In ministry, you get to meet so many different kinds of people. So many interesting stories: Because of a connection I had to another Lutheran church, and given that pastor’s recent move to the East Coast (he had called and asked me if I’d consider this), I was invited to do a funeral for a man who had never set foot in a church, except for maybe in his broken childhood.
I said I’d be willing to meet with a family member -- but he didn’t have any family...only a very close-knit community from his local watering-hole in Mission Valley. “His only community, his only family is his local bar?”
I laughed, rolled my eyes (because I was on the phone). But set up a meeting with his friend anyway.
Turns out that the man who had died was an incredibly interesting person -- an accomplished theatre and television producer, winner of half a dozen Tony Awards! Loving, charitable. His dearest friends wanted the service to be on the beach...and they wanted it to be a sort of Viking Funeral. Do you know what a Viking funeral is?
The idea is that you take a person’s belongings -- in the old days that meant everything, now it means those things that symbolized and meant the most to the dearly departed -- put them on a small Viking ship, push the ship out into the water...and set it on fire!
I was a little fuzzy on how this was going to work in the San Diego Bay. But totally intrigued.
They wanted a Viking funeral because apparently Richard -- who obviously had a flare for the dramatic -- had done his own Viking funeral at an earlier time in his life...
Yeah, the reason he didn’t have any family, except his local pub community, was because in the middle ages of his life, he had had a funeral for them and a bunch of other sad parts of his youngest years. I think when he was about 40. He had an event, his friends told me, where he brought symbols of all of that, set them on fire and pushed them out to sea.
In ministry, you get to meet so many different kids of people.
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I don’t know if you find this funny or sad or none of the above or all of the above. But the image of bringing the old parts of ourselves, dramatically setting them aflame and out to sea, strikes me this morning as we get back into Colossians!
“...when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God...and when you were dead in trespasses...God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us...nailing it to the cross.” I hear that now and think: Viking funeral! Baptism as Viking funeral. That’s what I want you to walk away with this morning.
When we are baptized into Christ, it’s like all our sad, sinful stuff is dragged out, set aflame, and pushed out to sea. And all that’s left is blessing and joy.
You might laugh or be sad at the fact that Richard’s only friends -- his only family -- were his drinking buddies. But I could tell very clearly in that afternoon with them on the beach, that all that was left for him was blessing and joy. It was a wonderful, deeply spiritual, loving group of people, non-Christians doing what I wish more Christians would do:
there was only love and pure life present in the stories and the laughter and tears and food and fellowship.
In baptism, we believe, our old self is drowned, as Paul proclaims.
And baptism happens for us Lutherans and Catholics usually at a very early age. That means our whole life is lived with nothing but blessing and joy. Our old stuff is dragged out and drowned.
We are rooted in Christ through baptism! We are so deeply buried in God’s love! This is the fundamental truth for us. Sin and sadness gets in there, to be sure, but baptism and the daily renewal and remembrance and celebration of our baptism gives a daily Viking funeral for all the sin and sadness.
What is it for you that needs to be lit on fire and pushed out to sea? The good, the bad, and the ugly? What is it that we need to let go of, so that there’s only blessing and joy, peace and grace?
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Just a caution and a nuance here: I don’t mean we need to bury to some difficult realities that need to be dealt with. The image of the Viking funeral is powerful, I think, because it means bringing certain things out, into the light: naming an abusive from a parent (perhaps), bringing out into the light a debilitating and burdening secret that’s kept you locked up for years. I’m not talking about burying the ugly stuff and just pretending that everything’s good and beautiful. I’m talking about being honest before God, and then letting it go...letting God take it out to sea and off our hands rather than you having to keep bearing that heavy load by yourself.
I said that the friends wanted Richard’s memorial service to be “sort of” a Viking funeral. That’s because we didn’t actually send it out to sea. What they did was they simply built a bonfire on the beach, and before starting the fire, they set a beautiful model Viking ship in the center of the wood. Inside the ship were Richard’s ashes. And then, they set out 4 or 5 long tables of his belongings, and invited people to take any items of clothing they wanted -- I grabbed some wonderful pairs of socks (he was known for his vibrant, colorful socks) --
and then whatever else was left on the tables, we were invited to take that, and put it on the fire, once the fire was ablaze.
It was really powerful, as the ship burned, and flames rose, and friends raised glasses and wept and hugged and laughed. I had never seen anything like it. It was beautiful. The community had dragged the stuff out into the light, carried some of it home with them, lightened the load, carried the load together. And in the end, there was only blessing and joy. (Doing grief, sadness -- it turns out -- is a form of blessing.) In the end there was only love.
“Therefore,” Colossians says, “do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals...These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you...puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.”
Sisters and brothers in Christ, we are rooted, we grow together (thinking of the children headed to camp), we are built up, in love. And that love is from God, who is made know to us in Christ Jesus, who weeps with us in our sorrow, who rejoices with us in our celebrations. We are built up, in love. And that love is from God, who challenges us when we get too comfortable, and who comforts us when we are overwhelmingly challenged. We are built up in love, as we gather around the foaming waters of the font (if you can’t see the foaming waters there, then we need to get a bigger font -- but I trust that you can), as we gather around those waters that lap up on the shores of our lives, know that we are built up in Christ, built up in love, built up in peace, built up in grace. We let the sin go. We entrust ourselves to the one who sets the fire. And in the end, there is only blessing and joy. Thanks be to God. AMEN.
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