Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash
I want you to picture a funeral. It's dark, probably raining, super sad with tons of black umbrellas in the air.
You can smell wet grass, hear the sobbing of a recently widowed septuagenarian and her adult children. But what else do you hear? What song is playing?
Unless you're watching Zack Snyder's Watchmen, the song you're imagining is probably going to be "Amazing Grace."
How is it being sung? You're probably picturing a somber, downtrodden female voice dragging out the notes to their utmost extreme. Personally, I picture an alto more than a soprano, but that's not really important.
For some reason, the song has been relegated to a rote performance at funerals and other such downtrodden occasions more than the worshipful anthem it is. On one hand, I get it. "Amazing Grace" is a great song for the funerals of believers when you consider the message, but that message has gotten lost.
One of my favorite musicians is a man named Pat Green. In his song "Dixie Lullaby", the narrator talks about his relationship with his father over the years. The last verse is talking about the father's funeral and it says, "As I stood there in the fields of Amazing Grace/ Oh, how the tears ran down my face."
It's a beautiful song and I would really encourage you to click the link above and give it a listen, but it was this particular line that really got me thinking about how we've so missed the point of "Amazing Grace."
Most importantly, "Amazing Grace" shouldn't be a sad song. It should be a song of rejoicing.
When you really take a look at the words alone, stripped of the melody or the familiar context, the message of "Amazing Grace" stands out so much easier:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found.
Was blind, but now I see.
If you keep going, you get into verses about spending 10,000 years in the presence of the Lord only to realize that those first 10,000 years are literally no drop in the bucket of eternity.
I'll admit that I'm not immune to this problem. When I hear the song performed or played, I generally fall into a somber recollection of funerals and death. But when I stop and really think about the words of this song, I can't help but start to feel overwhelmed with joy at realizing how God has given us a truly amazing grace.
Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash
I'm one of those people who has always been burdened by thoughts of eternity and the vast expanses of time. Whenever I start to think about what comes after life, when I think about what came before life, and when I think about things outside of time, my mind starts to get fuzzy and I feel a little dizzy.
Eternity is such a powerful, yet frustrating concept. We cannot fathom it simply because of the finite nature of our lives. The infinite, to our mind, is impossible.
I think this is part of the reason why I was so drawn to the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, because he deals openly with these concepts. From a purely fictional standpoint, I love that.
But from a perspective of reality, the eternal is terrifying and unsettling. Funerals are deeply disturbing because they make us face death in a real way that we just can't avoid.
As such, we have hijacked the song "Amazing Grace" to be our balm. It has been corrupted by sadness and now most people simply ascribe to "Amazing Grace" the status of traditional funerary rite.
In the context of a funeral, "Amazing Grace" has no meaning. It is just a little song we sing to make ourselves feel better while we say goodbye to someone we will never see again. That's the human mind coping and, because of that, we don't really get the beauty of this song anymore.
Try not to focus on how silly I looked back then. This is serious.
Two years ago this Saturday, my grandfather passed away. It was about a year and a half before that when his wife, my grandmother, also passed away after a very difficult few years. My last grandparent, my maternal grandmother, passed away this past September, but I was unable to attend her funeral due to a hurricane and the very recent birth of my first child.
I can say this. At both my grandmother and grandfather's funerals, I was a wreck. I loved those two more than I can really elaborate here, and losing them hurt my soul so deeply. There hasn't been a day go by since then where I don't wish I could sit and talk with them once more.
I don't think we played "Amazing Grace" at either of their funerals. I know my mother sang at one of them, but I can't recall what she sang.
Even so, had I listened to "Amazing Grace" at their funerals, it would've probably meant almost nothing to me. Really. It would've been just another song.
Now, though, I can rejoice when I think about the words and the promises pulled from scripture. There really is amazing grace in the fact that a funeral is not the end for us.
And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for Him. - Hebrews 9:27-28 (NLT)
The cynic will look at this passage and say, "Oh, judgment. Thanks, God. I'm so looking forward to being judged after I die." That's not what matters (right now). What matters is that there is an after.
When sin entered the world, God could have easily just said, "Okay. Now you guys get to live this one life, and then you're done." He could have condemned us to annihilation.
He didn't.
God gave us an after. Yes, we will die. That will happen. But when we die, there is an after.
Unfortunately, that after isn't all good news. There are two possible outcomes for each of us: one good, one bad.
Again, I know what the cynic will say when they hear this. "Of course, God just has to punish everyone. What kind of loving God would do that?"
But the cynic is missing the point. The beauty, the amazing grace here, comes from the fact that there is a good outcome at all. Humanity messed up. We are sinful people and God, in His love for justice, could have condemned us to an eternity of pain and separation from Him.
The fact that we have the opportunity to be saved from that outcome is unimaginable grace. The fact that a just God would allow us the grace to avoid the punishment we earn with our sin every day, that is amazing.
God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. - Ephesians 2:8-9 (NLT)
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:23 (NLT)
I lost my grandfather almost two years ago to the day. I will never see him on this Earth again. I know that.
But there is grace in the fact that we will see each other again. More importantly, there is grace in the fact that we will one day be together in the presence of God and Jesus Christ.