Have The Funeral
I once heard a preacher say that it isn’t necessary to be everlasting in order to be eternal. He was commenting on the unfortunate habit that we preachers (especially during church services) have of talking too much. It is an ancient vice. According to Acts 20:19, even the apostle Paul preached so long on one occasion that a young man in attendance not only fell asleep and fell from the balcony, but also lost consciousness and had to be resuscitated. I am doing my best, as another preacher advised, to say more about less. In this regard, the scriptures are a noble example. I marvel at how deftly the scriptures load so few words with so much weight.
Genesis 35:19 is a sterling example. It simply says:
So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Bethlehem.
What a short, simple sentence! But it carries so much weight. It carries us back into the heart of Jacob, one of the pivotal characters in all of scripture. His story occupies ten of the fifty chapters of the first book of the Bible. Jacob is highly relatable. He was far from perfect, and struggled all of his life with various shortcomings and mistakes. However, he was a fighter who loved God and loved his family. Not only did Jacob love God, but God loved Jacob, blessed him richly, and even changed his name. Genesis 32:28 refers to Jacob as a “Prince” who had power with “God and man.”
But this Prince had his share of pain. And perhaps the most excruciating pain of all is loaded in those brief words cited above. Rachel was the love of Jacob’s life. Jacob loved Rachel so much that he endured 14 years of trickery from her father in order to secure their relationship. Jacob loved Rachel so much that their first son Joseph was his favorite, a favor that he evidenced by giving him preferential treatment and exquisite gifts. And Jacob loved Rachel so much that although she only bore him two children, he esteemed her more highly than his other wife Leah( although Leah bore him more children and children were viewed as a source of wealth, pride, and favor in biblical times). Rachel represents who and what we love.
So this short, simple sentence is doing much more than just telling us that a woman died and was buried. It is telling us that a man lost the love of his life, and he buried her—but he kept moving. It is telling us that in life, who and what we love may die, but we must bury them—and keep moving. According to Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her book “On Death and Dying,” there are five phases that we must pass through to adequately heal from any loss. They are:
Anger
Denial
Depression
Bargaining
Acceptance
These phases are not sequential, some of them may take longer than others, but all of them are necessary to prevent us from being immobilized by our losses. In my own life, denial is the phase that has proven to be the most difficult to transcend. I have been blessed not to have lost too many people that I love, but some of my other loves have perished—and I’m still in denial. Some dreams that I cherished, friendships that I valued, opportunities that I sought, and plans that I had invested in have all died and I realized this week that even though they may have died, I still haven’t had the funeral. I haven’t had the funeral because I am still in denial.
I am sure that I am not alone.
But until we face the death of our “Rachels,” and have the funeral, we cannot move on to purposes and plans that still remain. When our Rachels die, we may be tempted to die alongside them—because a future without them seems unimaginable, and perhaps undesirable. But we must remember, as Tennyson put it, ‘that though much has been taken, much abides,” and what abides must be protected. Otherwise, our grief will sabotage our future. To protect our future, we must have a funeral. When I say have the funeral, I mean to engage in a public acknowledgement of a death. To have a funeral means to talk about it, cry about it, laugh about it, and then bury it—in order to accelerate our ability to get over it.
This is much easier said than done.
But with God’s help, we will find a way.