One day I received a call from a distraught family who wanted a minister to do a quick funeral. I say “quick” because they asked me to speak for only a few minutes. “We don’t want anything religious,” the son told me, “and nothing you do will be too short.” I asked him why it was so important for the funeral to be brief. He told me his family was not religious; his father, who had died suddenly, had never attended church. They did not even believe in God; the only reason I was called was because a relative thought a minister should be present. I made a deal with him. Yes, I would be brief; but I would have to tell the guests what I believed about death in general and Christ in particular. He reluctantly agreed.
If there is one word that characterized that funeral, it was hopelessness. Here was a man who had apparently made millions of dollars in the shipping industry, but now he was dead, and his body was to be cremated on that very day, after a rather long eulogy but a very short sermon....the shipping magnate at whose funeral I spoke in Chicago (was like) the rich man in the parable—and millions like them—have discovered too late that their worldly influence could not save them; nor could their wealth and reputation extricate them from this bind. Instead of victors, they were now victims; rather than bragging about their freedom, they now had to confess their enslavement.
- Erwin Lutzer