Funerals: When Tragedy Strikes.

The most natural response when tragedy strikes is disillusionment. Rightly so, we should be shaken when death visits a household, when an accident causes a massacre, when multitudes are killed in terrorist attacks, and most certainly when women and children are sexually abused and murdered.

Tragedy should cause us to weep; it should cause us to wail in sorrow. When God himself, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, came to dwell among mankind (John 1:14), he was not robotic at the sight of the horrors of a fallen world. He freely expressed sorrow.

When he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it.

”Luke 19:41

Jesus wept as he looked upon Jerusalem and the judgment that its sin would bring. Again, in the famous account of Lazarus, we are told that when Jesus saw Mary weeping and witnessed the grief surrounding Lazarus’s death, he was deeply moved. “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Like our Lord, we are to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) when tragedy strikes.

Disillusionment should not be the end of the matter. When tragedy strikes, it should cause us to think about our standing in the things that really matter. As unspeakably horrendous as it is when women and children are murdered, or when people are massacred in catastrophic plane crashes, car accidents and terrorist attacks, death is not the end. There is life beyond the grave, in eternity.

It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.

”Hebrews 9:27

Whether we die at a good old age from natural causes or are killed in a catastrophe or murdered, the bottom line is that we are all going to die. Thereafter, we will face real and eternal implications. This is true of a person who dies of natural causes at an old age, and it is equally true of a young woman who is raped and murdered. This is what we always need to return to after the initial disillusionment.

The Lord Jesus Christ made this abundantly clear when speaking about the Galilean worshippers whom the Roman governor Pilate had massacred and the eighteen people who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them (Luke 13:1–5). As awful as these tragedies were, Jesus warned of an infinitely worse tragedy: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (vv. 3, 5). Ultimately, we are all going to die. In death, we will either be carried by the angels to Abraham’s side, or awaken in Hades, being in torment (Luke 16:22–23).

We need to be clear that no one goes to heaven based on the circumstances of their death. People do not receive eternal life with God because they tragically died in a plane crash, terrorist attack or car accident, or because they were raped and murdered. All these horrible things happen because we live in a sin-cursed world.

When God created mankind in the beginning (Genesis 2), he created them good. He gave them a command: “You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Mankind broke God’s command and ate what God had forbidden. Since then, mankind has been born in sinful flesh—naturally hostile to God and under his wrath (Romans 8:7; Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:21; Ephesians 2:1–3).

The Lord Jesus Christ came to reconcile holy God and sinful people through his death. This reconciliation is received through faith alone in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God alone (Romans 5:10).

The only one who will escape the true tragedy of dying and facing judgment is the person who trusts in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus bore the punishment for the sins of all who trust in him, so that they will not bear that punishment themselves.

The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.

”1 Corinthians 6:9

Whether people die of natural causes or are brutally murdered, no one inherits the kingdom of God through the manner of their death. Scripture warns that neither the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, those who practise homosexuality, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). Such lives reveal the condition of people who remain enemies of God and have not trusted in the only giver of eternal life, the Lord Jesus Christ (John 3:16).

Therefore, when tragedy strikes, weep, wail and be sorrowful—but let it also cause you to think about what truly matters in the end: your standing in eternity. If you are outside Christ, as shown by a life of active disobedience to his Word, you do not have eternal life. Eternal death awaits apart from him.

Tragedy must never make us cold toward those who suffer. It should move us to compassion, prayer and tears. But it should also awaken us to the urgency of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, who alone gives eternal life.