Tuesday, March 14, 2006
The Funeral of Helvécio (Ximba)
First of all, we want to thank the large number of you who sent messages of support and pledging your prayerful concern regarding yesterday’s funeral. Generally when we send notice of non-urgent updates, we hear nothing (understandably) and never quite know if the army of receivers “out there” has actually received anything. This time the mountain of messages told us very clearly that we are cared for and prayed for.
The original prayer request was somewhat egocentric – the preacher going into a state of panic before a difficult funeral. The funeral is now over, but a large family is utterly devastated still, and the two Christian members of it are still simultaneously grieving and seeking to support the other relatives and testify to a real hope. So please pray on for Simone and Geraldo in these very sad days. We have to say that one of the most positive things in this situation is a new level of closeness to them, and a sense of wonder at the strength and quality of their lives and leadership in the family at this time. How the Word and the Spirit make better people! If anyone wishes to send them a message, we will be very happy to pass it on, translated.
Please pray also for the widow, Isabel. Helvécio left a son, André (17), by a previous marriage, and two children Manuela (6) and Davi (18months) with Isabel. Helvécio was the only son in a family dominated by sisters. The mother died a couple of years ago: the father is still alive.
Why are funerals "culturally shocking"?
It is very hard to know where to begin when describing a funeral here. Certainly, for us, funerals have always been the area of the most acute culture shock. On the one hand, a funeral is an occasion controlled by established codes of behaviour which are never taught, just picked up within your culture. There is a degree of variety, but certain parameters prevail. On the other hand, funerals are occasions of extreme emotions, and not least an extreme desire to please, to avoid shock, to be as helpful and supportive as possible. Weddings are similar, but at least at a wedding the prevailing mood is one which can laugh off the odd anomaly: one does not feel that way at a funeral. This combination of cultural codes and emotional freight makes a difficult cocktail.
Some of you have asked about why the funeral was so fast – is this normal? I hinted in my note that it could actually have occurred on the same day, if the body had been released earlier by the authorities. That was a possibility, but the general rule here is that funerals occur within 24 hours of the death. In this case it was probably 26. In the past this certainly had to do with climatic issues, but it also suits the culture. Emotions are not to be put on hold; the expression must be immediate and involve physical proximity. What you say is not as important as being there and showing you care with a hug. More than any legalities or practicalities, the thing to do when someone dies is to be together and weep, and that is what people do.
After a death, and the release and smartening up of the body, the deceased is taken to a chapel of rest where family and friends gather. In general this means a night of vigil. The coffin is open, a sea of flowers surrounding the body, whose head, clothed chest and hands are visible. As folks arrive, a pattern develops – greetings to family and friends, then to the coffin, to cry, then back to talk. For the close family this continues throughout the night, with repeated visits to the coffin to weep, and conversations either inside the chapel, or outside in the night air.
For Brazilians, love and affection are shown physically. This applies to the deceased too. The hands are held, the chest is rubbed, the face is kissed. It is not uncommon for people to throw themselves across a coffin at the burial, even to try to lift the body from the coffin. A death with special elements of tragedy (and that applies to many here) tends to provoke more extravagant gestures.
The funeral itself is, in some senses, highly informal. In part this is the product of the speed – there is no time to organise. The closest family members will in general not have been home to shower and change, so they are in the clothes they were wearing at the moment they heard of the death. In this case, the death having occurred on a Saturday morning, a significant number were in tee-shirts and shorts. Frequently there is uncertainty as to who will speak or take any kind of lead. Geraldo and Simone asked me to speak in the chapel of rest, but nothing specific was arranged for the graveside, and in the end Simone said a word there, and everyone said the Lord’s Prayer.
The hour that is arranged is the hour for the interment. In this case, 10.00 a.m. (13.00 GMT). This means that anything to be said and done by way of “service” has to be done before that. So we started at 9.35. Everyone is standing. There is no pulpit, the preacher (if there is one) standing generally near the head of the coffin. Then the closest male relatives screw the lid on the coffin, covering the face for the final time. This is often a moment of special emotion and possible outcries. The men lift the coffin and carry it to a gurney, pushing it out and up to the cemetery.
The graves are tight packed, stone and concrete affairs. There is not necessarily a deep hole, and where there is, it isn’t “in the ground”. It is more like a concreted slot. On Sunday the coffin was placed into a marble tomb at ground level. Any words to be said are said, some final demonstrations of grief, of touching the coffin and crying out, and then the tomb is closed over. Instead of earth, four paving slabs are placed over the coffin, and then the sexton seals it all with mortar. The work takes a few minutes and the people generally stand watching quietly. The women of the family bring flowers and wreaths, covering the marble slab. Then the people all drift away.
For Brits the rapidity and sheer physicality of a Brazilian funeral may seem quite repugnant. Please remember that many Brazilians might well feel the same way about a culture where the coming together of a grieving family can be coolly put off for a week or more, and where many adults have never seen a dead body. It all looks unbelievably cold, if not totally out of touch with reality! And, as a pastor in the UK, I knew something of the difficulty of those who have never given proper vent to their grief. So do not judge – we see advantages and disadvantages on both sides. Alan Davey tells me that the French take three days. It sounds like the happy medium! But at least friends may now be able to see why funerals have been a big cultural hurdle for us.
What about this funeral?
We want to give thanks again for the many of you who prayed fervently for this occasion. I have rarely if ever felt more the enabling of the Lord while preaching. Although extremely nervous, and with a few linguistic stumbles to give that away, in general I was able to speak with calm, and I trust a certain authority and relevance to the situation.
We spent the afternoon of Saturday with the family, and as was my habit in England, I said to them roughly what I was planning to say at the funeral, though in this case the plans were still very much in the early stages. But at least it established a point of contact with the family, beyond Geraldo and Simone. It was clear that they would all be glad if I were to speak.
In the evening I went to the chapel of rest, to meet other members of the family, and to take part in the vigil. It was good to go, and especially to see the face of Ximba, the deceased. We are more or less used to the open coffin now, but I still wanted to accustom myself to the situation before the service the next day. It was also important to meet the family, and to see how people were reacting. One element that was therapeutic, though very poignant, was the presence of the 18 month old son, Davi. He was a ray of light and life in the chapel, occasionally being breast fed by his mother, and then playing around his father’s coffin. I came away at 11.30 or so, leaving many family members to pass the night there
We returned at just after 9 in the morning. There were already many more people, and the same cycle of grieving and quiet conversation. But you could feel that things were beginning to come to a head. At 9.30 Geraldo said, “We had better start.” He and others called the people in to the little chapel. I made my way to the head of the coffin, and turned to face the company. There were no words to introduce me. With one hand resting on the open coffin, the other holding my Bible and brief notes and with a sea of tearful faces in front of me I began to speak.
What do you say?
I said the following:
We are here in a moment of terrible sadness and tragedy. What we need is not a word of cheap comfort, though there be many such words around at such a moment. No – what we need is a realistic word, with a firm base.
We don’t want to say or hear anything false in this moment. I am not going to pretend that I knew Ximba when I didn’t. My task is not to pretend, but to bring a word that comes from God’s book. It is this that the family has asked me to do.
And I am so thankful for the realism and honesty of the Bible. It tells us the truth. It tells us what we need to hear, even when it in uncomfortable. We are going to read one of the most important passages in the Bible to help us understand this terrible moment, and I am going to make a few comments on it.
Reading – Genesis 3 – with occasional explanatory comments, especially on the first part.
This passage tells us something very important. It tells us that the world we live in is not normal. It tells us that the world is spoilt and rotten.
Many people want to live as if this world were marvellous – but it isn’t. And this passage shows us why.
What we see here is the arrival of sin in the world. The start of rebellion against God – and its consequences.
We can see four consequences, and I am taking them in reverse order through the passage.
1. Man is expelled from the presence of God. This is the most important thing, and in some ways all the other consequences are fruit of and pointers to this fundamental problem.
2. The man and the woman suffer pain and difficulty in the most important areas of their lives – be it the fruit of the womb or the fruit of the earth, everything comes with pain. Life is hard.
3. The man and the woman suffer tension between them – and here we see the seed of every kind of fight and division and war between man and his fellow man.
4. The man has tension inside himself. He begins to experience shame. What is shame? It is to look in the mirror and dislike the person you see. Not the wrinkles and the warts, but the person. Before he sinned, Adam was at peace with himself, and now he has begun to hate himself. And sometimes that self-hate gets to the point where human beings do terrible things to themselves. As we see today. It all started here – when we sinned.
You see, what we see today is one more manifestation that this world has been spoiled by sin. We can’t escape it. We may want to live as if the world were perfect – but today of all days our hearts are telling us that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
We need to think clearly about this, about the place of sin in the death of Ximba.
• Sin in general. We can see his pain and his depression and his problems as the result of sin in general. Sin is in the air that we breathe from our birth, and it affects everything. In some ways, through no personal fault of his, nor of anyone around him, he was subject to depressions and miseries which affect some people, almost at random. His death is the result of sin in general.
• Specific sin. It is not right to do what Helvécio, what Ximba did. Suicide is a sin, a terrible sin. I have never seen that more clearly than today, looking at this family in grief. It is not right to take your life. But we need to remember that neither is suicide the unforgivable sin. Sometimes the church has spoken as if it were, but that has been in the moments when the church has forgotten how God pardons sin! Suicide is a terrible sin and a terrible death, but it does not in itself kill all hope, because we find our hope in another place.
• Sin in those around him. One of the terrible legacies of a suicide is a company of people in agony, questioning themselves, “If I had only known.” “If I had done something…” And I cannot offer cheap comfort even at this point. I cannot say to anyone here – you never caused sadness or difficulty to Ximba. All of us know that we contribute daily to the unhappiness of those around us. But nor must you see your measure of guilt or responsibility as something out of proportion. Do not punish yourself unjustly! This is a tragic consequence of suicide – people beating themselves up with little reason – and you need to remember that Ximba was responsible and that he himself chose the path that he took. Be balanced in your pain and self critique!
But the other reason for not concentrating on our own part in this tragedy is that there is something far more important and positive to think about.
The Bible is very realistic about the agony of the world. But it tells us that the greatest cries of distress in the history of the world came from the lips of Jesus.
He didn’t sin. He was never part of the system of sin, the poisoned world of rebellion that we made.
He didn’t deserve expulsion from God’s presence, nor hurt and pain, nor friction with anyone, nor self doubt and loathing.
But he came and he suffered.
I am not talking primarily about physical suffering. Many people died on crosses in the Roman Empire, and they suffered physically much the same, each one.
I am talking about psychological and spiritual suffering. I am talking about the man who cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
I am saying that he was expelled from the presence of God. And that was the greatest moment of horror in the history of the universe.
And we need to ask, “Why?”
And the simple answer is that there on the cross, the man who never sinned took human sin upon himself, so that we might be forgiven, so that we might have access to God, and a new hope of a world that is not spoiled nor rotten, but perfect. He suffered our agony, that the agony might be defeated.
This moment of tragedy is not the moment to be angry, or to punish yourself. But it is the moment to think about the foundations of your life, to face up to the fact that this world and our own lives are terrible because of sin, and to seek the only hope that has any value, in Jesus.
In all our confusion and pain at this time, make sure you do that. And I will be glad to talk further with anyone who wishes to.
Now let’s pray – giving thanks for a life, and everything positive in it, and praying for God real, gospel comfort for one another…
The people listened from start to finish with great attention. This is not always typical. But it was as if there were a desperate hunger for some word that made sense of it all. And praise God, the Bible gives us just that! Afterwards there were questions and comments from family members. The bankruptcy of spiritism to actually give hope and security at such a moment was all too evident. The tragedy of a family where all too few know Christ as yet was just glaring to see. But the Word was preached – and we pray that there will yet be fruit. Please pray on.
First of all, we want to thank the large number of you who sent messages of support and pledging your prayerful concern regarding yesterday’s funeral. Generally when we send notice of non-urgent updates, we hear nothing (understandably) and never quite know if the army of receivers “out there” has actually received anything. This time the mountain of messages told us very clearly that we are cared for and prayed for.
The original prayer request was somewhat egocentric – the preacher going into a state of panic before a difficult funeral. The funeral is now over, but a large family is utterly devastated still, and the two Christian members of it are still simultaneously grieving and seeking to support the other relatives and testify to a real hope. So please pray on for Simone and Geraldo in these very sad days. We have to say that one of the most positive things in this situation is a new level of closeness to them, and a sense of wonder at the strength and quality of their lives and leadership in the family at this time. How the Word and the Spirit make better people! If anyone wishes to send them a message, we will be very happy to pass it on, translated.
Please pray also for the widow, Isabel. Helvécio left a son, André (17), by a previous marriage, and two children Manuela (6) and Davi (18months) with Isabel. Helvécio was the only son in a family dominated by sisters. The mother died a couple of years ago: the father is still alive.
Why are funerals "culturally shocking"?
It is very hard to know where to begin when describing a funeral here. Certainly, for us, funerals have always been the area of the most acute culture shock. On the one hand, a funeral is an occasion controlled by established codes of behaviour which are never taught, just picked up within your culture. There is a degree of variety, but certain parameters prevail. On the other hand, funerals are occasions of extreme emotions, and not least an extreme desire to please, to avoid shock, to be as helpful and supportive as possible. Weddings are similar, but at least at a wedding the prevailing mood is one which can laugh off the odd anomaly: one does not feel that way at a funeral. This combination of cultural codes and emotional freight makes a difficult cocktail.
Some of you have asked about why the funeral was so fast – is this normal? I hinted in my note that it could actually have occurred on the same day, if the body had been released earlier by the authorities. That was a possibility, but the general rule here is that funerals occur within 24 hours of the death. In this case it was probably 26. In the past this certainly had to do with climatic issues, but it also suits the culture. Emotions are not to be put on hold; the expression must be immediate and involve physical proximity. What you say is not as important as being there and showing you care with a hug. More than any legalities or practicalities, the thing to do when someone dies is to be together and weep, and that is what people do.
After a death, and the release and smartening up of the body, the deceased is taken to a chapel of rest where family and friends gather. In general this means a night of vigil. The coffin is open, a sea of flowers surrounding the body, whose head, clothed chest and hands are visible. As folks arrive, a pattern develops – greetings to family and friends, then to the coffin, to cry, then back to talk. For the close family this continues throughout the night, with repeated visits to the coffin to weep, and conversations either inside the chapel, or outside in the night air.
For Brazilians, love and affection are shown physically. This applies to the deceased too. The hands are held, the chest is rubbed, the face is kissed. It is not uncommon for people to throw themselves across a coffin at the burial, even to try to lift the body from the coffin. A death with special elements of tragedy (and that applies to many here) tends to provoke more extravagant gestures.
The funeral itself is, in some senses, highly informal. In part this is the product of the speed – there is no time to organise. The closest family members will in general not have been home to shower and change, so they are in the clothes they were wearing at the moment they heard of the death. In this case, the death having occurred on a Saturday morning, a significant number were in tee-shirts and shorts. Frequently there is uncertainty as to who will speak or take any kind of lead. Geraldo and Simone asked me to speak in the chapel of rest, but nothing specific was arranged for the graveside, and in the end Simone said a word there, and everyone said the Lord’s Prayer.
The hour that is arranged is the hour for the interment. In this case, 10.00 a.m. (13.00 GMT). This means that anything to be said and done by way of “service” has to be done before that. So we started at 9.35. Everyone is standing. There is no pulpit, the preacher (if there is one) standing generally near the head of the coffin. Then the closest male relatives screw the lid on the coffin, covering the face for the final time. This is often a moment of special emotion and possible outcries. The men lift the coffin and carry it to a gurney, pushing it out and up to the cemetery.
The graves are tight packed, stone and concrete affairs. There is not necessarily a deep hole, and where there is, it isn’t “in the ground”. It is more like a concreted slot. On Sunday the coffin was placed into a marble tomb at ground level. Any words to be said are said, some final demonstrations of grief, of touching the coffin and crying out, and then the tomb is closed over. Instead of earth, four paving slabs are placed over the coffin, and then the sexton seals it all with mortar. The work takes a few minutes and the people generally stand watching quietly. The women of the family bring flowers and wreaths, covering the marble slab. Then the people all drift away.
For Brits the rapidity and sheer physicality of a Brazilian funeral may seem quite repugnant. Please remember that many Brazilians might well feel the same way about a culture where the coming together of a grieving family can be coolly put off for a week or more, and where many adults have never seen a dead body. It all looks unbelievably cold, if not totally out of touch with reality! And, as a pastor in the UK, I knew something of the difficulty of those who have never given proper vent to their grief. So do not judge – we see advantages and disadvantages on both sides. Alan Davey tells me that the French take three days. It sounds like the happy medium! But at least friends may now be able to see why funerals have been a big cultural hurdle for us.
What about this funeral?
We want to give thanks again for the many of you who prayed fervently for this occasion. I have rarely if ever felt more the enabling of the Lord while preaching. Although extremely nervous, and with a few linguistic stumbles to give that away, in general I was able to speak with calm, and I trust a certain authority and relevance to the situation.
We spent the afternoon of Saturday with the family, and as was my habit in England, I said to them roughly what I was planning to say at the funeral, though in this case the plans were still very much in the early stages. But at least it established a point of contact with the family, beyond Geraldo and Simone. It was clear that they would all be glad if I were to speak.
In the evening I went to the chapel of rest, to meet other members of the family, and to take part in the vigil. It was good to go, and especially to see the face of Ximba, the deceased. We are more or less used to the open coffin now, but I still wanted to accustom myself to the situation before the service the next day. It was also important to meet the family, and to see how people were reacting. One element that was therapeutic, though very poignant, was the presence of the 18 month old son, Davi. He was a ray of light and life in the chapel, occasionally being breast fed by his mother, and then playing around his father’s coffin. I came away at 11.30 or so, leaving many family members to pass the night there
We returned at just after 9 in the morning. There were already many more people, and the same cycle of grieving and quiet conversation. But you could feel that things were beginning to come to a head. At 9.30 Geraldo said, “We had better start.” He and others called the people in to the little chapel. I made my way to the head of the coffin, and turned to face the company. There were no words to introduce me. With one hand resting on the open coffin, the other holding my Bible and brief notes and with a sea of tearful faces in front of me I began to speak.
What do you say?
I said the following:
We are here in a moment of terrible sadness and tragedy. What we need is not a word of cheap comfort, though there be many such words around at such a moment. No – what we need is a realistic word, with a firm base.
We don’t want to say or hear anything false in this moment. I am not going to pretend that I knew Ximba when I didn’t. My task is not to pretend, but to bring a word that comes from God’s book. It is this that the family has asked me to do.
And I am so thankful for the realism and honesty of the Bible. It tells us the truth. It tells us what we need to hear, even when it in uncomfortable. We are going to read one of the most important passages in the Bible to help us understand this terrible moment, and I am going to make a few comments on it.
Reading – Genesis 3 – with occasional explanatory comments, especially on the first part.
This passage tells us something very important. It tells us that the world we live in is not normal. It tells us that the world is spoilt and rotten.
Many people want to live as if this world were marvellous – but it isn’t. And this passage shows us why.
What we see here is the arrival of sin in the world. The start of rebellion against God – and its consequences.
We can see four consequences, and I am taking them in reverse order through the passage.
1. Man is expelled from the presence of God. This is the most important thing, and in some ways all the other consequences are fruit of and pointers to this fundamental problem.
2. The man and the woman suffer pain and difficulty in the most important areas of their lives – be it the fruit of the womb or the fruit of the earth, everything comes with pain. Life is hard.
3. The man and the woman suffer tension between them – and here we see the seed of every kind of fight and division and war between man and his fellow man.
4. The man has tension inside himself. He begins to experience shame. What is shame? It is to look in the mirror and dislike the person you see. Not the wrinkles and the warts, but the person. Before he sinned, Adam was at peace with himself, and now he has begun to hate himself. And sometimes that self-hate gets to the point where human beings do terrible things to themselves. As we see today. It all started here – when we sinned.
You see, what we see today is one more manifestation that this world has been spoiled by sin. We can’t escape it. We may want to live as if the world were perfect – but today of all days our hearts are telling us that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
We need to think clearly about this, about the place of sin in the death of Ximba.
• Sin in general. We can see his pain and his depression and his problems as the result of sin in general. Sin is in the air that we breathe from our birth, and it affects everything. In some ways, through no personal fault of his, nor of anyone around him, he was subject to depressions and miseries which affect some people, almost at random. His death is the result of sin in general.
• Specific sin. It is not right to do what Helvécio, what Ximba did. Suicide is a sin, a terrible sin. I have never seen that more clearly than today, looking at this family in grief. It is not right to take your life. But we need to remember that neither is suicide the unforgivable sin. Sometimes the church has spoken as if it were, but that has been in the moments when the church has forgotten how God pardons sin! Suicide is a terrible sin and a terrible death, but it does not in itself kill all hope, because we find our hope in another place.
• Sin in those around him. One of the terrible legacies of a suicide is a company of people in agony, questioning themselves, “If I had only known.” “If I had done something…” And I cannot offer cheap comfort even at this point. I cannot say to anyone here – you never caused sadness or difficulty to Ximba. All of us know that we contribute daily to the unhappiness of those around us. But nor must you see your measure of guilt or responsibility as something out of proportion. Do not punish yourself unjustly! This is a tragic consequence of suicide – people beating themselves up with little reason – and you need to remember that Ximba was responsible and that he himself chose the path that he took. Be balanced in your pain and self critique!
But the other reason for not concentrating on our own part in this tragedy is that there is something far more important and positive to think about.
The Bible is very realistic about the agony of the world. But it tells us that the greatest cries of distress in the history of the world came from the lips of Jesus.
He didn’t sin. He was never part of the system of sin, the poisoned world of rebellion that we made.
He didn’t deserve expulsion from God’s presence, nor hurt and pain, nor friction with anyone, nor self doubt and loathing.
But he came and he suffered.
I am not talking primarily about physical suffering. Many people died on crosses in the Roman Empire, and they suffered physically much the same, each one.
I am talking about psychological and spiritual suffering. I am talking about the man who cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
I am saying that he was expelled from the presence of God. And that was the greatest moment of horror in the history of the universe.
And we need to ask, “Why?”
And the simple answer is that there on the cross, the man who never sinned took human sin upon himself, so that we might be forgiven, so that we might have access to God, and a new hope of a world that is not spoiled nor rotten, but perfect. He suffered our agony, that the agony might be defeated.
This moment of tragedy is not the moment to be angry, or to punish yourself. But it is the moment to think about the foundations of your life, to face up to the fact that this world and our own lives are terrible because of sin, and to seek the only hope that has any value, in Jesus.
In all our confusion and pain at this time, make sure you do that. And I will be glad to talk further with anyone who wishes to.
Now let’s pray – giving thanks for a life, and everything positive in it, and praying for God real, gospel comfort for one another…
The people listened from start to finish with great attention. This is not always typical. But it was as if there were a desperate hunger for some word that made sense of it all. And praise God, the Bible gives us just that! Afterwards there were questions and comments from family members. The bankruptcy of spiritism to actually give hope and security at such a moment was all too evident. The tragedy of a family where all too few know Christ as yet was just glaring to see. But the Word was preached – and we pray that there will yet be fruit. Please pray on.
# posted by Andrew and Cora @ 3:00:00 pm 
