As a pastor, I am often called upon to conduct funeral services for members of our church family or for extended members of their families.  Every once in a while, I get a phone call from a local funeral home about a family who has no pastor, and am given the opportunity to come and minister to them.  It’s something I welcome, and know that it might be a divine appointment for a grieving family to hear about God’s love for them.

I received once such call on a rainy weekend several years ago.  It was to be a simple graveside service at a small church graveyard WAY out in the boondocks, and I agreed to be there for the burial.

Normally, in these kind of cases, I like to meet with some family members the day before to find out some things about the deceased.  This one was a last minute call, and I only had the funeral director to help me with details.  From what he told me, Maybelle was a single lady in her mid-forties who had been killed in an auto accident in the wee hours of the morning, three days earlier.  It was a single car accident.  Maybelle had just left a honky-tonk after a long night of drinking and didn’t make it home.  Only a handful of friends and family were expected at the graveside.  It was such a tragic end to a tragic life of one whom God loved so much.  I was sad and knew it wouldn’t be an easy eulogy to deliver.

When I arrived, the funeral director and his associate were in the process of unloading the casket and suspending it above the grave.  The plan was to gather the few who attended at the gravesite and have a short message and a prayer.  It was a low budget affair, so no tent or chairs were provided.

Although the sun was shining that Saturday morning, the ground was very wet– quite muddy, in fact– after a rainy Friday.  No more than four or five cars drove onto the cemetery grounds, and not in a procession.  Friends and family just arrived randomly before the graveside service was to begin, remaining in their cars while they waited for the assigned time.  When noon arrived I helped the funeral directors coax the guests out of their cars and toward the gravesite.  There weren’t many words or tears, between them, only a few nervous draws on cigarettes with random puffs carried away by the wind.

Only a couple of the mourners were dressed-up for the occasion– two ladies, and neither of them in black.  They weren’t exactly wearing Sunday-go-to-meeting dresses, if you know what I mean, but they had definitely gone to some trouble to honor Maybelle.  The funeral director pointed out one of the ladies– the one with the red stiletto heels– as the nearest of kin, Maybelle’s cousin.  She was the one who had made the arrangements.

Just as I was about to read the scripture, the cousin in heels screamed out “Maybelle, Oh, Maybelle.”  Like a soldier on parade, she marched through the muddy dirt at a quick pace headed straight for the casket.  With each step her heels sank into the soft mud, but she managed to lift her legs high enough to dislodge the heels with every step.  “I want to see her!  I want to see her one more time! Open her up, I want to see her!” she bellowed. The funeral directors and I tried to dissuade her, but she kept insisting.  I whispered to the director,

“You’re not going to open the casket are you?”

“She’s the nearest of kin, I think I’m going to have to,” he whispered back.  I was mortified.  I can’t think of a time in my life I’ve seen a casket opened up while suspended over a muddy grave.

“Well, please make it quick,” I commented.  He agreed, instructing her to look from a short distance away.  The other funeral director tried to shield her from getting too close to the six-foot hole in the ground.

Suddenly, like a jack-rabbit she lunged past the funeral representative and threw herself against the casket.  She bounced off the casket and fell downward.  One leg slipped into the grave as she fell to her other knee and backward.  Fresh mud caked against her leg and all up her dress.  It wasn’t a pretty sight.  It took the three of us to pull her up to a standing position again.  It was then that I smelled her breath–  she was definitely “three sheets to the wind.”  In her on way I suppose she was saluting Cousin Maybelle with a final toast.  A few of the friends literally carried the poor girl back to the car.  But she DID leave cousin Maybelle a personal gift– one of her red high heels rested at the bottom of the grave– and does to this day, under six feet of dirt, right next to Maybelle’s casket.

I used the opportunity to preach the gospel. Seriously, I did. I spoke from my heart about how God can change broken lives, and offered Christ’s salvation personally to each one of them. I didn’t know anything to say about Maybelle; certainly no judgement passed on her since I’d never met her.  Besides, judgement is not my job. My job is to tell them how much God had loved Maybelle, and how much He loves each of them as well.

Never in my life have I ministered to a needier congregation than I did on that muddy Saturday morning.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”   Romans 5:8