A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Funeral

<p><em>A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to A Funeral </em>may seem inappropriate as the title of a book that talks about deaths and burials. But as a former teacher astutely observed words have uses rather than meanings. Funny is one of those words. Something may be funny/ha-ha—amusing humorous or funny/odd—unusual out of the ordinary even weird. And there are times when a thing is simultaneously funny/ha ha and funny/odd.</p><p>My experience across more than sixty years of ministry has included all three uses and that fact began early. Though a Baptist I began like a Methodist serving a circuit of two rural churches. They referred to me as their pastor but I was more like what the Air National Guard calls a “week-end warrior.” I was a college student in Birmingham the churches were 120 miles away in Chambers County and I had no car when the first one called me. One met on first and third Sundays the other on second and fourth Sundays. On fifth Sundays I went hungry! And to keep things interesting though the churches were in the same Alabama county one operated on central time and the other on eastern.</p><p>I discovered this pattern applied in ministering to those who were genuinely grieved as well as to those to put it nicely “less emotionally stressed”; of whom there are many. Moods and happenings have run the gamut from: pious to secular; heart-breaking to funny bone-tickling; sublime to ridiculous; holy to irreverent. <em>A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to A Funeral</em> therefore seemed most appropriate as a title.</p>