Card thinks churches are “embarrassed, almost panicky, that there are situations to which they have no answer. We want to present Jesus as the answer man, and we don’t want Jesus to look bad. And if that’s your theology, Jesus can look very bad at funerals.”
By contrast, he remembers a funeral for a six-year-old girl killed by a drunk driver. Though not many people had known her well, there was a huge turnout in her Missionary Baptist Church. “It was so tragic no one even tried to fix it. The best answer we had was to show up. That’s a big part of lamenting as a church together—basically showing up,” Card says.
Michael Card