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Update 45 pages 10-11.
In Update 45:
Still an issue,
Godparents,
S.E. London,
Perry,
1662 Confirmation,
Funerals,
Liturgy,
Hooker,
Andrews.
Integrity in conducting funerals
Mark McCaghrey, vicar of St Andrew, Roman Hill, Lowestoft, replies to Roger Brown's thoughts in the last issue.
BI Update magazine is not the vessel of Funeral Integrity, but I felt I had to reply to Roger Brown.
Like Roger, I am very aware that most of the bereaved at the funerals I perform have a belief in the after life more like that shown in the film Gladiator rather than that shown in the New Testament.
However I do not feel that the best solution is to say “No” to the many funeral requests I get from outside my congregation. I recently heard the statistic that 57% of the adult population attend an Anglican funeral service in any one year and this seems to me too much of an opportunity to throw away.
Why are we even thinking of allowing the Secular Humanists to grab the opportunity to present their materialistic atheistic understanding of life and death when we are being given access to people in a way we are unlikely to get at any other time?
So how can we keep integrity and make most of the opportunity?
I practice what Maurice Roberts, quoted in Roger’s article, suggests. Unless I know the person to have been a practicing Christian I avoid making it sound as if the deceased has gone to heaven, and I make no reference to their religious beliefs.
It seems to me that the funeral service liturgy contains much about the gospel - the the life we have is based entirely on Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection on our behalf. What I need to do is make the separation clear between what the gospel says and what happens to the person for whom I am conducting the funeral. I avoid any of the prayers which make the funeral service universalist and so keep the liturgy fairly minimal. Time constraints at the crematorium mean I have to anyway!
I do not see the trend towards funerals becoming memorial services as a problem - but rather as an opportunity. Are we going to meet people where they start or are we going to say “you are not where I am, so I am not going to bother”? I want to say to people: “As we come to say goodbye, the gospel has something to say to you”. I guess my focus is not so much on the dead person (whom I did not know) but the bereaved in front of me.
Neither do I see this trend as a problem to be coped with. What is wrong with remembering the person who has died, warts and all? Isn’t that what the bereaved are there for anyway? Why is this incompatible with the Gospel?
I would prefer to have integrity throughout. I am a minister of the Gospel and I will not flinch from declaring through Scripture, prayers and message the Gospel of life. The dead person may have little faith or none, as may the bereaved, but I will minister to them in their grief and with honesty about the dead person. I will not make him out him to have been religious when he was not.
I will admit that this sounds easier in theory than in practice and I would love to make the message of the Gospel clearer without diminishing the pastoral element of the service. This is particularly true of the crematorium service where I have 25 minutes to do everything. But I would prefer to live in the tension of proclaiming the gospel adequately to these people at the same time as ministering to their grief than not have the opportunity of sharing God’s good news for them at all. Let us, like Paul, make the most of every opportunity God gives us.
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This web page was last updated on 26th November 2002.
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