I watched Billy Graham’s funeral
I watched Billy Graham’s funeral service in the early hours of the morning. Why would I watch Billy Graham’s funeral service? As if answering a question on a school exam paper, “I would watch Billy Graham’s funeral service as he is a projection of a part of me. The part of me that goes back to my earliest memories when I was told stories of this man Jesus, ‘Jesus and the woman at the Well’, ‘Jesus and Bartimaeus’, ‘Jesus and Zacchaeus’ and on and on. Graham was the epitome of the Jesus storytellers.
He was revered as a celebrity and in the rivalries of Northern Ireland (NI), he was the closest we had to a Protestant Pope. As I grew up my beliefs aligned more and more with Graham’s as I became an Evangelical. In NI we didn’t use the word ‘Evangelical’ much we preferred ‘Born Again’ Christian. Graham popularised the term Born Again so when he spoke albeit with an American accent we understood his language.
In 1989 Graham would preach in London the event would be simultaneously broadcast to satellite sites across the UK and Ireland. I pushed invitations through letterboxes in my hometown for the local satellite event. During the weeks leading up to it there was an election and by coincidence I encountered the most well known NI preacher at the time the Rev Ian Paisley. Now Paisley had shared Graham evangelical zeal and they both had a connection to Bob Jones although Graham left Bob Jones University as he found it too legalistic. Paisley had denounced Graham due to his meeting with the Pope and his developing relationship with the Catholic church. Paisley had planned protests against Graham at the Satellite sites in NI. I asked him why he would promote such a protest. I can’t remember his answer though I remember thinking that Paisley seemed a much more gentler person in a one to one conversation than when addressing crowds, I suppose we all are.
As it happened I was in Birmingham, England that summer and watched Graham from a satellite centre in the city.
While my own beliefs have changed considerably since 1989 I remain grateful for the part of me that responded to the evangelical storytellers and through them learned a faith.
All of Graham’s children spoke at his funeral. They all had a great love for him though not surprisingly each one of them was different from the other. There were two that had inherited their father’s gift for preaching. It was his daughter who told the story of how she had got divorced and then walked into another doomed relationship that caught my heart. She made herself vulnerable though in so doing revealed Graham as a father who welcomed his daughter home. Too often we only see what seems perfect in families such as the Grahams yet each family and indeed each person has some degree of heartache. It is the broken that speaks more to me than she who presents herself as whole.
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