What Can A Pastor Say?

Q. The following question has been on my mind for quite a few years but I must say that I never really asked about it, so therefore never really came across a satisfying answer.

My son’s friend has had to face the sad reality of death recently, through his mother’s miscarriage and also, yesterday, with the death of his grandmother. I do feel very sad for him and I wish I could say something comforting to him, to help him with his bereavement period. That would not be difficult to tell him that, though his sister/brother was miscarried, he/she is in Heaven.

But as far as his grandmother is concerned, if my son’s friend was to tell me that she wasn’t a Christian, what could I say to him? In other words, what do born-again pastors say at the funeral service, when they know that the person who just died was not a Christian?

A. I don’t believe anything can be gained by publicly condemning the deceased in front of a grieving family, but neither is it good to misrepresent God’s Word even in the name of kindness.

As a pastor, I took the view that no one really knows what goes on in the mind of a dying person as they approach the end of their life. I believe God’s grace is such that if with a person’s very last breath he or she made peace with the Lord then that’s good enough. The parable of the Workers in the Vineyard demonstrates this point for me. (Matt. 20:1-16) Remember, in the parable all the workers received the same wage, whether they worked all day or just one hour.

Taking that view enabled me to base my remarks on the “if/then” principle and allowed me to issue a challenge to the living to resolve the matter of their own destiny without passing judgment on the deceased in the process.