5 When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. 6 The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. Acts 5:5-6
2 Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. Acts 8:2.
Through the Bible: Acts 7-8
One of my all time favorite albums is Johnny Cash’s American IV: The Man Comes Around. It was released in 2002, ten months before the singer’s death. His gravelly voice is weak and frail, and most, if not all of the songs are about death, regret, and grief. I don’t know why it’s one of my favorites, except that every note just sounds so real, so lived in.
After reading today’s passage about the devout men who carried Stephen out to bury him, a line from one of the songs drifted through my head:
“Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin / six dance hall maidens to bear up my pall…”
The line is from The Streets of Laredo, a ballad about a dying cowboy telling his story to a fellow cowboy after being shot. When Cash sings it, he sings like a man who isn’t far from the grave himself. His voice is cracked, thin, almost transparent. You can hear mortality in every breath. He sings the song as though he himself is the dying cowboy. It feels like a man rehearsing his own funeral.
So I did what I normally do when a song gets stuck in my head. I told Siri to play it for me. But Siri chose a different recording—one from 1965. The difference was jarring. On this recording, from Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West, Cash was 33 at the time. He’s young. He’s confident. The production (in my opinion) is overdone and sappy. The vocals are a hammy mix of reciting the story and singing it, and at times feel like Cash was using the song as a vehicle for his impressive bass range. And though the lyric is the same, the singer isn’t. He’s telling the story as a narrator. Singing about death as if it were something that happened to other people.
You can listen to the 1965 version here
And as the song played, something in me tightened. I realized:
I’m beginning to hear funerals differently too.
Not morbidly.
Just honestly.
Each one feels a little more personal.
Each one presses me to ask:
What kind of life am I living toward my own funeral?
And what kind of people will carry me when the time comes?
Scripture’s Stark Contrast
That question sits underneath a contrast Luke slips into Acts.
In Acts 5, when Ananias collapses under the weight of his deception:
“The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out.” (Acts 5:6)
Sapphira falls, and Luke echoes the same detail:
“The young men came in, found her dead, and carried her out.” (Acts 5:10)
Nothing is said about the pallbearers except that they are young. No indication of how they felt about Ananias and Sapphira. No indication of their own character. Just guys with strong backs assigned an unpleasant task.
A chapter later, after Stephen’s face shines like an angel, after he forgives his killers with his dying breath, Luke writes:
“Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.” (Acts 8:2)
Not “young men.” Not random guys who were available and able-bodied.
Devout men. Men of faith. Men who grieved because they had lost a brother.
I can imagine them competing for the honor:
“Let me carry him, for all the times he carried me.”
“I’ll do it. It’s the least I can do.”
“Please, if you have everyone you need, at least let me stand at the grave.”
The contrast is stark:
- Some lives leave behind a body to be moved.
- Others leave behind a grief worth carrying.
The Pastor at the Graveside
I’ve stood beside both kinds of graves.
I’ve attended funerals where so many people wanted to speak that we had to gently limit the stories. Men competed to be pallbearers. Entire Sunday School classes were designated as honorary pallbearers. Multiple eulogies were spoken. Everyone remembered a favorite hymn or passage of Scripture. There was grief, but it was good grief. The tears were heavy, but they were holy.
And I’ve attended the other kind. Where the room stayed mostly empty. Where the funeral home quietly asked the staff to help carry the coffin because no one else had come. Where the pastor had to ask the music leader to plan for more music because there were so few stories.
I don’t stand in judgment of the dead. But I do take inventory of the living—especially myself.
When The Man Comes Around
Hearing those two versions of Johnny Cash today—one young and distant, the other old and near the end—pressed the question deeper:
Who am I today?
I’m no longer the young man who thinks funerals happen to other people.
Every funeral I attend is one funeral closer to my own.
And even more:
Who will I be tomorrow?
When the time comes, who will carry me?
Who will feel the weight?
Who will grieve?
Who will thank God that I lived?
I can’t choose my pallbearers.
But I can choose the life that shapes them.
And here’s the thread of hope I cling to:
Every confession, every act of love, every repentance, every moment I return to Jesus—
these are small steps toward becoming the kind of man whose life is worth carrying.
Not because I’m impressive.
Not because I’m holy.
But because grace is patient, and God is kind, and the Spirit is not finished with me.
Six jolly cowboys would be fine, I suppose.
But I’m praying for something deeper:
Lord, make me into a man whose life leaves behind devout hearts—not because I was great,
but because You were gracious.
Teach me to live a life worth lifting.
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