Speaking at a funeral or memorial service can be challenging. I know from firsthand experience. I’ve delivered the prepared remarks at memorials for three close family members, and, believe me, that’s three too many.
Preachers and pastors usually officiate. But it’s often a friend or family member who gives the eulogy; someone who actually knew the deceased. We expect that person to share wonderful, sometimes humorous, stories to celebrate the life and accomplishments of the deceased.
Now, imagine someone who does that kind of thing full time, someone whose role and “calling” is to deliver end-of-life remarks. That’s what’s going on in Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead. Andrew (“Ender”) Wiggin is no longer the little boy and military genius of Card’s earlier novel, Ender’s Game. He is now an adult, and he travels around as a sort of professional eulogizer. He is hired to investigate the life of a deceased person, to try to really understand them before speaking about them.
There’s just one small challenge that real-world eulogizers don’t face: A Speaker for the Dead doesn’t just praise the deceased. They leave out nothing. Using honest—even blunt—terms, the Speaker for the Dead speaks to all parts of a person’s life: the good, the bad, and, yes, the ugly.
That can be painful.
If this is beginning to sound a bit like an Old Testament prophet to you, give yourself a gold star. Those folks had to speak the truth—often bluntly—about the people of Israel, their community leaders, and their spiritual leaders. Sometimes there was good, and sometimes there was bad. And sometimes there was ugly.
This week’s selection from Isaiah 6 contains some harsh truths that God directed Isaiah to pass on to the people of Israel. The message? God is about to end them as a nation. God is going to send a conqueror that will kill many of them, exile the few survivors to a foreign land, and even make the very soil of their homeland barren.
It’s harsh. But in God’s view, the people of Israel have earned this because they mistreated those who were in need, denied justice to the powerless, and exploited the lowly.
Isaiah was a Speaker for the Almost Dead.
Unlike a modern eulogy, he spoke the whole truth to them; something they needed to hear. But because he spoke of future events ahead of the nation’s demise, there was still time for people to repent.
Praise God, we no longer live under the strictures of the Law of Moses. But even though we believers can depend on God’s assurance that “mercy triumphs justice,” don’t think for a minute we can mistreat our poor and powerless without negative results.
Our actions influence what is said about us. Because we know this, we get some “say” in what words are spoken. We don’t have to wait for our lives to be over to know what’s in our eulogy. We write it every day.
Let’s give them something good to talk about.
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PHOTO CREDIT: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/wait-are-you-saying-a-podium-is-the-same-thing-as-a-lectern
See the lyrics while Paula Cole sings I Don’t Want to Wait (for our lives to be over):
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There is NO IN-PERSON Lectionary Breakfast this Friday morning. Can you join us at 8:00 on Zoom?** It’s an hour of Bible, discussion, prayer, laughter, and BYOB (Bring Your Own Breakfast). There’s nothing quite like it.
Blessings,
Steve
**Contact me for the Zoom link
NOTE: Zoom allows you to mute the camera & microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY & THE COMING WEEK
Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13)
Psalm 138
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
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