Sermon Illustration

Confessions of a Funeral Director

Mortician Caleb Wilde is a 6th generation funeral director, who garnered international attention through a blog and TED talk that explores the humanity of death and the importance of becoming familiar with the last enemy. Writer Eric Puchner, reflecting on spending a day with Wilde and his corpses says, "Americans don't like to talk about the inevitable: Our screens are filled with zombies, and yet speaking frankly about death is seen as "morbid" or "unhealthy."

Surely the recent virus panic is a product of this repression, a way of turning our own mortality into a foreign threat, an illegal immigrant landing on our shores. Death is embarrassing to us, even a bit unpatriotic."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Does this set us back in the West to contemplate not only our own mortality, but the call of Christ to "come and die"? Does is set us back in our understanding and appreciation of the resurrection? It's hard to think that it doesn't.

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