I "did" the funeral of a long time church member and friend yesterday. That's a deliberate shorthand. I've also said or heard said "performed", "led", "conducted", not sure if Miss Manners has a proper action term for the process of a Service of the Witness to the Resurrection. That's what a funeral service is called in my Book of Common Worship.
In a Christian funeral service, that is where the rubber meets the road. That is where the promises of the faith are depended upon. As a minister, I am standing on what might metaphorically be called a line. On one side of that is the promise of heaven and eternal life while on the other are the grieving friends and family of a good man.
But it is not a line. It's a fogbank. If the promises of Christ transcended our human natures, these services would be celebrations. Who, according to the order of things in the church, should not be absolutely delighted and praising Jesus at the time of death that their loved one has gone to the place without pain, suffering, illness, hospitals, chemotherapy, collapsed lungs, blood problems, kidney problems, cancer...and the list goes on and on?? We should be thrilled.
Being thrilled someday means very little on the day of tears and grief. The promise of eternal life being fulfilled can take the edge off, it can give hope for the future, but to dwell there in a funeral service is to discount the very grief and loss of those gathered to say good bye.
I don't live in heaven, I live on earth, and this is where I am going to be until it is my turn to die. This is where I have to come to terms with the fact that although my friend was a walking miracle for over a decade and a half, there came a time when he died.
One valuable lesson I have taken away from being a Police Chaplain is from their procedures of Death Notification. You don't say "passed away", "passed on", "with the Lord", or anything else that can give the human ear the ability to slide away from the truth. The person has died or the person has been killed. It is couched in the best way possible, with emotional support and outreach, but truth be told.
I've been told, and I've used this line, that death is neither good nor bad, it just is. No. Death is bad. It can be argued that death can end illness and suffering, so it isn't always bad. No. The illness and suffering can be worse, a higher measure of 'bad', and death can be a release, even a relief, but at best, it is a lesser 'bad'.
At this moment, we are on a continuum, where death is good relative to the pain it ends, but that doesn't mean its good.
There have been moments, among the deaths that I have had the privilege to be witness to and participate in, when I've seen nothing less than heaven leaking in. A person is at such peace, that person has somehow touched the presence of our Father in Heaven and they have the assurance that everything is going to be okay.
That doesn't mean, for me, that death is not a bad thing. What it does mean for me, as a pastor, as a believer, as one struggling to figure out how to live like Jesus wants me to live, what it means for me is that we are seeing God's power at work for a greater good to emerge from that bad time.
And it reminds me to look forward to the day when we will have the greater good without having to first experience the bad.
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