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Goodbye Billy Graham

Billy Graham has died.  It seems as if he has been around forever.  And in my life, he has been around forever.  I am not young anymore and, yet, Billy has always been there.  I never met him.  I was never in the same audience with him.  I never went to a revival where he was the speaker.  I know some communities sponsored revivals supported by Graham and I was never a part of one of these.  I saw him numerous times on tv.  I have certainly seen him on the news so many times I could not count.  He has been around forever.  And now he is dead. 
   
He died at age 99.  Billy Graham was born in 1918 as WW I was concluding.  Billy was a North Carolina farmer’s son.  That southern accent was riveting.  He was a Southern Baptist, but became larger than the evangelical tradition, although it could be argued he never left it theologically.  He came into his own through the technology of the twentieth century.  He had a powerful radio presence and was a towering tv personality.  Often he was hailed as the “Pastor of the Country.” 
   
The New York Times obituary puts it well.  “Mr. Graham took the role of evangelist to a new level, lifting it from the sawdust floors of canvas tents in small-town America to the podiums of packed stadiums in the world’s major cities.”  Laurie Goodstein, writer of that obituary, captures well the dominating presence that was Graham’s.  “With a warm, courtly manner that was readily apparent both to stadium crowds and to those who met him face to face, Mr. Graham could be a riveting presence.  At 6-foot-2, with a handsomely rugged profile fit for Hollywood westerns, he would hold his Bible aloft and declare that Scripture offered “the answer to every human longing.”
   
He was a riveting presence.  And maybe that was his key.  Many of us who grow up in the faith---or find some kind of religious or spiritual faith---may think God is somehow a riveting presence.  When I was a kid, it would have been easy to imagine God asking me, “Do you want to be born again?”  Perhaps it was no different when Graham asked those in the audience that same question.  The answer would be an obvious, “yes!”  I had no doubt that would be my answer, if I ever felt confronted by the question. 
   
Yet and perhaps oddly, that never was my experience.  More than once I found myself at what could fairly be described as a revival service and I never had that “sense” or “demand” that I be born again.  I never doubted the authenticity of those who have had this experience.  In almost every way it must seem much more clear than my own experience of evolving into faith.  My experience has never been without some room for doubt.  Maybe I needed an encounter with Billy Graham. 
   
Again in the Times’ obituary, “Mr. Graham drew his essential message from the mainstream of evangelical Protestant belief.  Repent of your sins, he told his listeners, accept Jesus as your Savior and be born again.”  I heard that three-part formula many times.  Repent, accept Jesus and be born again.  It sounded easy, clean and effective.  No doubt, Graham spoke to a deep human need when he prepared the audience for the opportunity to welcome God and a new life. 
   
Goodstein effectively captures Graham’s process.  “In a typical exhortation, he declared: “Are you frustrated, bewildered, dejected, breaking under the strains of life?  Then listen for a moment to me: Say yes to the Savior tonight, and in a moment you will know such comfort as you have never known.  It comes to you quickly, as swiftly as I snap my fingers, just like that.”  Somehow Billy Graham was able to speak to each of us who do at times feel frustrated and bewildered.  There have been times I felt like I might break under the strain of life.  I know many folks who have felt like their life made no sense. 
   
It is easy to feel like you are dead even when you are not yet dead.  What’s the point?  For decades Billy Graham was able to articulate what is the point and to guide human beings to get the point---one by one.  Graham had a great line: “This is not mass evangelism…but personal evangelism on a mass scale.”  While Graham’s way of coming to the faith was not how it worked for me, I appreciated what he was able to do.  He was a man of faith and a role model for countless of folks.
   
Billy Graham’s human pilgrimage is now complete.  No doubt he knows answers now to the “what happens after death” in ways all of us who live can only guess.  Of course, the New Testament offers its own views and other major religious traditions have their perspective.  Whatever reality Billy Graham now knows, it is perfectly clear he made a difference in millions of lives here on this earth.  His legacy is secure.  He was obedient to the God he perceived called him into ministry.  I applaud that.

Goodbye Billy Graham

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