Instructions for my funeral

My husband and I attended two funerals in December. Because of the circumstances of death, they were quite different. One bid farewell to a close friend our age who had died suddenly and unexpectedly; the other said goodbye to an older friend who had suffered for many years before he was released to death.

But the two services were alike in a significant respect: both were a good balance of celebrating the deceased person’s story and proclaiming the Christian story.

Sometimes funerals are religious but strangely detached from the deceased; except for the obituary, they feel generic. Sometimes – and this is where our culture is heading – reminiscence predominates.

As the Baby Boomer generation approaches what eco-internment pioneer Billy Campbell euphemistically calls “accelerated mortality,” projections for the funeral industry include funerals that are “less religiously involved” and more fun. Funeral directors, it’s said, will have to be “more like party planners.”

If Boomers, who enjoy attention and have always insisted on doing things their own way, can still wield power from their wheelchairs and walkers, we’ll probably soon see an increase in funeral plans that diverge from church-based traditions around death.

This is not to say the church always got it right in the past, but rather to call us to Christian thoughtfulness about what we do at funerals. There are temptations inherent in the practices of a pagan culture that we may need to resist (or, turn inside out with kingdom values).

“The body makes theologians of us all,” Barbara Brown Taylor has said. This happens at birth, during illness or disability, but most profoundly at death. The big truth every funeral confronts is that this particular life is over – finished! – in the flesh.

So what does the funeral need to do theologically?

The theological work it does for the dead is commit them back to the earth and to God. The theological work it does for the living is to face death’s fact, and to weep, comfort, remember, and honour. To do this, it tells stories about the loved one who is dead.

But memories fade and personal stories only take the living so far. Funerals also need a larger context, the liturgy of God’s story within which we live on earth and then beyond.

All flesh is like grass, the prophet Isaiah wrote, but the Word of the Lord abides forever.

So, if I have the chance to give instructions for my funeral, I hope I’ll have the courage to say: go heavy on the Word, because if it’s all about me, it won’t be enough!

That Word could be a reminder that God’s love lasts, from one generation to another. A reminder that God redeems, crowns with compassion, doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve. That time’s wind blows and we are no more. That God’s Wind blows, making new – and so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

There are many texts to choose from, so why not more than one? How about the resurrection account, the Emmaus story (one of my favourites), Peter’s sermon in Acts, or Paul’s words to the Corinthians about the wisdom of God? Perhaps 1 Corinthians 13, or Romans 8. All resonate with astonishing power when they’re spoken in the presence of death.

These instructions for my funeral wouldn’t imply that I’ve never struggled to understand the Christian way, or to submit to it. But, keeping a funeral richly religious means the last words of a stumbling discipleship yield to the verities of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And, since the Word of God is always fresh, it will sustain the lives of the living.

Dora Dueck is associate editor of the MB Herald.