(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Putting the Fun in Funeral”, originally shared on September 27, 2023. It was the 278th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Funerals have changed. In the
place of reflections on the meaning of life and death, many now put the “fun”
in funeral. Today, we’re going to find out what that means.
When was the last time you went
to a funeral? One where the focus was not on the deceased but on Jesus. Not on
funny stories from the quirky life of the deceased, but on the good news of the
victory won by Jesus’ death on the cross.
That is, to a John 3:16 funeral?,
'For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life.
Most of us in Western culture
prefer to avoid thinking about funerals because a funeral is about death. And
we live in a death-denying culture. We pay for “age-defying” tonics and creams,
we pay big bucks for “cosmetic” surgery, and in some cases, we will seek any
treatment, including those for which animals and people have had to suffer, in
order for us to look good. And by “good”, we mean “young”.
Because, we believe, if we look
good, we will feel good about ourselves, and that is one of the core values of
our culture.
It is, of course, a lie. We
can’t fool ourselves.
Or maybe we can.
Abraham Lincoln said, “You can
fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but
you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
But can we ever fool ourselves?
The expression “you’re only
fooling yourself” tells a person that “you’re not fooling anyone else.” Death
is a part of life. Can we deny death? We seem to be trying.
We don’t go to a funeral
anymore. We go to a “Celebration of Life”. Why? Because people find funerals
depressing or, worse, boring, with all their sad talk about death. Because we
don’t have much to say about death that isn’t depressing. Or, because we put it
on the deceased, we say that, “It isn’t what they’d want.”
Maybe. Maybe some people do
only want the living to have fun at their funeral.
Or maybe this is a generation
where the relatives of the deceased didn’t get the point of their family
member’s faith.
The deceased didn’t want people
to be sad their funeral because they believed that death wasn’t the end, that
what we see as death is just a transition into another form of living.
Nevertheless, the family understood their faith to mean, “Have fun!”.
Christians do not fear death.
We hurt for those who will grieve at our loss to them after our death, but we
believe that our death is something that has already happened to us. It’s in
the past
A colleague, a predecessor at a
congregation I served, told me about the night he had a Church Council meeting,
and he knew it would be a late evening. He called his wife and told her not to
make a dinner for him. He would just stop by MacDonald’s on the way home, which
he did. But, as he got out of his car to order inside, someone jumped out at
him, pointed a gun at him and told him to give him all his money or he’d kill
him.
My colleague told me, “I wish I
could say that I was brave, but the truth is that I was just tired, and I said,
‘You can’t kill me. I’ve already died in Jesus Christ.’”
All the color drained from the
other person’s face, and he turned and ran away? I guess he thought he was
talking with the living dead! Here’s what Paul writes, in Romans 6:3-5,
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too
might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will
certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
That’s the focus of a Christian
funeral. It’s on the Resurrection and ours. It’s where the focus is on
death and we aren’t afraid because we know that three days after giving his
life, Jesus took it back again. Jesus rose from the dead! And because he is
risen, we will rise and live also,
“Celebrations of Life” may have
started as celebrations of life in Jesus Christ, but like the Halloween
celebration that mocked evil, they have changed. They are mostly alternatives
to Christian funerals. But even Christian “funerals” have changed. They have
been changed by the expectations of non-believing relatives and by cultural
influences that have been experienced not for the better.
Celebrations of Life have
become pagan celebrations using religious language. Their focus is on the
wonderful qualities of the deceased, and not on Jesus. They are a
whistling-through-the-graveyard opportunity for someone to play stand-up
comedian and master of ceremonies, to downplay the presence of God in order to
make people feel less uncomfortable, to manipulate people who have little idea
what the Christian faith says about life and death and don’t want to hear it,
for eulogists to offer comic relief and to compete with one other for the title
of best friend or relative. To please the audience and keep the religious stuff
to a minimum.
They are, ironically, part of
our reluctance to proclaim the best news that anyone has ever had to offer in
order to be accepted by a culture that is not interested.
I read an article online the
other day from the Religious News Service called “REM Was Right. We are ‘Losing
our Religion’” by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin. The author is Jewish, but the analysis
is totally relevant to the Christian Church today.
He runs through the commonly accepted
reasons that religion is in decline in the Western world, but proposes more
foundational factors, referring to the book The Great Dechurching,
saying that,
“contemporary American life is
actually antithetical to religious values. Contemporary American life does not
promote mutuality, care, the common life, or the common good.
Rather,
what is the focus of American life? Radical individualism. Consumerism. Buying
and owning what it is that makes you feel good. The promotion of individual
accomplishment — professional and financial success.
If it
doesn’t contribute to your professional life; if it doesn’t contribute to your
financial success; if it doesn’t contribute to your personal happiness or
fulfillment; if it doesn’t contribute to your children’s academic or
professional prospects – the sad truth is that we have precious little time or
energy for it.
Many
Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and
uncertain of how to live in community with other people.”
This pairs nicely with the
long-made observation that the dominant religion in America and the rest of the
Western world is “Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism”, the belief that, in a few
words, my religion is all about “me”.
We are the antidote to Western culture,
but we have lost our desire to proclaim it in our rush for acceptance and for position.
Why don’t we want to look
forward to life after death? Why don’t we celebrate it? Do we assume that
everyone goes to heaven? Or are we afraid that some don’t? Do we think that any
thought of a personal God of mercy and justice, or any talk or any
concern about life after death, is a relic from another time? An embarrassment
in our meta-modern age?
Most non-clergypersons I’ve
spoken with are surprised when I’ve said that most pastors I have known would
rather do 10 funerals than 1 wedding.
Weddings have become
productions where the presence of the pastor, or “officiant”, has become
superfluous. They are, it has been said, the only thing standing between the guests
and the reception. Or, as one colleague observed, “The role of the pastor at a
wedding it to be the buffoon.” On the other hand, people have their minds on
serious things at funerals. Life and death. And the pastor has good news to
proclaim.
The role of the pastor, if any,
at a “Celebration of Life”, however, is to be the MC.
There has been a price to pay
for our willingness to be attractional churches, trying to be popular and attractive
to the world in order for it to like us, rather than missional ones, bringing
good news to the wounded and the dying.
Miley Cyrus, the pop
singer, once said, “I don't necessarily define my faith by going to church
every Sunday. Because now when I go to church, I feel like it's a show.”
Paul encourages us
to stay true to the truth that is in us and not to be concerned with the
self-serving lies of “the world”, a term he uses for those without new life in
Christ, in Romans 12:1-2,
2 Do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds,
so that you may discern what is the will of
God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Change happens.
That’s true. But it doesn’t just happen. It needs acceptance, or at
least acquiescence. It requires conformity.
Theologian H.
Richard Niebuhr spoke of the message from some of the churches in his day in
1938 as being, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom
without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” (He
is, of course, speaking of women as well as of men.)
We are not the
Church if we allow that message of accommodation to be the norm in our
day. That is, if we lose the message of the cross in order to put the fun in
funerals.
We are called to a
different standard for life: the will of God. And that will is that no one be
lost, but that all be saved. God died on the cross for us to proclaim and
demonstrate that selfless love. It can only come from God and is given to us as
a gift.
A 1.5 million dollar painting
was on display in 2015 in a museum in Taiwan. Authorities had put a platform
and a rope fence in front of it so that visitors could see the painting but not
get too close. A 12-year-old boy was walking by, looking at the 350-year-old
artwork, and didn’t notice the platform. He tripped on it and fell into the
painting, punching a hole right through it.
Will we be consumers of
entertainment in the Church, not recognizing the hazards close-by and falling-in
to damage its true message?
Or will we paint the world a
picture of everlasting life for all who receive the living relationship with
the one true living God for which people were created?
Will we be spectators,
expecting to be amused, or ambassadors conveying a crucial message?
Will we pay no attention to
what’s around us as we walk by, or will we be focused on the message and the
question conveyed by Jesus in John 11:25-26?,
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe
in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you
believe this?”
