Death Hits Home (by John Frye)

My mother died last Wednesday. I am thankful that Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and the Life, gets to have the final word: glory. What feels like ‘the sting of death’is only the expected and natural process of grieving. My mother was a life-long devoted follower of Jesus with a minor detour into a false version of Christianity due to some serious, relational hurt in her life. My mother and father divorced when I was ten years old. Truth prevails; the gospel truths she learned as a child set her free from the delusion of heresy.

As a pastor, I have officiated who knows how many funeral services. None of them prepared me to officiate my mother’s service. She was eighty-five, in poor health (she had battled cancer and won), some degree of dementia, and had a broken hip from a fall. The vibrant, joyful, ever-optimistic woman who raised me in life and in the faith suffered the life-taking ravages of a world subjected to the groanings of creation in its futility. Yet, her final words spoken to my step-father were these, “I love you, Neal.”  Her final words to me, “I love you, John.”My mother banked her life and her eternity on the love of God revealed in Jesus the Christ.

My mother told me stories about my life even before I was born. She said that God assured her she would have a son, that she should name him John, and that her son would be a messenger of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I wanted to be a jet-engine mechanic. Yet, God met me, redeemed me, and called me into vocational Christian ministry. I don’t mind at all being a fellow-shepherd serving under the direction of the Chief Shepherd, Jesus Christ.  One of the first books my mother gave me when I was in high school was a collection of poems (she loved words). In the cover, she inscribed a short poem by John Henry Newman.

I sought to hear the voice of God

And climbed the topmost steeple;

But God declared, “Go down again,

I dwell among the people.”

As I look back, that simple poem helped navigate the direction of my life. When I was in junior high, my mother taught a Child Evangelism Fellowship, after-school class in our living room. I learned fascinating Bible stories via the high technology of the flannel graph board and learned the great hymns of the faith.

Feelings were paradoxical, even surreal, as I stood before her coffin looking at a face so unlike the face stored in my memories. My mother was always a stunningly beautiful lady. (She won a beauty contest as a 17 year old.) Our four daughters had a hard time as well reconciling their memories of “Grandma Margaret”with the body they saw a few days ago. “We want to remember Grandma as the laughing, loving person who hugged us tightly and kissed all over our kids.”

Qoheleth wrote that it’s better to go to a funeral than to a party. Why? Because death is the destiny of us all. I and my whole family, my stepfather and his relatives, and my Christian friends—all of us find comfort in One person: Jesus Christ. Jesus faced and endured death for us all so that whenever a child of God departs this life, the destiny is eternal glory.