First Funeral

I went to my first funeral as Chaplain of Post 64 Friday. Irv Larson, 97 was transferred to Post Everlasting. My Dad always told me, under normal circumstances, the number of people attending a funeral is inversely proportional to their age when they died. In other words the older you get, the fewer you get. Since I’ve little experience with funerals, I’ll hold off on the validity of the theory. I did notice this however.

It was a wonderful service and I don’t mean this irreverently. The group in attendance was very diversified from the very old to the very young. The American Legion should be proud of it’s level of attendance as there were quite a few of us there. The thing that struck me with such power was the message.

It was given by Rev Jerry Larson, Irv’s son. First that he could give a message standing over the coffin of his father with such composure. Even though he mentioned he has presided over thousands of funerals, to do it for you Dad… It was awe inspiring. His message was simple. He told of his own personal spiritual journey.

As a young, dedicated church attendee with many, many years of Sunday services never missed – he still was missing something. He felt in his heart a yearning, a hunger for an unmet spiritual need in his life. Then one day, while crossing his college campus, he finally understood, not just in his head, but in his heart that what he needed was a personal relationship with Christ. Not just a head knowledge – ‘yeah I believe this or that’ – but a moment in time when he had to:

Turn from and ask God for forgiveness from his mistakes in the past,

understand that Jesus paid his debt for those mistakes by going to the cross and dieing in his place,

that his promise of everlasting life in heaven with God is assured by Jesus’ coming back to life after being dead for three days,

that he needed to ask Jesus to save him personally, by faith – it’s a free gift from God, not by what we do, but by what He as already done for us.

And so, Jerry Larson, quite out of character there on his knees on the lawn of his college campus, became a Christian. Not by all the good stuff he (Jerry) had done, but by faith in Christ for what He has already done for all of us.

Jerry mentioned that before his dad died, his father too came to know Jesus as his Savior. What a wonderful thing to know. That after this very brief time on earth, he knows he’ll be seeing his dad again, in heaven. What a great treasure.

I could tell Irv was much loved by the folks there last Friday. The next day I was reading about evil King Jehoram’s funeral found in 2 Chronicles 21:1-21 Where it says,

Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. No one was sorry when he died.

What an incredible contrast between these two men. I could tell, Irv was much loved by his friends and family there last Friday and although they were certainly sad to see him go, they know they’d be together again. Not even his mother was sorry for Jehoram when he died.