Accompany Them with Singing--The Christian Funeral

by Thomas G. Long

It is important to maintain, at funerals and otherwise, the distinction between these two categories: death and Death.

Thus every person, said Niebuhr, “has a direct relation to eternity, for he seeks for the completion of the meaning of his life beyond the fragmentary realizations of meaning which can be discerned at any point in the process where an individual may live or die.”7

A Christian funeral is not purely meditation; it is dramatic action.

The late Stella Adler, a celebrated teacher of acting whose students included the likes of Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, and Marlon Brando, often reminded her students that the word “theater” did not always suggest entertainment and escape. The word comes from a Greek term meaning “the seeing place,” and, at its most profound, the theater, she said, “is the place that people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.”1 Because the theater is about the truth, there is, Adler said, one inviolable rule that an actor must learn: “Life is not you. Life is outside you. If it is outside you, you must go toward it.”2

Funerals, as Kathleen Norris’s friend suggested, “blur the line between this world and the next.” Part of the power of a funeral is that we can see so clearly “the rest of the community,” that we are connected in worship to the one who has died and to those who, having died before us, now worship God in that land toward which we are traveling. In other words, at a funeral we become sharply aware that this worship involves the whole communion of the saints.

What we do know is that death changes, but does not destroy, our relationship to the dead. We stand on a great continuum of worship with the saints who have gone before us. We pray, and so do they. We praise God, and so do they. Only the prayers and praises on our end of the continuum are appeals to God from the midst of historical, communal, and personal brokenness and incompletion, and as such our prayers are all set to the music of “Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20), which is the penultimate acclamation of the New Testament.

Kerygmatic A good funeral, whatever else it may do, tells the kerygma, the gospel story. The funeral is bold to proclaim that, though it may appear that death has claimed yet another victim, the truth is that the one who has died has been raised to new life in Christ and is now gathered with the saints in communion with God. The kerygma proclaimed at a funeral is, of course, the same gospel announced every Sunday. This gospel is the assurance that death has been destroyed by the death and resurrection of Jesus. But there is a very personal quality to the kerygma at a funeral. Here we are given the comforting news that the risen Christ stands with us and for us, the Christ who promises that persons and relationships will not be eradicated by death. 19

Oblational The meaning of “oblational” is connected to “offering.” As is the case in all services of worship, an offering is received at a funeral, but here the offering is usually not about money. What do people bring to a funeral to offer God? Their grief, of course, and their memories. Sometimes they bring regret and guilt, perhaps simply over a word they failed to speak, a smile they did not smile. They may bring anger, a need to shake the fist at God. And they bring the deceased, the body, actual or remembered, of the one who has died; and one purpose of a good funeral is to enable people to give the deceased to God and, thereby, to give them up, to let them go. People bring many things to a funeral to offer to God. As Hoon says,

Ecclesiastical A good funeral is a work of the whole church, the communion of the saints, and it announces that we do not pass through the valley of the shadow of death alone. People should sit together at a funeral, mourning families surrounded by the others, and a good funeral allows for the voices of the congregation to be heard in the service, in prayer, lesson, song, and creed.

Therapeutic A good funeral is not about pastoral counseling, but it is about providing comfort to the afflicted and the grief-stricken. Some of this comfort comes through directly addressing sorrow through the prayers, sermon, hymns, and other elements of the service. Much comfort comes indirectly, through placing the bitter loss of death into the context of the community’s praise and the larger resurrection story of victory over death.

Eucharistic An old practice in the church involves the celebration of Holy Communion at a funeral, in the earliest traditions at the graveside. In the Lord’s Supper, the church gives thanks for all of creation and anticipates that day when the whole family of God will be gathered at the heavenly banquet. Even when the Eucharist per se is not observed, the funeral still is an expression of thanksgiving. The church gives thanks to God for the many gifts of life, especially the gift of the life of the deceased. Even when the deceased was a “difficult” person and our experience was conflicted, we give thanks for this life, this sometimes inscrutable embodiment of God’s image, and for the ways our faith has been tested and strengthened by being in relationship with her or him.

Commemorative A brother or sister in Christ has died, and a good funeral actively remembers this person. The book of Acts reports that when Dorcas, a much-beloved Christian in the town of Joppa “who was devoted to good works and charity” died, they washed her body and laid her in an upstairs room. Some women stayed beside Dorcas’s body “weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them” (Acts 9: 36, 39). This act of touching the things that Dorcas had sewn was not, of course, to admire her textile craft; it was to remember Dorcas. In a funeral, the church carries a saint to the place of farewell, and a good funeral brings to our memory the reality of the one we are carrying.

Missional The funeral is not a stopping place for God’s people, but a way station on the journey of faith. We take a loved one to the place of departure and say farewell, and then we go back and get to work serving God’s world. A good funeral prays, then, not just for ourselves in our loss, but also for the world in its sorrows and needs.

Educational The funeral is educational in two directions. First, it allows the church to participate once again in the ancient Easter drama, and we learn the script and our roles all over again. We discover anew who we are as Christians, the nature of our hope, the destination of the dead, and the power of the resurrection. The funeral is also an occasion for education on behalf of the guests in the household of God. Many funeral congregations include those who are not Christians, or at least who are not usually a part of the worshiping community, and the funeral can be an occasion for the biblical practice of showing hospitality to the stranger. These visitors are invited to get up on stage and read parts in a play with which they are not familiar. Sometimes a pastor can welcome participation with a simple and brief word of explanation—“The reason why we pray this prayer is …”

Planning a funeral involves blending that which is very old, deeply traditioned, and oft repeated with that which is entirely new, profoundly personal, and utterly unique.

Jacques Bénigne Bossuet

A Christian sermon is built on the conviction that when we take what is happening in our lives and in our world to a biblical text and honestly and prayerfully listen, a word from God may be heard there.

A Christian funeral, as we have emphasized, is a piece of drama in which the church reenacts the gospel by symbolically walking with the deceased on the pilgrim path toward resurrection, singing and praying as they go.

Death—capital-D Death—loves to preach and never misses a funeral. Death’s sermon is powerful and always the same: “Damn you! Damn all of you! I win every time. I destroy all loving relationships. I shatter all community. I dash all hope. I have claimed another victim. Look at the corpse; look at the open grave. There is your evidence. I always win!”

Every human life, no matter how short or long, complicated or simple, sorrowful or joyful, is nevertheless a text that can be read in the light of God’s image and grace. The words may catch in the throat for some, but “Thank you, O God, for this life” is one of the refrains we sing as we process to the grave.

the procession of faith does not end at the grave. Even as our eyes are downcast in grief, the missional sermon reminds us that baptism defines us more lastingly than grief and calls us to “keep our eyes on the prize” of the kingdom of God and our call to be about the work of God in the world.

But the gospel does not play on people’s emotions or take advantage of the vulnerable. Instead it welcomes people into the place of worship.