Visitation of the Sick — Funeral Services
IT is a duty which every family in your congregation, owes to their pastor as well as to themselves that they should inform you promptly of every case of serious sickness. Nor can you be too prompt in responding to such a call. However busy you may be in preparing a sermon or in any commendable occupation, everything else must be laid aside; a pastor should be as quick to hasten to the room of sickness, as an ambulance is to reach a scene of disaster. You may find that your parishioner has been suddenly attacked with dangerous illness and that even your entrance into the sick room may be agitating to the patient; at such times you will need to use all the tact and delicacy and discretion that you can command. Do not needlessly endanger a sick body by your efforts to guide or to console the immortal spirit that may be hovering on the brink of the eternal world. Let your words be few, calm, tender, and every syllable you speak point towards Jesus. Whoever the. sufferer may be — saint or sinner — his failing vision should be directed to “no man save Jesus only.” Let the prayer also which you offer be brief, and in the tenderest language in which you can breathe out a fervid supplication to the God of all grace. It is not commonly the office of a pastor to tell a patient that his, or her disease is assuredly a fatal one; but if you know that death is near, then in the name of the Master, be faithful as well as tender.
There are many cases of extreme and critical illness, when the presence of even the most loving pastor may be an unwise intrusion. An excellent Christian lady who had been twice apparently at the brink of death said to me, “never enter the room of a person who is extremely low, unless the person urgently requests you, or unless a spiritual necessity compels it. You have no idea how the sight of a new face agitates the sufferer, or how you may unconsciously and unintentionally rob that sufferer of some of the little life that is fluttering in that feeble frame.” I felt grateful to the good woman for her advice; and have often acted upon it accordingly, when the family have unwisely importuned me to do what would be of more harm than benefit. On some occasions when I have found a sick room crowded by well-meaning but needless intruders, I have taken the liberty to “put them all forth” as our Master did from that chamber in which the daughter of Jairus was in the death-slumber.
A large portion of the time and attention which you bestow upon the sick will be demanded by chronic sufferers — who have been confined to their beds of weariness for many months, or years. Whoever you may neglect, do not neglect them. Visit them as often as possible. Bring into their rooms the sunshine of a cheerful countenance, and a morsel of fresh manna from heaven that shall have the taste of honey. Some of those bed-ridden sufferers are “prisoners of Jesus Christ,” who can do you quite as much good as you can do for them. What eloquent sermons they can preach to you on the beauty of submissive patience, and on the supporting power of the Everlasting Arm! Such interviews strengthen your own faith, soften your own heart, and infuse into it the spirit of Him who “took our infirmities and bare our sickness.” Mc-Cheyne of Dundee said that before preaching on the Sabbath he sometimes visited some parishioner who might be lying extremely low, for he found it good” to take a look over the verged
The hour you spend in the abodes of sickness and of sorrow will often subject your nerves, and your sympathetic sensibilities to a pretty severe strain; and from such trials you must not shrink. But the most difficult and delicate part of your pastoral duties will be the conducting of funeral-services. At such trying services too many ministers sadly fail; some from want of sense, and some from want of sensibility. The first class offend by their unwise utterances; the second offend by their utter lack of sympathy; to them a funeral is as “professional” an affair as it is to the undertaker.
In making the arrangements for funeral-services, the first persons to be consulted are the bereaved family; their wishes must be respected. Unless in a few and rare cases where public honors are to be paid to public men, the last services will be of a domestic character; and the simpler they are the better. I always love to see the kindred occupy the same apartment in which the form of the beloved one lies sleeping; it seems far more affectionate to sit beside their dead, than to leave a parent, a wife or a child to be surrounded by chance-gathered neighbors or strangers. The pastor should also, if possible, stand close beside the mourning family, and not be thrust away into another part of the dwelling. We are often stationed upon a stairway in the hall, with nothing to look at but a blank wall, or the heads of the people congregated below us. This detracts from the naturalness of the service, and puts us, as it were, out of sympathy with those whom we desire to comfort. We are affected through the eye, and the sight of the slumbering dead, and the sorrowing kindred is apt to stir the fount of feeling in our own hearts. Cold formality is the unpardonable sin in the house of mourning. No matter what suffering it may cost us, or however severe may be the strain upon our nerves, we pastors must not shirk the suffering. It is no place to harden the heart or to retreat into a frigid formality. A funeral is a heart-service; let your own heart have its way. The closer you follow your own best instincts, the fewer blunders will you commit. Put yourself in the place of the mourner, and then speak as your feelings dictate.
So far have I aimed to carry out this principle that I rarely prepare any funeral address. I store my mind with the chief facts and circumstances of the occasion, and then allow the heart to utter its own words of sympathy and consolation. Set speeches beside a coffin are icicles. Stale truisms about death are often a solemn impertinence. Elaborate addresses are usually as much out of place as at a communion table. Simplicity and tenderness are the prime essentials. Grief is always simple, and bleeding hearts must be touched tenderly. Honest eulogy of those who have lived nobly and for God’s glory is often a duty to the living as well as a deserved tribute to the one who has fallen asleep in Jesus. The instincts of a minister’s heart ought to tell ^lim how much to say; but let him not disown or dishonor the grace of God that dwelt in the life just ended. The last experiences of the last hours of the departed are sometimes full of eloquent inspirations, and we ought to rehearse them to cheer the faith of the survivors. A sudden death is in itself a tremendous sermon; and we may enforce the solemn lesson, if we do it discreetly and lovingly. Grant that but few persons have ever been converted by funeral addresses; we should none the less speak in the same direction that the Almighty God is speaking. While comforting the bereaved we may incidentally gain a strong hold on some unconverted souls, and thus the way be opened to lead them to Christ.
No funeral service is adequate or proper in which there is not a large use of appropriate Scripture — and also the singing of one or more hymns. Sometimes an elaborate musical performance is provided that would better befit a concert-room. Nothing goes quite so close to the heart as the tender and tearful singing of some sw,eet hymn like “Rock of Ages,” or “Jesus, Lover of my Soul,” or “Abide with me,” or “Asleep in Jesus.” A hymn sinks deeper into the soul than a discourse. Tears are a blessed escape-valve for pent-up overpowering grief, and the more freely they are evoked during the last services of affection, the greater will be relief to suffering hearts. Pray that God may make you a “son of consolation,” while you are standing between the living and the dead. Yet your office as a comforter does not end when the silent form has been committed to the bosom of mother-earth. The hardest strain upon the bereaved will come when the obsequies are all over and the crowd have gone, and the sorrowing ones come back to the empty house and home and hearts. Then you will be needed most; and then will it be your office to guide the trembling hands and point the weeping eyes to that Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. May the dear Master give you grace to speak a “word in season to them that are weary,” and to lift many a sobbing, suffering soul up into the sweet sunshine that streams from the heavenly Throne!