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Christian Funeral Rites: A Theological Consideration

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8.38–39)

Death is, in Christian understanding, both friend and foe. It is the doorway to life eternal and it is the wage paid by sin (Romans 6.23). Even when death comes as a friend to one who has suffered prolonged illness or catastrophic, irreversible injury, those who are left have no release from the pain of grief.

Death is consuming in its urgency; its advent leaves none unchanged. Other priorities are set aside, and attention is forced, like it or not, upon the immediacy of what has occurred.

The angry, the dazed, the relieved, the numb – all look for help; and when they seek that help from the Christian people of God, they expect to receive all the compassion that our humanity commands. God in Christ calls us to offer more. The Church’s funeral rites provide more than a dignified farewell to the deceased and quiet sympathy to the bereaved.

The Christian understanding of our creaturehood leads us to believe that life and death and resurrection are all in the hands of God. Life and death and resurrection are therefore theological concerns, and in Christian understanding must be linked with the life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

The funeral rites offered here take their stance from these primary beliefs. They relate each instance of human death to the death of Jesus. There is an evangelical dimension to the Christian funeral; it is the proclamation of Christ’s victory over death in which he binds the strength of death before plundering death of its spoils (cf. Mark 3.27). Christ’s death is an offering for all, making all death an offering to God. His death transforms what we naturally fear and resent. The pain of death and bereavement is not diminished by this, but it is transformed.

Nor is the call to the risen life issued to the dead alone. The bereaved, too, are called to newness of life. ‘Returning to normal’ is not a Christian option. The old normality can never be recovered, for God is making all things new.

The ministry of the Church at the funeral is therefore to proclaim the story of Christ, setting the deceased’s story within it, to speak of Christ’s death and this death, to speak of the resurrection, the light in the darkness. We minister best to the bereaved not by vague generalities, but by careful attention to the details that made up the life of the deceased. We must not ignore the ways in which grief comes, nor must we forget the word of forgiveness, which the deceased and bereaved alike need to speak and to hear. ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’ With the death of another we are reminded of that judgement to which we are summoned. We all stand in need of the mercy and forgiveness of God. The measure by which we forgive is the measure by which we are forgiven.

In part it is the responsibility of the liturgist to devise rites that will enable these considerations to be properly addressed. Whoever leads the service needs to take the structure of the rite and apply it to the particular circumstances of death.

For all these reasons a short homily or sermon is to be provided. For many this is problematic. There is a temptation to offer something along the lines of a sanctified obituary notice. The old tag ‘nothing but good of the dead’ becomes the prevailing imperative, and the need for forgiveness is obscured – one might almost say eradicated – as ‘beatification precedes interment’.

The task of the preacher is to tell the story of the dead person honestly, and to frame that narrative in the story of Jesus, whose death and resurrection assure us that our death is not God’s last word.

What we say here addresses the central questions of the funeral and offers a Christian answer. ‘Where is daddy now?’ and ‘What will God do to our friend?’ are questions that will be asked whether we wish it or not. We need to be ready to speak of God’s love in Christ from which not even death can separate us (Romans 8.38–39). If we do not offer Christ’s answer to the questioner, in what sense has the funeral been a Christian one?

If we do not lead people to the love of God, where is that hope of which Scripture speaks?