Covenant Stories: Our First Funeral

Story #15 in the Covenant series

Births, weddings, and funerals. These are hallmark events of any church. At Covenant we had seen a few births, including two of my own children, and a number of weddings. But as of 1997, there had been no funerals. The reason is obvious enough: our oldest member at that time was 53. New churches are often started by younger people, but I always felt a little out of balance in those days. In the churches of my youth, there were always plenty of gray hair in the pews. I asked Ben once what he thought we could do to attract some older people to Covenant.

“We might just have to grow our own gray heads,” he said. “And if the offerings keep looking like this, Luke and I will be our first.”

But, as we all know, the old are not the only ones who die. And so death made it’s inevitable first call to Covenant Baptist Church.

My wife met George Swisher at the hospital where she was working as a chaplain. George had AIDS and was in the hospital battling an infection of some kind. George was an avowed atheist. His father faithfully took the family to the Baptist Church on Sundays, but then he beat any idea of God out of George during the rest of the week. In George’s mind, his father, the beatings, and the Baptist Church were all rolled up together in a ball of painful memories. It’s not surprising that he hadn’t been in church for awhile.

One afternoon George was in a sleepy, drug-induced state and thought he saw Jesus standing at the foot of his hospital bed. He shook his head a few times and the vision of Jesus faded. About that time my wife walked into the room and announced that she was a chaplain. Normally George would have thrown her out, but the Jesus vision had spooked him a bit, so he let her stay. She did not push God talk on him. The two talked about life, laughed, and ended up becoming friends. I met George at a sandwich shop to talk, and in that conversation he confessed that he would like to come to church, but he felt it was a problem that he did not believe in God. I asked him why he wanted to come to church if he didn’t believe in God. He told me he remembered the hymns they sang in church when he was a boy. He thought he would like to hear that music again before he died.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, come to church. People come to church for all sorts of reasons. Just sit there and sing hymns. You don’t have to do anything else. We won’t bother you or try to get you to convert or join or anything.” George was there the next Sunday, wearing jeans, black tennis shoes, a plaid flannel shirt, and suspenders. He sat in church, closed his eyes during the hymns, and sang along. He had a beautiful baritone voice, and within a few weeks, people were sitting near George so they could hear him sing.

I don’t have time to tell you how George became a Christian, and I don’t remember in any case. We never asked him. We just let him sing on Sundays and come to church picnics and be with us. We became his adopted family, you might say. One day George pulled me aside and said, “I think I’m ready to be baptized and become a Christian.”

“Really?” I said. I was surprised. “What happened?”

He scratched his beard. “Well, I don’t know for sure if there is a God. I still kind of doubt it, to be honest. But I started praying. I’ve been calling God ‘Dad.’ You know, like, ‘Hey Dad, can I talk to you for a moment?’ Do you think that’s okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “God, Dad, Father, Creator, Abba, whatever.”

After he was baptized, George’s act of service for the church was to stay after worship and pick up the hymnals. This he did with absolute faithfulness every Sunday. When it came time to elect deacons, I said we should vote for people who are servants of the church. I guess people immediately thought of George because he was always picking up the hymnals. We were too young and unsophisticated to have bylaws that said how long a person had to be a Christian before he or she could become a deacon. So when half the ballots came back with George’s name on them, George became a deacon. He was completely shocked by this and kept saying, “Are you sure it was ME they wanted? There’s not some other George is there?”

It is safe to say that George was beloved by all of us. His approaching death had given him a sense of peace. He had lost any idea that he was going to get a lot done in his life. He was happy to come on Sundays and sing and put away the hymnals. How can you not love a guy like that?

But the inevitable finally happened. This was before the current AIDS drugs became so effective. George got weaker and weaker until finally he couldn’t stand. We brought him to church in a wheelchair. When we couldn’t do that, we brought communion and music to his house. I was at the hospice facility with our other deacons the night George died. He was not aware of our presence. His breathing was ragged and hard. We stayed until late, but everyone finally went home. I put a CD player by George’s pillow and put on “Singing With the Angels,” a collection of classic hymns by Darrell Adams. I set the player to repeat the CD over and over. Then I left the room.

I got the call about 3 o’clock that morning. When I arrived, Darrell was still singing, but George had gone away.

And so we had our first funeral. It was a cold and cloudy day. George had a few family members there. Covenant people made up most of the audience. We had the whole service at the graveside. I cannot remember a single thing I said. Not one word. Which is fine, because I doubt anyone else does either. What we do remember is that George gave himself to God with an extraordinary act of faith. He prayed to God and put his life in God’s hands without even knowing that God existed. That, my friends, is faith.

George did not have many possessions. He left me a book and a rock. The rock was one he had gathered from our land. He kept this rock because he knew that he would not live long enough to see our church building there.

Two years later I asked the man who was building the rock facing of our church if he could put George’s rock into the church wall. He put it on the backside of the church, down low, right outside one of the Sunday school windows. I took a black marker and wrote “George’s Rock” on it. Every two our three years the wind and rain erase the ink, so I write it again.

It is still there today. A tender reminder of the power of faith and faithfulness.

Gordon Atkinson

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