Funerals that celebrate life

While departing the church today after a funeral, I made the comment that, in an odd way, I rather enjoy funerals. Perhaps that requires some explanation.

A good funeral — and both that I attended this week were "good" — is faith-affirming and life-affirming. The message at such services is not lamentation but celebration of a life well-lived and the promise of new life after death. The Scriptures chosen for these services are reassuring. Today, and at my father's funeral (at my suggestion), one Scripture was from the end of the eighth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans: "Neither life nor death ... nor things present nor things to come ... can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus."

The hymns are likewise reassuring and faith-affirming. The hymns chosen for the funerals I attended this week included "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee," Henry Van Dyke's sacred lyrics to Beethoven's symphony; "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" (the Navy hymn whose notes will forever remind me of John F. Kennedy's funeral); and "Here I Am, Lord." At my wife's uncle's funeral in December, we sang "For All the Saints," perhaps the most appropriate of all hymns for a funeral.

I came away from both funerals this week with a feeling of having been touched spiritually. Although a sad occasion, certainly, a good funeral affirms all that is good in religious faith, and it cushions survivors with the love of friends. For those relatives and friends attending the service, a good funeral is an affirming reassurance of God's love.

Some months ago, I wrote about grief and mourning, prompted by a column by Meghan O'Rourke, whose mother had recently died. Her contention was that Hamlet is such an profoundly complex character simply because he is grief-stricken. And I contended that although we take great comfort in the Scriptures read at funerals, the Bible is quite ambiguous about just what the afterlife might be like and whether we will recognize our friends and relatives in that spiritual realm.

Some people say they hate to go to funerals, but I rather like to go — at least to the good, faith-affirming ones. How much closer can one come to God than when standing so close to death?