A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to A Funeral 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.

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.

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. A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to A Funeral, therefore, seemed most appropriate as a title.