For a funeral I always ask the family and sometimes I have the opportunity to ask the almost dearly departed what hymns they might want to have sung at their funeral. I rarely come across someone who’s got that all figured out. So, I’m going to make it easy for my family when the day comes and, well, here’s my funeral list. I would like my funeral to start with “I Sing the Almighty Power of God” sung to a tune that I wrote for it. I should probably record it so that the musicians will know it and not play it to the tune of Forest Green which works for “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, but not so much for “I Sing the Almighty Power of God”. I am moved by the last two lines of that hymn: “While all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care, and everywhere that I could be, Thou, God, art present there.”
Next, I would have everybody sing, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” but do it the way my friend and contemporary Christian artist Glen Soderholm does it. The melody is the same as in our hymnals, but I like his accompaniment. I have found the end of verse two to be always the case and a helpful reminder. “Have you not seen how your heart’s wishes have been granted through God’s kind ordaining?” I would next have everybody sing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” to the tune of Nettleton. To me that hymn most adequately describes what it is to be human before a gracious God. We are “prone to wander” yet God tunes our hearts to sing his praise.
I would also have a couple of Christmas hymns at my funeral. “Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus” to the tune of Hyfrydol. That’s a song of hope and my prayer for this messed up world. We would also have to sing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”. That would serve as the theology lesson for the day. It is all about God with us as the man Jesus.
Next, we would sing “I know whom I have believ-ed, and am persuaded, that he is able, to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.” That’s an appropriate hymn for when you’re leaving people you love behind. That’s also a very special hymn to me because whenever I would go back home when Mom was alive she would pull out the old hymnal of favourite hymns and start playing that one and that’s the one I will always hear her voice singing in my head. We’d also have to sing “In the Sweet By and By” because in the weeks before my dad died my sisters and I sang that with him as best we could in harmony. Dad always wanted to sing bass in a Gospel quartet.
I would have three passages of scripture read. Psalm 23 KJV of course. Isaiah 35 about the desert blooming. I’ve seen those deserts in bloom. 1 Corinthians 15:51-58 about resurrection and when it comes to where it says, and I would have it written in the bulletin “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?” and everybody could shout it at the top of their lungs together, And then again at the graveside too! Whoever is preaching need not say anything about me, but rather proclaim Resurrection into Creation made new because Death is not the last word in God’s very good Creation.
Finally, the service will end with “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” to the tune of Hyfrydol. I want all them grieving people leaving with a taste of being “lost in wonder, love and praise.”
Oh well, talking about your funeral list may be a bit morbid but I think what we have here in Philippians 2:5-11 is Paul’s funeral hymn. Whether or not he wrote it is not known to us. He wrote Philippians from prison in Rome. He writes with confidence that he will be released, but he does so recognizing that it was highly possible that he might be martyred there in Rome. So, his death was on his mind and he used this hymn to speak a word, maybe his last word, to the church at Philippi who were in the midst of a conflict. Two leaders in the church who had worked alongside Paul to plant it, Euodia and Syntyche, were at odds. Paul wants them to get past their conflict by having in themselves the same attitude of humility that Jesus embodied.
The hymn tells us that though he was equal to his Father, Jesus humbly set aside all claims to equality with God and became a man, a servant, a slave. As a man he humbled himself unto death, indeed death on a cross. So, God the Father has exalted him so that everything must bow to him, to the Father’s glory.
This hymn preaches. At its heart is the message that Jesus did not do what worldly power does, which is to exploit status and power for his own benefit. He let those worldly powers who were claiming to be gods or even to have power over God do the worst they could do to him...death on a cross in utter humiliation. The Prince of peace, Lord of all creation – the powers put him to death in the way they put treasonous thugs to death. Behind the scenes, undergirding these men who would be gods, were the powers of sin, evil, death, even Satan was in there deluding them that they had power even to put God to death.
But Jesus stuck to the plan of humbling himself. Though he was God he did not use his power as God to assert himself and to bully the powers aside to set himself on a throne as King of the World. Rather, by his humiliating death he unmasked the powers and shamefully exposed them for the petty tyrants they are. The worldly powers kill the innocents, kill the good, kill the meek, kill the faithful, kill those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, kill those who mourn, kill those who show mercy, kill the pure in heart, kill the peace-makers, kill those who heal people, and worst of all the traumatize and kill children. They kill to keep themselves in power. By exposing their petty and shameful behaviour Jesus opened our eyes to see the powers for what they are and even to see ourselves for what we are - complicit. No one can hear the story of Jesus and his death and say anyone other than Jesus was in the right. Well, not only did Jesus unmask the powers. He shows us what God is like. Jesus on the cross is the very nature of God.
Jesus and his cross is the way God establishes his kingdom on earth. His way, the way of humility, of emptying oneself of power and status in order to bring forth healing to this creation’s brokenness is the way we, his followers, are to conduct ourselves…yet, not simply in imitation of Jesus, but because we have his mind/attitude in us. He has poured his Spirit into us making us able to be humble as he is humble. He has made us able to bend our knees before him. The challenge we are faced with every moment of every day is whether we will empty ourselves of prideful opinions, judgemental oughts, and attempts to get our own way and yield ourselves to him? His kingdom comes amidst each one of us. Amen.
