17 December 2009 No Comment

Let me make it clear: I don’t use the word ’secular’ and I don’t like it when Christians use the word ’secular’…… I think ‘Just what part of creation are you saying that Jesus is not Lord over or…how is ‘Incarnation’ limited?’

However, a week or so ago, someone asked me to do a secular funeral for their relative. Run that past me again: they asked for someone, knowing that they were a minister, to do a ’secular’ funeral? No: I didn’t get it at first.

Ten years back I would have said ‘no’… but I live in a village- here people and trust are more important than fixed definitions. I said ‘yes’…figuring that God is bigger than secular and the way of Jesus is not to force: ‘You have to have x,y,z and such and such dogma…oh and by the way God cares for you-he really does.’

I went to visit and found a level of honesty that I could not help but respect and an early childhood trust that had been bruised by harsh religion. Often when I meet someone who is hostile to faith I find this. We have to learn to tread softly….In that case, I figure, it’s we the faithful that have to serve and earn the trust, not place more demands.

At first, using no Christian imagery seemed harsh and empty, yet at the funeral, about which I guess I prayed more than usual I sensed God present………and that ain’t platitude. And the God issues came up more in a supposedly ’secular’ setting. Funny that…. perhaps God is less fussy about what could be holy than we are.

And I’m climbing in the car, trying to make sense of it all, and my cd player came on with Sufjan Stevens singing ‘Amazing Grace’.

I can’t make sense of it…yet somehow as I hear those words I can.