Ken and I are trying to prepare for a few contingencies. After all, sooner or later we’ll have to perform a wedding ceremony, baby dedication, or funeral. Comes with the territory.

Baby dedications are fairly simple and don’t need an elaborate ceremony, and it all lends to a message that’s easy to preach and won’t require more preparation than others.  Weddings, on the other hand, are almost always elaborate, with many customs and such attached (such as whether the bride’s mother or groom’s mother gets seated first.) Not our forte – so we’ve found a couple of websites that outline wedding ceremonies from plain to extravagant. Not easy. But not rocket science for the pastor.

Funerals, on the other hand, are thorny. I think I could preach the funeral of a relative stranger or acquaintance, but how do you preach the funeral of someone you love? Our church members are our family – we’re united by the Blood, even if not by direct genetics. I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. And I suppose that preaching the funeral of someone we know is in heaven won’t be so difficult.  It is, after all, a celebration of one’s homegoing.

But what of funerals for children? That’s got to be hard. Families don’t want theological or intellectual explanations. Or worse, for someone we are 99.9% sure is unsaved (can’t discount that last-minute confession of faith, but I’m convinced they’re rare)?

I’ve tried googling about for examples on that last… and all I’ve found either comfort the grieving that because God is merciful, their loved one will find mercy. Er… no. If their loved one got judged on his own merits, rather than those of Jesus, that person is in hell. That’s a stark, cold, slap-you-in-the-face reality. I hate the thought so much that as I typed it, tears formed. Yet we can’t change reality. Truth is truth, no matter how unpleasant. At the same time, though, we can’t slap that family in the face with this fact. If they’re believers, they know it already; if they’re not, parading it around surely will not help. I’ve read sermons which are like this.

So – how do you preach the funeral of someone who wasn’t saved?