O Come! Little Children

This funeral sermon is for a three-day-old infant who died of complications arising from a birth defect.

I stand here in the pulpit ready to preach Jason's funeral sermon with a feeling deep down in the pit of my stomach that anything which I say must seem very trivial. Having presided at over 200 funeral services, my experience tells me that there is no loss so striking, so numbing, so tragic, so full of grief, as the loss of a child. I say that not to minimize the sense of loss for those who have seen spouse or parent or friend suffer and die; certainly any loss is tragic for those who are left behind.

But the loss of a child seems to have its own special kind of tragedy. Our minds want to race ahead to all of the things that this lifeless child will not be able to d…