“You may have noticed this isn’t the usual sort of memorial service,” Kathy Keller told about 2,000 guests gathered today to remember Tim Keller. She meant there were few tributes and no videos or photos of her husband.
“That’s because Tim wrote it himself, just the way he liked to do funerals for other people,” she said. “You mention the dead person, certainly, but then you talk about the God that person is now facing.”
That’s exactly what happened in Keller’s final service. The founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and cofounder of The Gospel Coalition passed away on May 19 from pancreatic cancer. He was 72 years old.
‘Tim Is with Jesus’
Kathy spoke midway through the 90-minute service held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, one of the oldest and largest churches in the city. Even then, space was limited to invited guests, who included actor Max McLean, actress Patricia Heaton, New York Times columnist David Brooks, rapper Lecrae, historian (and recent convert) Molly Worthen, and The Gospel Coalition cofounder Don Carson. Nearly 10,000 more from around the world watched the livestream broadcast by Redeemer City to City.
“Tim is buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery . . . but that place is huge and you couldn’t find the grave even if you tried,” Kathy said casually. “But please don’t try, and here’s why I don’t want you to: you know those scenes in movies, like at the end of Saving Private Ryan, where someone has a heart-to-heart talk standing at the headstone of the deceased person? Tim and I were always uncomfortable with those because the person isn’t actually there.”
Instead, “Tim is with Jesus—healed, loved, more alive, and happier than he has ever been,” she said, keeping her tone conversational. “Having mentioned the headstone, I will tell you I’ve been considering various Bible verses for it. . . . Let me tell you my favorite right now.”
She read Isaiah 25:6–9, then clarified, “That’s not what I’m going to put on the headstone—that would be like 20 feet high. That’s just context.”
She’s actually got her eye on Isaiah 26:1, 12, and 19, “In that day this song will be sung. . . . All that we have accomplished you have done for us. . . . Your dead will live, LORD, their bodies will rise. Let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy” (NIV).
Isaiah was speaking of a future reality with no more death or tears, and “Tim is living in that reality now,” she said. “How I yearn for all of us to trust the God he now worships face to face so that one day we may all sit down to that feast together.”
Beloved Dad
She then veered off the script prescribed by the 28-page program and offered the microphone to her youngest and oldest sons. “Jonathan, did you have something you wanted to say?”
He did.
“Dad was—is—fundamentally a gifted encourager,” Jonathan said. “Let’s be encouraged, friends and family, even in our sadness, from the memory of his life, which is a testament to something greater and longer-lasting than we have here on earth.”
His brother David followed with the most emotional moment of the service, pausing several times to control tears during his prayer.
“Heavenly Father, we are sad at the loss, but we take comfort in knowing Dad is filled with joy,” David said, with Kathy and Jonathan standing near. “We ask you to meet us in our grief and remind us that your loving sacrifice on the cross and resurrection has conquered death, so that when you call us home we can joyfully say what he did, ‘I’m ready to see Jesus. Send me home.’”
Evangelistic Emphasis
The rest of the memorial followed the order of service, with readings from the Bible and C. S. Lewis, hymns chosen by Keller, and a homily from family friend Sam Allberry.
“The very qualities we have loved in Tim are all reflections of what can be found so clearly in Christ,” Allberry said. “What Tim was, imperfectly, Christ has always been, fully and completely. Or to borrow from one of Tim’s more memorable phrases, ‘Jesus is the true and better Tim Keller.’ And so the best way to appreciate and understand Tim is to think about Christ.”
Jesus, the most powerful individual on earth, came to serve and to die for us, Allberry said.
“Tim was an extraordinary servant because he had let Jesus serve him,” he said. “It was being served by Christ that enabled him to serve so many of the rest of us so beautifully. So will you let Jesus serve you? If you’ve never done so, would you let Jesus serve you today, this afternoon, this very moment?”
Allberry’s evangelistic tone was reminiscent of the last high-profile funeral in evangelicalism. When Billy Graham passed away in 2018, he too directed family and friends to share the gospel with the more than 2,000 memorial attendees.
“Tim was very clear that he wanted it to be evangelistic and not about him,” Allberry told TGC.
Purposeful Service
That same purposeful theme ran through the songs.
“I chose each hymn and there’s an order to them,” Keller told attendees at a worship service at the National Institutes of Health in April. His reasoning was transcribed in the program.
“Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise” is all about God and his attributes, Keller explained. “Amazing Love, How Can It Be?” is about a personal relationship with God. “How Firm a Foundation” is about connecting to God through his Word, “Jesus Lives and So Shall I” gives hope for life after death, and “For All the Saints, Who From Their Labor Rest” reminds us all the saints will be gathered together at last.
Keller’s memorial service was also thick with Scripture—in addition to verses in the opening and benediction, sections from John 14, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 4, Romans 8, and Mark 10 were read by leaders from four Redeemer campuses. Every one of them pointed to the resurrection to come.
“We grieve, but we grieve with hope,” Tim’s middle son and pastor Michael Keller said in closing. He pointed to a quote in the program from D. L. Moody: “Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher.”
“The world to come is brighter and better and more real,” Michael said. “We are going to see him again in the new world, so there is joy and grace and love and light forever more. Let that comfort you, let that sustain you in all things now and always.”