Marking the page
Hymns are powerful things. When I meet with a family before a funeral to discuss the arrangements for a service, I always ask if there’s any particular scripture passage they would like read, and if there’s any particular hymns they would like sung. Only once has a family suggested a scripture passage, but every single family has had some hymns in mind. 9 times out of 10, one of these hymns is the 23rd psalm, either in the metrical version, or in Henry MIller Baker’s “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” adaption.
I took these pictures at the Masonhill Crematorium this afternoon, where the majority of our funerals take place. To think how many mourning thumbs have touched that spine, to consider the hundreds of voices singing “goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” amidst the pain of death, to preside at many of these services, lifting my voice to the hills, is a gift and a privilege I do not take lightly.
Thanks be to God, for the mark of a sustaining psalm.
Linkage
So I have a sermon to write for Sunday that hasn’t really been started yet–these funeral sermons took precedence–but I thought my readers to have something to keep them going. Here’s some link fun.
- For the American justice-oriented type, check out this interesting post by Barbara Ehrenreich on the challenges facing truckers at the moment. As a student, I always feel strapped for cash. But considering the economic crisis from the point of view of truckers is illuminating. I’m particularly struck that they seem to have said, “enough is enough” and begun to protest–I don’t see truckers protesting anything related to W. in the years following 9/11. (hat tip to Mary Hess)
- Rhett Smith has an interesting post on the millennials (I’m one…are you?). Even better though–and more church nerdy, is Neil’s hopeful analysis of the PC(USA) and millennials. Check that out and the spiffy Presbymergent site
- Seth Godin writes here about blogging and writing. I’m not quite sure how often blogging increases the quality of people’s writing, but I take the point that it can and may. Blogging is an interesting new genre as his “drip, drip, drip” suggestion to write cumulatively points out.
- If you haven’t seen CCBlogs, you should check it out. My last funeral post is featured at the moment, but you’ll find other featured posts as well as a plenty of other Christian Century blog network blogs.
- So my Dad just got a Macbook Air, but all I want is this ghetto but cool lamp.
Grave truth
I lowered a coffin into a grave today. I’m told Scotland is one of the few places in the west in which coffins are still manually lowered into graves by mourners. Today, at a funeral of a church member with no living relatives, there weren’t many to hold the eight cords attached to the side of the coffin. So I took one. My supervisor took one. A few church members took one. And a home carer of the deceased took one.
“Now slowly let the cord slip through your hand” the funeral director said, “and let the coffin descend into the grave.” And we did. Eight of us standing on muddy boards perilously close to the edge of the grave.
“Drop your cords into the grave and slowly carefully step away” we were instructed.
My supervisor then proclaimed, “We commit this body to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” during which the funeral director threw several handfuls of dirt into the coffin.
Usually, at this point in the service, family members will each take a rose, kiss it, and toss it in the grave. But today the small group who attended the service lifted prayers instead.
I’m sure such graveside practices vary in the states, but my few experiences at gravesides have lacked such clear encounters of death and burial. At home, I’ve encountered mourners sitting in white folding chairs arranged on fake grass in front of where the coffin that will later–when all the family is gone–be lowered into the grave. Folks drive away before the coffin is set in the earth, before the body has been fully committed to the grave.
I know of an American pastor who has made it a practice not to leave the cemetery until the coffin is in the grave. Often, when the family hear his plans, they are comforted by the knowledge that their loved one will descend under the caring eye of the pastor, still praying.
I bet there’s many a state and federal law that might prohibit Americans from lowering caskets into the grave themselves. But in my short experience here, standing in the open air and seeing the coffin lowered into the earth by loved ones enacts the reality that, while we belong body and soul in life and in death to God, at the same time we are dust, and to dust we shall return.
A "Celebration" of Life
Reading a London Times article today on a child’s tragic death, I noticed a profoundly theological use of quotation marks. The article mentioned the child’s funeral at her church, and the family’s description of the funeral service as a “celebration” of the child’s life.
The article said something like, “and family and friends gathered at the church to ‘celebrate’ her life.”
I take, by this use of quotations, that the writer considered celebration for a life prematurely cut short as abnormal, deciding it best to use quotation marks to make sure readers knew it was the family who had this crazy idea of “celebration” and not the writer.
I recognized the phrase, “a celebration of her life,” because I often use it myself. I do a lot of funerals. Meeting with families before I often say, “We’ll make the service a celebration of [loved one's] life.” I’m beginning to think, however, that this is a phrase that comforts but fails to communicate.
When I speak of the service as a celebration of the loved one’s life, I’m more fully hoping to convey that the service will be (1) worship of God during which, (2) we rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus who gives all lives hope, and (3) we shall give thanks for the life of the loved one, commend her/his body to God, and commit her/him to the elements.
If I’m honest, however, I think points 1 and 2 are often unclear, misunderstood, or completely absent. Funeral services all too quickly become overly focused on the life of the loved one and only on God as an afterthought. This is especially true when funerals are for and attended by non church-goers. The liturgy helps correct this emphasis on the deceased, but my impression is that most people come to the crematorium (where 90% of such services occur) to “pay their respects” to the deceased and the family rather than to worship God.
To counteract the popular notion of funerals as first about the deceased, I suppose I could explain to each family, carefully and fully, my understanding of the funeral service as first one of worship in light of Jesus’ resurrection, during which we will give thanks to God for the life of the loved one. But I’m afraid such a clear statement might make many families uneasy–some to the extent of preferring me not to lead the service–as a significant number of funerals I do are for non church-attending people who may or may not have anticipated such a service.
The Presbyterian Book of Common Worship titles such services, “The Funeral: A Service of Witness to the Resurrection,” clearly emphasizing Jesus’ resurrection rather than the death or life of the deceased.
Certainly, a funeral can include a celebration of one’s life. Or further, a funeral should include a celebration of one’s life. But at its core I understand a funeral to be a celebration in praise of God, remembering Jesus’ resurrection first and foremost.
I sense, in my current context, that my understanding is in the minority–certainly not the first time. Maybe the newspaper writer was right, the funeral service was a “celebration” of the child’s life.
photo by rameckers
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