As important as consolation is in a time of loss, the role of the Christian community at a funeral is much larger than emotional care. People feel grief, of course, but death is also a crisis of meaning. What is death? What has happened to the one who has died? Why is life so fragile? What is our hope? These questions find their best response not in discussion groups but in worship. At a funeral, the church has come not to provide therapy but to worship, to enact the story of the gospel about life and death, which, of course, provides the deepest comfort of all.
