Funerals

The day of the funeral for our loved one is a day most of us meet with dread.  It is the day when our numbness and denial collide with indisputable reality.  

There our loved one lies in the casket or in the urn or already in the ground.  For a few days between the death and the funeral, we could wait and hope that she or he might stumble through the front door and declare that it had all been a mistake or a joke or a misunderstanding.  Now those fond delusions wither under the glare of death's relentless spotlight.

One after another the guests come and say things like, "I'm so sorry."  If our loved one is still alive, then such statements are absurd and even silly.  But those statements are not absurd or silly.  People say those things because our loved one is dead.  

When I was by myself I could ignore such voices.  I could choose to hear nothing at all.  Now I have to listen.  And I have to say thank you to people for reminding me over and over that my loved one is dead.

Perhaps a funeral service is, as much as anything, the public enforcement of reality upon the bereaved.  No one wants to do that or takes any pleasure in such an exercise.  It is, however, one of the unavoidable elements of a funeral.  

Is it any wonder that people insist these days on having "celebrations of life" in a continuing campaign to deny the reality of death?

If no one had died, a funeral would be a pretty poor excuse for a party or family gathering.  The fact that all those nice people showed up with tissues in their purses and pockets means that something terrible has happened.  We all know it.  We can't escape it.  The funeral happens.

Then it's over.  We move to the cemetery.  Or we go home with the cremains.  Or something.  

In any event, we find a way to enact the words that Christians use at the grave site: "we commend our loved one to the ground--earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."  When our loved one is a veteran we hear "Taps" being played and know that this is a salute to the final sunset of a life.  One moment she or he was here, alive and breathing.  The next moment she or he was gone, silent and cold.  There's no getting around it.

No escape.  No denial.  No illusions.  It's no wonder people dread that funeral day.

In the midst of that, we Christians do something quite remarkable.  We celebrate--not just the life of the deceased, but rather the Life that cannot die.  It isn't that we are without grief.  No, life is a sweet and precious gift from God.  We hurt deeply because we love deeply.  We who follow Jesus weep with those who weep as well as rejoicing with those who rejoice.

Then we do one more thing.  We make an announcement.  "For I am convinced," we quote the Apostle Paul in Romans 8, "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."

We are convinced.  That conviction carries us beyond the day of dread into a future with hope.