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.
