Making Sense of Death
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine died. The Rev. Everett Lees was the rector of Christ Church in Tulsa, where he served for thirteen years. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died sixteen days later, leaving behind a wife, three young children, his parents, his other relatives, dozens of friends, hundreds of colleagues, and an entire parish to grieve a loss that they had only just begun to anticipate.
Everett’s funeral was on a Sunday afternoon, and I left as soon as our 11:00 a.m. service was over in order to make it on time. As I drove to Tulsa, I wondered why I was going all that way after a full Sunday morning to attend a funeral only to then turn around and drive all the way back. I thought of Everett as a friend, but, truthfully, we never spent much time together. We broke bread at a conference his church hosted a few years ago, and we knew each other from General Convention and some other clergy gatherings within The Episcopal Church, but we were not close. A while back, we exchanged text messages about meeting up in Siloam Springs for lunch, but it never happened.
As I heard in the funeral homily, lots of people felt like they were Everett’s friend. He had a gift for making other people feel loved and appreciated, and I am one of countless individuals who experienced that kindness from Everett. Still, something else pulled me to Tulsa that day. I needed to be there. I needed to put on my cassock, surplice, and white stole and process in with the other clergy and take part in the service. I needed to hold out my hands and receive the bread of Holy Communion. I needed to be at his funeral because I needed help making sense of Everett’s death.
I do not pretend that I understand any better why Everett died or what role God had in his death after going to his funeral. The homily provided words of comfort and affirmation, but the preacher did not attempt to explain why bad things happen to good people. (Thanks be to God!) But the entire event helped me remember what we believe about death and God’s victory over it.
A large group of people came together, only a few of whom I knew, to embody the Body of Christ and to seek to become more fully the Body of Christ. We sang hymns of praise to the God whose love carries us through this life, through the grave, and into the life that awaits. We heard the sacred words of scripture rearticulate God’s promise of resurrection life to God’s people. We gave Everett back to God, giving thanks for his life and acknowledging that God is able to do for him more than we can ask or imagine. We laughed and cried and hugged each other because holding on to someone else, even if it is not someone you know well, is sometimes all that we know how to do.
In the last two weeks, we have had four funerals at St. Paul’s, which is an exceptionally high number even for a parish as big as ours. Each time we gather for the burial office, we attempt to make sense of death and to reground ourselves in God’s promise of new life in Jesus Christ. Although the words and structure of the liturgy remain almost the same each time, the good news of the Gospel comes alive within the context of an individual’s life through the hymns, lessons, and homily that reflect that person’s identity.
When a member of the church—a member of Christ’s body—dies, the rest of us must grapple with the reality of that loss and attempt to fit it within the larger Christian narrative of God’s triumph over death in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As the liturgy proclaims, “Even at the grave, we make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” But how is that possible? How can we, who believe that death has been robbed of its sting, hold onto the hope of our faith when the sing of a loved one’s death hurts so much?
In part, our answer comes from the liturgy—not simply from the words themselves, though they help a great deal, but from the act of engaging in the timeless, boundless worship of the God whose Son proclaimed to his disciples that Lazarus’ illness did not lead to death yet also wept at the tomb of his dead friend. Our worship allows us to grieve the loss of our loved ones and acknowledge the holiness of our tears without being overcome by despair. When we worship God in the burial rite, we encounter and recenter ourselves in the truth that, although death is an inescapable outcome of this life, because of Jesus, death as a force or reality has no ultimate bearing on us.
There are certain truths in this life that must be encountered, experienced, or enacted to be understood—understood not only with our mind but within our very being. Amidst the fragility of this life, we cling to God’s promise to rescue us from the power of death not as something we wish for but as something we have already experienced in Jesus Christ. Although the fullness of the life to come has only begun to break through into this world, we see it accomplished in the empty tomb and unfolding in the lives of the saints around us.
I often hear people say, “Funerals are for the living,” by which I think they mean that the family needs the burial service just as much as the one who has died. Of course, the service itself is far more than a remembrance or celebration of a person’s life. At a funeral, we commend the one who has died to God in order to remind ourselves that death is not the end. We tell stories of hope and love from their life not to convince ourselves that they are heaven-bound but to remind ourselves that our hope is not a mere recitation of our faith but a lived experience reflected in the lives of the saints we know.
As someone who spends a considerable amount of time thinking about, planning, and performing funerals, I can tell you that I never stop needing them. They are important, even if the person who has died has no one to call their family. They help us maintain our faith in the resurrection even though death is far more familiar. Death is a part of life—an inevitable part as biologically natural as the next breath we take—but the death that separates us from those we love is not God’s vision for the world, nor is it God’s plan for our lives. Truthfully, I do not quite know how to make sense of that, but I know that it is true, and I encounter that truth again every time we gather to bury someone we love.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
