By Paul Sheppy

What makes a funeral Christian? Many ministers find it difficult to take what they call a ‘non-Christian’ funeral, meaning the funeral of a non-Christian. There is, I think, a difficulty with using this phrase. Funerals are seldom as clearly classifiable as that direct equation suggests.

For example, what if the deceased was not a Christian but the immediate family and close friends are – or vice versa? Is the Christian nature of the funeral primarily dependent on the mourners or on the corpse? When we ask the question in this way, we begin to see some of the difficulty. If our answer is that it is Christian faith of the dead person which is the determinative factor, how do we address those who mourn?

John Knox is unambiguously clear: "We inter the body decently, but our primary concern is the soul. Since the departed person’s salvation is determined by their faith in the salvation wrought by God through Christ, we must attend to those who mourn. After death comes the judgement, and it is therefore the minister’s duty to preach about the certainty of hell for those who do not repent and put their faith in Christ." In these less robust days, I have met no minister who is prepared to do this at the funeral service as Knox would have done.

Equally, if it is the faith of the mourners that establishes the Christian nature of the funeral, what do we say about the non-Christian deceased? Again, I have met no minister who is prepared to stand before the congregation and say without qualification, "Harry has gone to hell." They may feel it privately, but they feel the pastoral insensitivity of speaking their minds.

That genuine concern is often bolstered by the theological justification that judgement belongs to God alone and we have no right to speak in such terms. The difficulty remains, however; our approach to the funeral is dominated by the difficulty of making a judgement, whether of the mourners or of the deceased.

What, then, do we do at a funeral which distinguishes it from a formalised farewell of the dead? What makes our funerals different from a humanist or pagan funeral, or from the funerary rites of other world faiths? The simplest answer is that we commend the dead to the mercies of God in Christ.

This is not (or ought not to be) an empty formula, as though we were pronouncing some form of abracadabra. All our ministry is exercised in the name of God, empowered by the Spirit and patterned by the high priesthood of Christ. It is in reaffirming this truth that I believe we can begin to see what makes a Christian funeral. It is rooted in the Christian Trinity, and specifically in the work of salvation which we might call the ‘Easter event’ and which liturgists call the Paschal Mystery. A funeral is made Christian by the ministry of Christ – by the death of Jesus, by his descent to the dead, by his resurrection; and these constitute the sacrifice which he offers to God.

If we describe funerals in this way, we will see why it is impossible for the Christian minister to perform a non-Christian funeral. All our ministry is offered in Christ, whether we serve other

Christians or those of other faiths or no faith at all. We serve them by placing the death which brings us to any given funeral in the context of the death, descent and resurrection of Jesus. The death which Jesus died is "for us" not merely in a substitutionary way; not least because what a substitute does has no direct bearing on the person substituted.

Jesus’ death does not stop death coming to us all. Rather, it is as our representative that Jesus can offer his death to redeem our dying. If, in our ministry with bereaved people, our primary focus is Christological, then our pastoral care is not shaped by our judgement either of the deceased or the mourners but by God’s saving love.

For some, this will beg the question, "Am I not reducing the love of God to a vague sentimentality? Surely, the love of God does not overlook sin in a kind of non-judgemental relativism?" I understand the force of such objections, but I resist it on two grounds. First, the love of God in Christ is demonstrated not in "vague sentimentality" but in the Cross. Second, the Cross is not a judgement which destroys but one that puts right.

For some, this will be inadequate. They will suspect a hidden agenda. Protestant theology has generally denied the possibility of salvation after death, although not all have been so certain. Those who question the matter go to 1 Peter 3:18-4:6.

In the conservative theology of this epistle we find language which systematic theologians take to indicate that the descent of Christ to the dead was a genuine kerygma with all that this implies. New Testament theologians have almost unanimously rejected such a view.

Take careful note of that ‘almost’; it is important. There are voices which suggest that the systematic theologians are correct. I have described that case in detail elsewhere,(1) and I remain convinced that the gospel imperative to follow Christ here and now does not, of itself, eliminate the saving power of God beyond death.

Whatever view we take of this issue, the central theological question remains for funeral officiants: ‘Is our ministry shaped primarily by our private judgements of the situation or by its participation in the great high priesthood of Christ?’ For me, there can be only one answer: the Paschal Mystery is at the heart of all our ministry, and it is this factor that drives the way in which we shape the funeral service.

In the early years of this century Belgian social anthropologist Arnold van Gennep wrote his seminal book, The Rites of Passage.(2) In it he looked at societal rites in which members passed from one state to another. Funerals were a primary example of such rites of passage. He identified three main stages to which he have two sets of descriptions. The first pattern was based on the idea of passing over a threshold (or limen); here van Gennep spoke of pre-liminal, liminal and post-liminal stages. The second pattern described the function of each of these stages: separation, transition and incorporation. In funeral rites these stages manifest themselves both in the one who is dead and in the mourners. There is an element in which we acknowledge that we separate from one another’s world; the dead are no longer part of our world, and we are no longer part of theirs. There is a ‘chaotic’ stage in which we have to adjust to the loss we suffer with the attendant uncertainty which attaches to the separation we are experiencing. Finally, there is an emergence into a new world.

If this is the agenda of social anthropology, there is a corresponding matrix which relates to the Paschal Mystery. On Good Friday there is the separation which Jesus experiences in his dying. On Holy Saturday there is the transition to the descent of the dead. On Easter Day there is the incorporation of Christ into the resurrection life.

This way of describing the rites of passage at death offers us a means of shaping the pastoral and liturgical tasks confronting us in our ministry at funerals. ‘Ritual’ is a dirty word for many Baptists, and is frequently linked to the word ’empty.’

In fact, ritual is very rarely, if ever, empty. Ritual is a means by which we arrange personal and social interactions with the unknown. Ritual is, according to Tom Driver, what makes us human.(3) It is the means by which we learn language and socialisation. It is the means by which the freedom of the children of God is enacted in holy communion. These are big claims, but the cogency and clarity with which Driver argues his case demand close attention.

In shaping the funeral, we need to understand that one service cannot possibly bear all the burden of bereavement grief, nor express all the joy of Christian hope. Nonetheless, in the rites we devise, we can rehearse with those who mourn the future path they must tread.

It is important that we do not belittle the reality of the loss that death brings. To do so denies the abandonment of Good Friday. It is important that we do not avoid the sense of numbness and unreality so often experienced in bereavement. To do so ignores the transition of Holy Saturday. It is important that we do not suggest that people will eventually "get back to normal." To do so misses the resurrection life to which God summons the living and the dead. We are not called to repeat the past; our obedience is to a new order of existence.

If all we do is lay the dead to rest and offer our best graveside manner to the bereaved, then we do no more than any decent humanist would do. We are called to do more. We set the story of the deceased within our proclamation of the story of Christ. We speak of Christ’s death and this death. We speak of resurrection to new life, the light of Christ which the darkness can never master.

The ordering of Christian funerals is more than the disposal of a body and a thanksgiving service. Too often we move to praise without acknowledging the pain. Am I alone in having to deal with those who have never properly grieved because the funeral of their partner did not rehearse the valley of the shadow of death? Where there has been no death there can be no resurrection. When we deny death’s dark hour, we offer a kind of docetism which has no place in the Paschal Mystery which our baptism foreshadows and our death appropriates.

I am increasingly convinced that good funeral liturgy is a key factor in Christian pastoral care. Shaping the final exit is a task which the Christian community undertakes with those who mourn in order that together they may know the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and the power of his resurrection.

Notes:

1 ‘He descended to the dead,’ Theology Themes 1 (2), Autumn 1992 (Northern Baptist College, Manchester).

2 English tr. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960.

3 The Magic of Ritual (New York: Harper Collins, 1991).

[Rev. Dr Paul P.J. Sheppy is Minister of Barnoldswick Baptist Church, Colne, Lancashire. This is an edited version of an article appearing in The Baptist Ministers’ Journal, July 1997.]