Hagiography: What?

I am a pastor of a church.  Frequently I conduct funerals or memorial services for church members and others who have died.  Through the years I have discovered that while this can be a difficult task it is often very rewarding.

One of the members of one of my former churches said to me once that I preached better funeral sermons than Sunday morning sermons (one of those conditional compliments!).  Her comment, however, made me reflect on why that might be so.  When a Christian dies I think the responsibility of the pastor is to honor the memory of the person and to witness to the presence of God in that person’s life.  I want to tell the truth about a person’s life, of course, but the truth as God sees it.

We all know that people are flawed.  The Bible puts it this way:  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)  Christians are not without sin.  Yet it is “the God’s truth” that God delights in each one of us.  God even delights in those persons who deny that God exists.  God even delights in those who don’t believe.  God delights in every creature.  (Zephaniah 3:17;  Psalm 149:4; Genesis 1:31)  So, what I try to do is to see the person who has died through the eyes of God’s unfathomable and uncontainable delight. 

In the early church there was a popular literature called hagiography.  This is a fancy word for describing the study of holiness, particularly holy people, whom we often call saints.  The lives of the saints made for interesting reading at one time.  I think it still does. 

There are two ways of defining saints:  those who are holier than anyone else, and those who are considered holy by God simply by virtue of the fact that God created them.  I prefer the study of everyday saints.  As I have learned to see the deceased through the eyes of God’s delight I have learned also to see living people through that same lens, to see the holiness that is in them (as much as they might deny it).  Perhaps my best sermons are nothing more than an attempt to see the delightful glory of God in the most ordinary of folks.

It sometimes takes practice to tune your vision in this way.  But it is great fun, as well as amazingly humbling, to see people the way God sees them.  Try it.  It may also change the way people see you.