Ben


Abstract:
When we did the story of the angels visiting Abraham and Sarah, when they announced that Abe and Sarah would conceive and bear a son, we played a clip from Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On." I'm not kidding.

Body:
I met Ben a few years ago when I was thinking about launching a new worship service at our church. He was tall and had a toothy grin. I complained to him that most contemporary worship music was too white. All ethereal guitar riffs, hand-waving, and rock-opera drum beats. There was no funk, no groove to "praise and worship" music. It all gravitated to 60's sentimentality.

He agreed and got excited about some kind of alternative. He named about a dozen musical sources. I knew I was no longer hip because the only one I recognized was the Dave Matthews Band.

We started working on putting together a worship team. I told them there was no canon of great Christian music I wanted them to draw from. They would have to find or create whatever fit best with our story. Once we did the story of Jacob meeting Leah at the well. She is so beautiful that he cries. So we sang "Pretty Woman." The week before that we did the story of Jacob's ladder, and for our time of meditation they played the instrumental bit from "Stairway to Heaven." When we did the story of the angels visiting Abraham and Sarah, when they announced that Abe and Sarah would conceive and bear a son, we played a clip from Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On." I'm not kidding. It was great stuff. He wrote two songs that became standards for our band - one based on Psalm 25 and one that was a rewrite of "For the Beauty of the Earth."

My fondest memories are of him sitting at our dining room table, eating peanut-butter waffles and joking about politics, love, and fart jokes. My two-year old son saw him so often at church that he called the church building "Ben's house." My toughest memory is of praying with him in the back of a police car when he was arrested for trying to break into a church member's house. I had thought that he was a recovering addict. I learned that he was not as "recovering" as I had hoped. The last year had been really tough on our relationship, but I heard that he was making a turnaround. He had a job. He had a fiancee.

He died in a car wreck on Friday night on his way to attend a funeral. His own funeral was Tuesday. He was 23 years old.

In my eulogy, I pointed out that nearly every time Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, he uses the image of a party. The father welcomes the prodigal son and throws a party. A king invites wealthy citizens to a banquet, they refuse, and he goes out and invites the street people instead. A woman sweeps madly for a silver dollar and, when she finds it, throws a hundred-dollar celebration. A messiah passes bread and wine to his disciples and says, "this is my body and blood."

For me, the Kingdom of Heaven will always look a lot like Ben sitting across the table, eating peanut butter waffles, making fart jokes, and telling me about this new song he's working on.

Posted: Mon - November 20, 2006 at 10:58 PM           |

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