Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. – 1 Corinthians 13:12

Friday afternoon, Rebekah and I attended a funeral at Wake Forest Presbyterian Church. The experience was powerful in a way I would like to try to explain.

We arrived just before the service got under way and landed in a random open seat. I picked up the hymnbook for the first song and something made me take a look at the dedication page; it read, “Given in honor of Craig & Naomi Campbell, by Rebekah & Derek Maul, 2013.” What are the odds?

The deceased – our friend and neighbor Keat Wiles – was in every sense a good man. Keat was a master teacher, yes, and his love for words (and in particular “the” word) was legendary; but it is his essential goodness, his gentle spirit and his commitment to live the truth of the Good News out loud that defined him.

Several decades ago Keat – along with his friend and colleague Carson Brisson – lost his teaching post at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary when the Southern Baptists took a marked turn toward the cultural/political right and required professors to compromise scholarship and conscience in favor of arbitrary ideological talking points.

But Keat’s allegiance was – and remained – to the integrity of the Gospel and to the truth as spoken and lived by Jesus and revealed in the scriptures. So Keat changed careers to became a lawyer, representing “the least of these” crying out for justice, and he was a key leader in the emerging witness of Wake Forest Presbyterian Church. Carson grew into the role of deeply loved and respected professor at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia.

I say all this by way of background for Keat’s service Friday afternoon.

What a Good Memorial Achieves:

What a good memorial service achieves is an explanation of the hope that is ours as believers, along with the assurance that this event is simply a transition point in a larger story, a story we have been invited into by Jesus, who not only dismantled the power of death but offers us abundant life – both now and in the impossible to comprehend hereafter.

Carson preached, and his message was at once both brilliant and disarmingly simple. In listening to the words and the music in the service, we seemed to be occupying a space where time and eternity overlap, where some of the deeper truths – elements of the mystery, particulate matter of what we call heaven – leak into present consciousness with enough gravity and substance to take root.

We were, in other words, both assured of the promise of the Jesus story and witness to what we will always struggle to begin to understand – now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror. But, as C.S. Lewis suggests throughout his writing, the glimpses we have of the rest of the story are A) likely all we can handle in this world, and B) proofs that the story that plays out in a higher form – well beyond the limits of our capacity and imagination – is real.

So I want to thank the late Keat Wiles for his winsome witness to life, and also Carson Brisson for the power and the clarity of his telling of these deeper truths.

Conclusion:

If you have stayed with me until the end of this long post, then thank you. Nowadays we have a short attention span as word consumers, but some stories are worth telling carefully and making sure we do our best to get them right.

This is, after all, the Gospel we are talking about, the good news of Jesus, the only story that brings it all together – life and life beyond life – in a way that we can live into with confidence and with joy, in the right here and right now.

In love, and because of love – DEREK