Funeral Matters
FROM THE RECTOR
We have missed more than a few funerals lately. As individuals and as a parish, we have suffered the loss of people we love, but, in many cases, we have not been able to come together to remember them and give them more fully into God’s care. Some families have had small, essentially private services. Others are waiting until the community can gather again. Without access to the familiar means for expressing our losses, many of us are bearing the burden of heavy, cumulative grief, some of which is personal but much of which comes from that generalized sense of heartache that we all share.
At all times but especially in moments like this, our funeral liturgy is one of our most important resources. The words and actions that we use to bury someone both reflect and shape our understanding of death and our confidence in the face of it. As Christians, we know that “life is changed, not ended; and, when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens” (BCP p. 382). Nevertheless, as human beings, we still experience the sharpness and anguish of a loved one’s death, and we need to be reminded of and formed by our faith in ways that buoy us.
In order to accomplish that, our burial rite focuses primarily not on what has been but on what is yet to come. Although far more personal than the funeral service from the 1928 prayer book, in which the name of the deceased was never even mentioned, our current liturgy reflects our belief that the promise of the resurrection depends not on the merits of the one who has died but on the work of Christ alone. When we gather for a funeral, therefore, we celebrate not the life of the decedent but the gift of everlasting life given to us by God in Jesus Christ. In the homily, the clergy try to ground our faith and hope in the resurrection in the life and witness of the one we love, but we do so while primarily looking forward instead of back. Families do not need the church’s help eulogizing those they have lost, but, when we search for the assurance that death is not the end, we turn to the church to give us that hope.
Funerals are as much for the community of faith as for the family of the one who has died. Even if we hardly knew them, when someone from our parish dies, we all experience that loss. One who was created by God for everlasting life has suffered the consequences of our fallen human nature. Whenever someone dies, we depend upon the church to show us that death, while real and consequential, has no ultimate meaning for people of faith. We need to be comforted with the assurance that God’s love has the power to save us even from the mortality we all share. In this season of struggle, when so many people live in fear of illness and death, we need to experience again our place within the community of faith, which in Jesus’ name embodies the repudiation of death’s sting.
Personally, I do not believe that the souls or spirits of individuals who die without receiving a formal, liturgical burial are in any way trapped in this world or prevented from entering the “blessed rest of everlasting peace” to which we commend the departed in our burial service. God’s love and care are bigger than the words we speak in church. But I do know that those of us who are not given the chance to hear the comforting prayers and proclamations of the burial rite sometimes carry an unfinished grief for a little longer than we otherwise might. And I know the palpable relief that comes when the duty of caring for someone who has died is itself laid to rest through an act of worship by the Christian community.
Whenever the opportunity presents itself again, I encourage you to come to a funeral and hear those familiar words: “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.” Come not only for the sake of those who mourn the death of a loved one. Come also for your own sake. Come because you, too, need to be reminded that we believe in something more powerful than death. Come because you, too, have your own burdens to lay down. Come because you know that Jesus Christ will receive your grief and because the community of faith will stand with you and bear it up to God beside you.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan