central Gulf [railroad], and he [Plowden] has already made several shots from a spot beside Jed's Yazoo Mowers ("Sales and Service"), where Main Street crosses the tracks. There is more to Gilman than Chebanse. A James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, is playing at the Palace up the block. There is a Ben Franklin, a Montgomery Ward."
Well, one of the problems with this paragraph is, there no longer is a Ben Franklin or a Montgomery Ward in little Gilman, nor nothing like it there anymore. In 1982 the Palace Theater no longer showed movies but became "The Pizza Palace."
But that's all right with Plowden. He takes photographs in part, he says, to preserve dying structures for all time. "You know," he says to McCullough, "what I really love about doing this? In a sense I preserve this little place -- I caught it, and it won't disappear. It's been held."
Yes, it's been held in a photo, but even that photo can get lost, deteriorate, and die. Nothing on this earth will last forever. It's hard for us to accept that. Even memories can fade. It's hard to watch someone with Alzheimer's forget the name of one of his or her closest friends. In reaction against change, we can invest in our history a romanticism, wish that we were back there, say that those were better times, and, through nostalgic actions, escape into that fantasy realm.
But that is not the way of the Spirit. To this day many Jews mourn the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem, and wish it to be reconstructed, not realizing what dangers might crop up if they ever tried. Some sit day after day after day along the "Wailing Wall" of what's left of that building, chanting and rocking back and forth, oblivious of the opportunities God gives us to do His will NOW. When the Samaritan "woman at the well" tried to compare her mountain temple with the Jewish one -- implying hers was better - Jesus replied, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem," and He later predicted the Temple's destruction.
But Jesus didn't mourn excessively that destruction. He saw in it the start of a New Era in the life of the Spirit of God. "God is Spirit," He told that woman a little bit later. "and those who worship God must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." (John 4:16-26) And we, too, when unwanted change occurs, can look ahead not in sorrow, anger, or fear, but in joy -- joy that, in any case, God is leading us and guiding us along a journey that eventually will lead us to a New Heaven and a New Earth.
So what is a funeral? I am about to be a part of one, as a mourner, not a pastor. Yes, we "mourn" the loss of a loved one; that is well and good. But is that the most important thing at a funeral - what we lost? The Spirit always impels us forward, as we continue our Adventure with Him. St. Peter calls us (1 Peter 2:11) "aliens and exiles," those who are sojourning to another, more promising land, a far country. As the lead singer of Switchfoot sings, "I don't belong here."
For my mother-in-law, it is definitely the beginning of a New and Most Glorious Day, beyond our fathoming. May the afterglow of that Spiritual truth for her light up this and every other funeral that claims to be Christian. "Because He Lives, I can face tomorrow."
David Hewitt
