The Funeral Ends Today

Recently Ned and I rented the movie, "We Are Marshall". For those of you who haven't heard about this movie, it is the story of the 1970 plane crash that took the lives of practically the entire Marshall University football team, along with coaches and some of the booster club. The movie chronicles the attempts of the University to keep their football program alive, despite the inconsolable grief of an entire town. After repetitively petitioning the NCAA to lift their ruling about freshman recruiting, the University begins to rebuild a football team out of young, inexperienced and naive players. These boys do not have the experience nor the determination to win. As they don their new football jerseys, they come under a constant barrage of negative support from those who mourn the ones who once wore those very same jerseys. At one point in the movie, head coach, Jack Lengyel, played by Matthew McConaughey, takes the boys and the coaches on a "field trip" to the cemetery. Coach speaks about those who lost their lives on that horrible day. He speaks of the impact the loss has had on the town and the team. In a moving speech about the oftentimes crippling effect of grief and the team's seeming inability to focus on the game, McConaughey says, "the funeral ends today".
That phrase stuck in my mind throughout the rest of the movie. I thought about how many of us talk about the "good ole days" as if they really were---good. I thought about those who recount the "sowing of wild oats" that took place before they became Christians, and about that little edge of pride hidden behind the smile of regret. I also thought about churches that have been hurt in the past and still carry that pain today, allowing it to keep them from growing and maturing and reaching out beyond the stained glass windows and the steeple's spire. I thought about brothers and sisters whose feelings have been hurt, whose spirits have been wounded and who have let the past hurts cripple them and drive a wedge between them and their church family and ultimately between them and God. Why is it that some of us are unable to live beyond our past? Why is it that though logically aware the past is gone and we cannot change it, emotionally we hang onto it like a small timid child, clutching our security blanket? It seems to me that if we are to grow as a Body, if we are to become healthy, fully functioning Christians, that we must let the past die, bury it and end the funeral.
The past is simply that---passed! We can neither change it nor control it. We cannot rewrite history! Neither can we pretend it did not exist--bad things do happen! People do get hurt and they grieve and mourn. While we cannot control the past, we can decide how much impact it will continue to have on us and how it will effect our relationships with others and with God. We can decide that! We can choose to move through the pain, to grow in spite of the past and to let it die.
Like most of us, there are things in my past that I am ashamed of, things I have done, people I have hurt, words I have said. Would I take them back and undo them if I could? Absolutely! But I cannot. And so I try to remember how much pain they caused and make every attempt to not repeat those same mistakes. There is some of my past I am not proud of! There is some of my past that still hurts when I think about is. But . . . and this is huge--there is a future that I can affect, a future where different choices can be made, a future that is right in front of me. You have heard me say before, "God put our face on the front of our bodies so we look forward." (One of the many things I learned from my brother Tom Washburn).
Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time to look forward. The old Neva, her sins are gone, washed clean by the Sacrificed Blood. The old pain, it is healing, healed by the comfort of the Holy Spirit and the mighty power of forgiveness. I refuse to be crippled by the past. I will no longer mope and no longer grieve. The funeral ends today!

Peace
Neva