Summary: My first funeral sermon 16 years ago flopped. "It didn't sound like you knew him at all," a worshipper told me on the way out of the funeral home chapel. "Uh, I didn't know him at all," I replied. I was just a student. I didn't know then - they don't warn you in seminary - that most lay people consider it the mark of a good funeral sermon when the preacher sounds like he knows the deceased. When it comes to funerals, lay people don't usually judge whether I've proclaimed the Gospel or done a good job unpacking the scripture text or pointing to the promise of Cross and Resurrection. For services of death and resurrection, it's a good sermon only if the gathered can shake my hand at the door and say, "It sounded like you really knew her." or "You really captured him." Whenever one of the flock is lost, most people don't care whether or not I speak of the Shepherd or proclaim that the Shepherd is good. Whenever one of the flock is lost, most people want to hear about the one lost sheep not the singular Shepherd. They want to be assured that I know the person whom they've lost. They don't think they need to be reassured that the lost member of the flock is known by the Shepherd. I don't know you, whoever you are listening on the other side of this speaker, but I suspect if you're enough of a church nerd to be watching a sermon on the screen of your tablet or iPhone, then you've heard these lines about thy rod and thy staff recited or prayed or sung so many times in worship you no longer hear the oddity of Psalm 23 or the offensiveness of it.
