New Creation!

Sometimes it just all hits you at once. I have the honor of leading the memorial service for our sweet Carol Pope tomorrow while Jim is on the other end of life’s stage, welcoming a new grandbaby into the world. Then, mere hours later, I’ll officiate the wedding of a young couple, part of a whole gaggle of youth on whom I had the pleasure of learning how to pastor. “Marrying and burying,” as they call it, is the erstwhile business of parish ministry - now too often abdicated to uncles with online ordination certificates. It is possible to lose your sense of awe with such events if you turn them into rote function (or self-expression) and distance yourself from the depths of human experience encountered in these holiest of moments.Yet they are profound: these moments so sacred that we have universally ritualized them and passed down liturgies to guide us through them, desperate to soak up every drop of significance as we process together through a waterfall of human experience. He has set eternity in our hearts, and these are the moments designated for stepping back, trying to take in the infinite. Try to sum up a life, however long it spanned, however wide her impact. Try to imagine all the details of “better or worse” over the long course of “till death do us part.” Speak the mysteries of Christ’s love for the church and the resurrection of our bodies, laid down for good. It is an awesome responsibility and an incredible means of grace.I noticed that both Carol’s family and this young couple selected “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” to be sung at their respective ceremonies. It is a very true word that “streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.” Weddings and funerals, though vastly different in tone, are part of the same rich stream of mercy, from a Single Fountainhead. His blessings, bitter and sweet, beckon our faith-filled response.Alongside the depths and heights, funeral potlucks and wedding feasts, we gather at The Table for our daily bread. I can’t help but be grateful to the Lord for preparing this Saturday in concert with this Sunday. As we wrap up our study on The Apostles’ Creed, we’ll look at eternity together: “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” So what happens to us after our funerals, and why does God liken it to a wedding feast, and can celebrating these moments well tune our hearts to sing God’s grace in eternity? Let's explore it together.- Josh