Easter "Up Close and Personal"

I first heard the hymn when I joined others of the Chorale in helping our director mourn the loss of her mother at her funeral. I had not known her, so it was not difficult for me as some other departing services have been. But when the last hymn was sung, then something got to me. It was this: I did not know the hymn, and so looked around a bit at the congregation as I listened. Pall bearers came forth and lifted the coffin from its resting place at the front of the sanctuary, and reverently carried it, very slowly, down the aisle and out the door to the waiting hearse.

This is a difficult thing for someone who was raised Baptist. We never spent time discussing or thinking on funerals or memorials, as our belief that the soul had gone either to heaven or hell already was uppermost in our teachings. Add to that Paul's conjunction in a letter to one of the early churches to not "mourn like the heathens do", and we had a zealous tendency to stuff it at times of loss, when others honestly and simply cry. We hadn't learned how to mourn.

As I watched the coffin make its slow way down the aisle, my eyes fell on my director in the front pew with her Presbyterian minister husband. She was finally crying too. She had been strong for our last concert, while her mother lay dying in her hospital bed at home. I had caught only one tiny tear during "All Poor Men" in our Christmas line-up. But now it was time for her to say good-bye forever to a woman who had been such a beautiful Christian role model for her daughter and son-in-law, besides simply her own good mother. That's when I nearly lost it.

My faith had taken quite a beating during my education years and beyond, and now I was 3,000 miles away from my own faith-filled mother, from all my family and my life-long friends. I had a hard time with funerals at any time usually, because they seemed to shout out a final answer: "THERE IS NO HEALING!" This death-knell to faith in prayer was quickly followed by the question, "So is there no resurrection too?" This question surfaced again as I watched the coffin retreating.

But then on my ear fell the words of this hymn I had never heard before. "Jesus lives, and so shall I. Death! thy sting is gone forever." The words were so strong. Where I doubted, each word of this hymn answered with no wavering, the tune lines strong and undefeated. My attention became riveted on it as I watched that evidence of death's victory receding further and further, until it finally was loaded and out of view, driven away, and the doors to the church closed on death.

That was not the final answer. This is:

Jesus lives, and so shall I,
Death! thy sting is gone forever.
He who deigned for me to die,
Lives, the bands of death to sever.
He shall raise me with the just:
Jesus is my hope and trust.

Jesus lives and reigns supreme;
And, His kingdom still remaining,
I shall also be with Him,
Ever living, ever reigning.
God has promised: be it must;
Jesus is my hope and trust.

Jesus lives, I know full well,
Naught from Him my heart can sever,
Life nor death nor pow'rs of hell,
Joy nor grief, henceforth forever.
None of all His saints is lost;
Jesus is my hope and trust.

Jesus lives, and death is now
But my entrance into glory.
Courage, then, my soul,
For thou hast a crown of life before thee;
Thou shalt find thy hopes were just;
Jesus is the Christian's trust.

Lyrics ~ Christian F. Gellert, 1715 - 1769
Trans ~ By Philip Schaff, 1819 - 1893
Music ~ Johann Cruger, 1598 - 1662
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmMKD3PmLW0