July 12, 2016 – Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Ecclesiastes 12.1-8
Romans 6.3-11
My Funeral
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
When I meet with couples who are planning to be married I remind them that one way to look at their wedding day is to remember that it is one of the few times in your life that virtually all your family and close friends will be together in one place to celebrate. I say one of the few, because there is at least one other occasion when virtually all of our family and close friends will be together in one place for a celebration, although the drawback of that occasion is that we won’t be able to share that celebration with them. This, of course, is the occasion of our funeral.
The sacramental life of the church has changed considerably since I was ordained forty-six years ago tomorrow. For example, I don’t perform nearly as many weddings as I once did, partly because the church is no longer the default wedding venue, and partly because any one of you can now be authorized to perform a marriage ceremony, and some of you likely have. The wife of a former organist got into officiating weddings early on, and I used to tease her, “Nancy, you know that every wedding you perform steals the bread from my children’s mouths.” Baptisms have decreased as well, though for different reasons. Younger generations of parents just don’t feel compelled to have their children baptized, and parallel to this, birth rates continue to decline.
But one part of the sacramental business that has remained robust is the funeral or memorial service. Nobody, that I know of, is clamoring to usurp the clergy from officiating at a funeral, at least not yet. I remember, when I first arrived at my church in Beverly, I had 30 funerals in the first 26 weeks of my ministry – I figured either everyone was waiting for the new Senior Minister to arrive, or it was my arrival that did it!
Funerals and memorials have been on my mind of late, as I have three in the past fortnight. Two weeks ago I buried my good friend and mentor Stuart, whom I told you about last February. Yesterday I officiated at Nate Jacobson’s service. And this afternoon I will preside at the memorial of a young man of 55 whom I have known since he was 13, whom I both confirmed and married, and will now bury; he and his family have been like family to us for more than forty years.
All of this has given me pauses to think about my own funeral. Actually, that’s not quite right, because I think I would prefer a memorial service to a funeral, which means when you all gather to talk about me, I don’t need to be there; it would be too embarrassing. A few years ago I was listening to a Stan Getz tune, one which I’ve played more than a few times, and Debbie, who has had to listen to the piece more than a few times, said to me, only partly in jest, “I’m going to play this song at your funeral!” And we both laughed, but it occurred to me, if anything is played at my funeral, or memorial service, or whatever, I want to have a say in the matter. So I started thinking about the occasion, and the way I’d like it to be.
First, it had better not be maudlin. I don’t care if it takes place a week from now or thirty years from now, the last thing I want is a mess of weeping and wailing and a preacher remembering me in somber pallid tones. James Boswell writes, in his Life of [Samuel] Johnson, “To my question, whether we might not fortify our minds for the approach of death, he [Johnson] answered, in a passion, No, Sir, let it alone. It matters not how a person dies, but how they live. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.” The way I see it, to be mournful at a funeral is to concentrate on the fact of the person’s death, which as Johnson observed, lasts but an instant. What ought to be celebrated, is the person’s life. Now, if the person’s life is an occasion for weeping, I suppose that is another matter altogether. But nonetheless, no weeping and wailing at my funeral.
No mournful or lugubrious hymns, either. If this is going to be a celebration, the music has to be upbeat. You will not sing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” nor “Abide with Me,” as lovely as that can be on other occasions. Instead I’d suggest a rousing chorus of “Rejoice, Give Thanks and Sing” or that old campmeeting tune, “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, I’ll Be There;” or even, (if I may be so bold,) “When the Saints Go Marching In.”. I want the congregation on its feet, singing at top form, swaying and clapping hands.
And I want the scriptures to be positive and forward looking. You might begin with Jesus’ words from John 16, when he said, “You may have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will [be able to] take your joy away from you.” I also like the apostle Paul’s version of the same good news in Romans 6: “For since we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Now this is something worth celebrating. And if you must read the 23d Psalm, please do not read it like it was the dirge of David: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” Read it as though it were written by the David who danced for the Lord: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever!”
And speaking of dancing for the Lord, my memorial will not end with the final benediction. I want all of you to find some festive place to gather and sing and dance, and eat and drink, and talk and laugh, to tell stories both real and exaggerated, all in celebration of life. Find a good setting, too; recognizing that the Fellowship Hall is probably not the most appropriate place for a big bash, you might want to think about the Pattaconk instead, or maybe – maybe I could get Cindy to close the streets for a block party, and Paddy Whack can play on Leif’s porch and the Little House can name a beer in my honor. (Deacons, see if you can get to work on that…) For as much as I believe that life is to be enjoyed while we’re still here, it should also be enjoyed when we’re gone, and if I can gather all my friends and family together one more time for a celebration, all the better.
Now, I hope you don’t think it unusual that I’ve thought about my own funeral. Quite to the contrary, I think it would be unusual for a person not to think about their funeral. Consider all the time people put into planning weddings; why, most couples start planning a year or two in advance to insure that everything goes just the way they want it to go. I spend time with families planning to have their children baptized, explaining what baptism means, and hoping to discover just what the parents intend by having their child baptized. Why should a funeral be any different? Why should we leave the ceremony to chance, when a lifetime of accomplishment is remembered, and relationships come to their culmination, and the passing of one of God’s children from this world to the next is marked and celebrated? There is a lot about a funeral, or a memorial service, which can be considered in advance. In fact there is no reason that the whole thing cannot be thought out and planned ahead of time, except, of course, for the date. Besides, I have a computer program for that…
Some of the most satisfying services of memorial that I have been a part of are considered ahead of time. On multiple occasions I have sat with a parishioner and their family, tossing ideas around about what their memorial service would be like, the music, the readings, and yes, sometimes even the guest list. And far from being a dreary occasion, it was an opportunity for the whole family to begin dealing with their grief at an early stage, so that when their loved one passes it becomes a healthy experience, psychologically and spiritually, for everyone.
And if I may insert a brief advertisement at this point in the sermon, you should know that I am ready to plan your funeral with you as well, if you feel so inclined. After all, do you really want to leave it to me to make up nice things about you once you are gone, and perhaps to choose that one hymn you have always despised? Our choir knows me too well to allow me to choose their hymns, right? With all that your surviving family and friends will need to think about and do when the time comes, do you really want them to sit around the kitchen table and argue about whether or not we should ask Uncle Frank to get up and speak? Beginning to think about your own memorial, regardless of age, can be dynamic experience for yourself, your family, and your minister.
In fact some of you have already done this. I have in my files the basic outline of a service of memorial for a few of you, along with instructions of what to do when the time of your passing comes, as it will for all of us. I would be pleased to add to that file, and to spend the time with any of you who would like, to begin sorting out what you would like to happen, in church and otherwise. And if you want to check my references, I can say in all honesty that I have never heard from a dissatisfied customer.
But I think we want to remember there is nothing morbid or macabre in thinking or talking about it. This morning’s reading from Ecclesiastes describes the end of one’s life in very natural, and rather poetic terms: “The silver cord is snapped… the golden bowl is broken… the pitcher is broken at the fountain… the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” This is particularly true of the Old Testament, that death is understood as one of life’s most natural processes. Eliphaz spoke realistically to Job when he said, “You shall come to your grave… as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor in its season.” What could be more genuine, more natural, than this? And remember that in the New Testament, for Jesus, death is a going home to God; for in Christ death has become the portal, the threshold if you will, to eternity. Why not celebrate this fact instead of pretending it doesn’t exist?
I don’t remember who said it, but I do remember once reading something along the lines of, “Our fears of death are our fears of life.” And perhaps this is the reason the topic of our funerals seldom arises in polite discussion. Just try raising the topic of your own funeral some day in the course of conventional conversation, and see what kind of reaction you meet. But it is a pretty good bet that if we are not afraid of death, it is at least partly because we aren’t worried about what people will say about our lives either.
Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
All of which is to say, if we want to be certain that our funerals are everything we hope they will be, there is something we can do about it. Maybe the best way to get ourselves ready for them is to be sure to live the kind of lives that folks will want to celebrate when we’re gone. In a good way, of course. May we live the kind of lives that will make people care to remember us, gather to honor us, celebrate the fact they were part of our lives, and we were part of theirs.