How can a priest remember the dead and proclaim the Gospel of life?

In a recent Globe and Mail news item, the social customs that surround contemporary funerals highlighted, for me, the dilemma many clergy face when planning funerals: it is difficult to combine a life celebration with Gospel proclamation.

An English vicar said he felt his role was superfluous at funerals that featured pop music and bad prose from grieving participants…. His comments prompted debate over what is an appropriate way to mourn and led one bereavement charity to brand his blog “pretty insensitive.” (Globe and Mail, October 21, 2009)

While I understand the frustration and the difficulty expressed, I do not sympathize with the vicar’s sense of helplessness and affront.

When I was in seminary in the late1960s, I was told repeatedly that any words spoken at a funeral had to be centred on the resurrection, and the best liturgical resource was The Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Eulogies were out, and the name of the deceased was to be said only once, in the set prayers. These were the guidelines.

That mantra of seminary training changed radically for me in my first year of ordained ministry. Randy, a 50-year-old man with Down Syndrome, had died, and at his funeral I was deeply moved by his family’s obvious pain and tremendous sense of loss. In dutifully using the BCP service, I spontaneously remarked mid-service that Randy’s life had profoundly enriched the lives of those around him and that the BCP service recognized that his life was as significant to God, his family, and his friends as any similar service—say, for the Queen. Those simple words were so cherished and remarked on at the funeral reception that I knew I had to change the way I/we did funerals. The BCP liturgy was an excellent blueprint, but it was utterly devoid of humanity and needed some further addition.

Many years later, a former funeral director and now a newly minted Anglican priest (and my curate) observed that Anglican clergy, in his experience, provided “the least effective funerals and ministry to the grieving.” His remarks were based on years of observing the rigidity of Anglican clergy in excluding anything personal from the funeral service.

A good deal of this observed rigidity has since changed and, indeed, many clergy would say that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the personal, the tasteless, and the sentimental.

All of this begs the question: who is the funeral for?  My simple answer is, “For the living.” Of course, we do express liturgically what we deeply feel: that God will grant eternal rest to our loved one. And, of course, our funeral homilies express “the hope that is within us,” but the living need profoundly more from the liturgy, i.e., to remember, to give thanks, and then to begin letting go and letting God. All of this requires that we be patient with the sometimes “too long” tributes that can indeed lionize the deceased, and we need to be somewhat indulgent of the occasional piece of sentimental prose or poetry. People are struggling to express the inexpressible, and they need to hear clergy be more transparent about their own struggle to express what words often fail to convey. The bereaved need an opportunity for conversation and are often anxious to hear what we have to say, as long as our response doesn’t appear to censor.

Many times in my life and ministry I have been rescued from my own verbal inadequacies by music and art. I am grateful that our liturgies in the BCP—and more recently in The Book of Alternative Services—have rescued us from the tyranny of needing to produce a new and improved model every time we officiate at a funeral. On the other hand, clergy need to enter into the hard work of listening closely to the grieving and allowing a reflection of the deeply personal into each and every liturgy.

Clergy can give to the grieving the impression that their own personal sensibilities or those of “the institution” need to be met in funeral planning. It is so important to remember that the liturgy is intended to address the needs of the living. It seems to me that really listening and responding to the community of family and friends is the most loving thing to do; hence, this is the gospel imperative we need to follow.