It is best to mark the death of a ‘child of God’ with proper solemnity

By Bishop Peter Foster, Bishop of Chester

I have been thinking recently about funerals – not my own, particularly, although having just obtained my bus pass (and other welcome perks) in idle moments that has crossed my thoughts.

My mind has been concentrated by another experience, which is becoming more common: to go to a funeral, only to find that the cremation or burial has taken place earlier in the day, and the funeral has become a celebration of the deceased’s life.

Why does this jar with me so much? There have always been occasions when of necessity a funeral has been held without a body, but that seems different from a deliberate decision to hold a small private ‘funeral’ before a larger ‘celebration’ or ‘commemoration’. I think there are several reasons why I regret this new trend in our society, and especially when it invades the Church.

Firstly, it easily gives the impression that our bodies don’t matter much, that the essential ‘me’ is a disembodied soul or spirit. It was precisely such a view, common in the ancient world, that (like Judaism) Christianity rejected. I believe in the resurrection of the body: that statement is not in the Creed for nothing. It emphasises that we are created, taken from the dust of the earth, and that it is this world which God has chosen to redeem and re-create.

We are not spiritual chips off some cosmic block longing to return home: we are sacred individuals, made in God’s image, body, soul and spirit.

Secondly, these new funeral practices can seem to put death to one side, to ignore or even deny its reality. Some poems read at funerals give the same impression: ‘I have only slipped into the next room’, etc. Some music chosen at funerals likewise seems out of place, missing the proper solemnity which should mark the death of a child of God.

For Christians, death is an intrinsic part of life itself. We are baptised into the death of Christ, that we might live his risen life. The Christian life can be seen as a progressive embracing of death, or rather of the crucified and risen Christ progressively embracing us. Just as the crucifixion is presented in the New Testament as the crucial event in God’s love for the world, so we should not evade the central place our death has in our journey to God.

When we organise a funeral we set out liturgically to accompany the deceased on his or her journey to God. That’s why funerals are so important, and why the person, in the form of their body, should be part of the ritual itself. Only then will a funeral also become a witness to the resurrection.

+Peter