“Christian Observance on the Occasion of Death”

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
 On August 19, 2001

This is a passage I’ve chosen because I think it speaks to this theme of funerals and memorial services that I want to talk with you about.

Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. Just then there came a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. He fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, who was dying.

 While he was still speaking, someone came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the teacher any longer.” When Jesus heard this, he replied, “Do not fear. Only believe, and she will be saved.” When he came to the house, he did not allow anyone to enter with him, except Peter, John, and James, and the child’s father and mother. They were all weeping and wailing for her; but he said, “Do not weep; for she is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and called out, “Child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and she got up at once. Then he directed them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astounded; but he ordered them to tell no one what had happened.

       Luke 8: 40-41, 49-56

I was talking to a woman this week about funerals, a member of the larger community. She said to me, “Oh, you know, I never go to funerals.” She said, “I find them morbid and oppressive, and I’m really not sure why we do that at all. Aren’t we supposed to be the Good News community? I just make it a practice to avoid funerals altogether.”

It was not the first time I had heard that kind of remark. I know that that may be the feeling for a number of people in the community of faith, as well as the larger community. So I wanted to take some time this morning to talk to you about the Christian witness to the resurrection of the dead, in the occasion of worship, the memorial service or the funeral.

It’s not a sermon that I’ve ever preached before, and I don’t expect that I’ll preach it often again. But I thought I would speak to it in the sermon this morning as a way of helping to delineate what it is that we are about when we gather in this way, as a way of seeking to rehearse and remind for you the themes of the resurrection that we are speaking to when we gather in worship this way. I am hoping that if we can get this clear in our hearts and our minds, that it will help to nurture us when we come to that occasion.

Why do we gather when there has been a death? Why does the community gather in worship? It may not be the practice in secular society. Perhaps it might seem, on the outside, like it makes more sense simply to move on. After all, the one who has died is not helped by the service.

The experience of death is a critical moment in any community across faith traditions. Not just in the Christian community. But the same is also true of the Christian community. The experience of deaths for us is a critical moment. By critical moment, I mean death breaks our sense of community. We experience this reality of separation, and it challenges our framework, what we believe about human life and God’s promises. It threatens life with meaninglessness.

On the occasion of death, the church’s challenge is to confess the faith and to assert the reality of the significance of the human life, and the reality of a community of care. Across the centuries, we have always done that with a worship service. Preeminently, the service is first an act of worship and an opportunity to express our gratitude to God for a human life. 

I think the Romans text that Kathy read speaks to that (Romans 6: 3-5).  When the apostle reminds us that even as Christ went through the experience of death, we also will go through this experience. And even as we are baptized into a death like his, we will be baptized into a resurrection like his.

And in this text from Luke, I see some actions on the part of Jesus that I think speak to the pattern that we use on encountering death. Jesus is told that the little girl is sick, and on the way there, the friends of the family come and tell him that she has died and there is no reason to go on any further. You might as well stay away now. And perhaps that’s the word of the world to us. There is no need to gather after someone has died. Then it’s a moot point. Why don’t you just move on?

But Jesus does move on toward her. He does go to be with the family. And he says to them, “Don’t be afraid. Do not fear. Believe in the Lord and believe in the power of God. She is sleeping.” And the community laughs at him. They laugh at him for this affirmation of God’s power to bring life out of death. You may have the feeling that the community laughs at the assertion we make about life in the face of death. But Jesus moves forward nonetheless, to be near this family in their grief and to make this witness. He performs the miracle of bringing her life back to her.

In this pattern, I think we are able to find a norm for us to follow over and against what may be the actions of the world. But preeminently, I think it is important to remember that when you gather, you are not gathering because of a particular connection you may have had with the individual. But rather, we gather as a community as a confession of faith. We gather in the experience of death as an affirmation of our faith in God and in the good news through Jesus Christ.

That’s why we gather, even as a small crowd or a large crowd, and why it is good that when there has been a death and we gather for worship, that the officers of the church and the members of the congregation come, regardless of their personal association with the one who has died. Because it’s the community’s affirmation in the experience of death, about what we believe. And it takes emotional courage to gather in the face of death. It takes intentionality. It takes re-working of your schedules. It is a way of affirming through your presence not just our belief in the resurrection, but also affirming before the family that this particular life was of significance and of worth.

In the faith of a world or a culture or a lifestyle that oftentimes diminishes the value of the human life, to gather in the experience of death regardless of our personal connection with the life, or even the individual achievements of that life, is a way of affirming that we believe each life comes from God and is precious to God. It’s likened to when we call a child by name when we perform the sacrament of baptism.

The pace and the needs and the scheduling of a busy and vast world would all seem to assert that a human life is of little difference in the total scheme. The regularness of our routine is even little interrupted in the experience of death.

So for the church to stop and to gather and to proclaim and to remember, is to say that what God has told us through the good news of the Bible is true. It’s a declaration of faith, even in the experience of death.

In addition, the confession of faith that we make when we gather testifies to the reality of the church as composed of both the living and the dead. We affirm, as we gather in worship at death, that it is not only we who affirm, but the hosts of heaven, the communion of saints, who gather with us.

While we can't speak in detail about the mechanics of that mystery, nor should we attempt to, except perhaps to say what the young man said here this morning, that heaven is like Jesus Christ, and that we feel the presence of those whom we have loved and who now are with Jesus with us. Beyond that, we may not be able to articulate the details. But we can affirm it as a truth, and affirm it as a part of our experience, and we can be strengthened by it.

What should be the content of this confession of faith we make as a community in the experience of death, the content of this service of worship? Well the tradition of the church has been that the central piece is the reading of scripture. That it is critical to read scripture and that we gather around the Word. Because here we hear the promise of the faith in the face of death. Here we hear the eloquence of the Word in the face of death, and in a very particular way, here we have the opportunity to connect with the one who has died, because of the possibility of our having shared scripture with that person.

The centrality of scripture sometimes is best proclaimed by the singing of hymns at a service like this. It is very appropriate to sing hymns at a memorial service. It is not necessary, and there are some times where some people may not find it helpful because of the emotions connected with them. But it is appropriate, and for many of us it is a very strengthening thing to be able to witness to the faith through the singing of hymns in the experience of death.

I also think it is helpful for people to use the Apostle’s Creed as a way of affirming our faith, or to recite together the Twenty-Third Psalm, because of the way we know it as a common creed. So often, we can be sure that those who have died have recited it with us.

I like, in the service of worship, to include a prayer of confession as a way of allowing those who gather for worship to acknowledge that there are unfinished pieces of business that we are not able to bring all things to completion in the story of our individual lives with others, but that we trust that God in the power of God’s resurrection is able to bring to fulfillment not only an individual’s life, but our own relationships with that person, and to use that power to bring that to fulfillment.

Certainly one of the things that we provide in the worship service around death is the opportunity for people to grieve in a formal and public way. It’s not the only reason for gathering, but it is a function that takes place in gathering, and the community acknowledges that our grief is a sign that we have been blessed by something we love, and a sign that God has given us something good.

I also frequently will use a personalized meditation in a memorial service. When I graduated from seminary, the strictest liturgy professors pushed students away from a personalized meditation and moved us towards a very common service of prayer and scripture for all people, where perhaps there might be a statement of the person’s name or a brief mention of thanksgiving for their character in a prayer. Really, coming out of seminary, that was the party line.

But now I find myself wanting to include, and thinking there is an appropriate place to include some personal acknowledgement about a person’s life. Some remembrance of their achievements, of their work in our midst. It should not be something that is comic and it should not be something that moves on too long. It should be done with brevity and with an appropriateness in terms of length. But there is, I think, a place for it as a way of saying something other than the cold kind of impersonalization that so often is the world statement, as a way of affirming that this is the life of someone that was good for us and that God blessed us with that individual life.

The occasion of death could be an occasion where the church is asked to participate in some unusual practices. The same thing is true, often, of weddings. Some of those practices may be superstitious, or others may be something other than Christian rituals or affirmations, or they may be individually eccentric. I remember when I was working with a group of teenagers back in the eighties, I had a young woman as a teenager in that group. She is here this morning. We were talking about weddings, and I said something to the effect of when we conduct a wedding, we talk with the couple about the music we are going to use and whether or not it is appropriate for the wedding. She said to me, “You mean you tell people what they can play or not play at their wedding?” I said, “Well, we try to encourage them to use things that we think glorify God.” She said, “I just don’t think that’s any of your business. When I come down the aisle, if I want to come down to The Twisted Sisters, I’m going to come down the aisle.” (The Twisted Sisters, I think, was an acid rock group out of the eighties.) I was haunted by the possibility, you know, that that could happen. It’s part of the reason I moved to Gastonia, to avoid that happening. But in God’s providence, when I came back, I ended up performing her wedding, and I am happy to report to you that she did not make that request.

Death and burial of the dead are times, certainly they are a time when kindness should take precedence over our own preferences or ideas. I remember from my study of reformed history that Calvin in his work administering the churches of Geneva, resolutely refused to subordinate truth to love. He thought love had to be honored, and that it ought to be on an equal plane with truth. Yet there is a point where personal behavior does distract, and should be contained.

Oswald DelGado taught me that pastors ought to always wear white long-sleeved shirts on Sunday mornings so that their congregations wouldn’t be distracted when they were preaching by a variety of different colored shirts. One of the great functional things about black robes is that it hides individual clothing, so that in the dog days of August, you can't tell whether I am wearing a short-sleeved or a long-sleeved white shirt.

The point that Dr. DelGado was trying to make was that corporate worship calls for good taste, which is appropriateness in words, dress, and acts.

Now some of you may be thinking, “John, what makes you think that you’re qualified to say anything about good taste?” The church, you may be thinking, should just stay out of this arena altogether. And there have been times in my pilgrimage as a pastor when I have thought this way. I remember a wedding that I did in Gastonia where I allowed, at the bride’s request, the bridesmaids to come up the side aisle rather than the center aisle. There was a fine member of the congregation who came to see me on Monday, and boy, was she furious about that! She said to me, “If the Episcopalians can marry people in good taste, then we ought to be able to do it also.” And I remember kind of hollering back at her, “Worship has nothing to do with good taste!”

Yet over time, I have come to see that it is pertinent, that it does apply. Not because the church should be controlling individual style, but because we don’t want behavior in word or dress or deed that distracts from the central proclamation of the Gospel. That subverts it, or that displaces it.

How can we keep behavior from distracting or displacing the central focus of the Gospel, and yet follow Calvin’s direction in not letting love be subordinated to truth?

I remember a funeral I did about four years ago, where a well-known member of the community had died. The three adult children (it was the second of their parents to die), as they gathered, really wanted to use in this memorial service, the song “Proud Mary”, which I couldn’t make sense out even as a gospel song. As I talked with them, I knew that it was very important to them. For them it was a central expression of her life. So what I ended up doing was to conduct the service of worship and to pronounce the benediction, and then I actually left the chancel as a sign that the church’s service was over. Then they played the song. Some of you may have been here at that service. It’s a hard call to make, but I was trying to be kind to them in their need, and yet make the appropriate work with respect to worship in the centrality of the Gospel in it.

I include this in the sermon this morning and preach on it, because I expect in many different ways the issue is present in your own lives. The tension between personal freedom and community norms. While in Christ, the epistles tell us, we do have personal freedom, the epistles also tell us that as Christian disciples, our behaviors ought not to distract from our calling to truth, love, and service, as ambassadors for Jesus Christ.

Finally, I simply want to affirm that the memorial service is an opportunity for the community to affirm our hope for the future. Every experience of death brings us into the challenge of affirming the faith in the experience of death. But there are certain deaths that seem particularly absurd—the death of a young child, the sudden and unexpected death of an adult—that seem especially to challenge the meaningfulness of life or the providence of God. Then it is very important for the church, particularly then, to gather and to affirm what the members of the family may not have the strength or the intellectual ability to affirm at that moment, that God is good, that God’s plan is operative, and that God is working his purposes out in human history.

For centuries, the Church has answered that challenge, not only by gathering, but by gathering and reciting these words from the eighth chapter of Romans:

What then are we to say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “Evil and trouble may assail us just as if we were sheep waiting to be overcome. But no, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Ó John T. DeBevoise, 2001