Words at Funerals

By Chad Bird

There will come a day, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, when the man in the coffin will be me. They say the dead don’t care, I'd like to have some say in what goes on at my funeral. Not that they will be privy to the details of what happens at their own funerals, but they still care about the world, about their family, about the church. The saints in heaven continue to pray for those who are still on their earthly pilgrimage, so how could they not care about them?

Because I do care now, here are some things I hope and pray are not said at my funeral. I want the truth to be spoken, the truth about sin, the truth about death, and, above all, the truth about the love of God in Jesus.

SO PLEASE DO NOT SAY --

1. He was a good man - Don’t turn my funeral into a celebration of my moral resume. For one thing, I don’t have one. l’m guilty of far more immoral acts than moral ones. Secondly, even if I were the male equivalent of Mother Teresa, don’t eulogize me. Talk about the goodness of the Spirit who calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps us in the true faith. Talk about our good Father who’s made us all His children in baptism. Don’t say, “He was a good man,” but “our good God loved this sinful man.” l don’t want to be the focus of my own funeral.

2. I was not the centre of attention- on Sunday mornings, so why should it be any different during my funeral liturgy? If anyone’s name comes up over and over, let it be the name that is above every name—Jesus. Let me decrease that Christ may increase. In fact, once I am resurrected on the last day, I will be more human than ever before, for my human soul and human body will finally be in a glorified state that’s free of sin. People don’t become angels in heaven any more than they become gods or trees or puppies. The creature we are now, we shall be forever. God has enough angels already. All He wants is more of His children in the place Jesus has prepared for them.

3. We are not here to mourn Chad’s death, but to celebrate his life - So-called “Celebrations of Life” do a disservice to the mourners for they deny or euphemize death. The gift of life cannot fully be embraced if we disregard the reality of death, along with sin, its ultimate cause. Whatever the apparent reason for my decease may be—a sickness, accident, or old age—the real reason is because I was conceived and born in sin, and I built atop that sinful nature a mountain’s worth of actual sins. The only person’s life to celebrate at a funeral is the Saviour conceived of the Virgin Mary, who became our sin on the cursed tree that we might become His righteousness in the blessed font, who buried sin and death in the empty tomb He left behind on Easter morning.

4. Chad would not want us to weep -When Lazarus died, Jesus wept. Those tears betoken a God who’s fully human, who experienced the sadness and grief we all do at the death of those we love. To cry is not to deny that our friend or family member is with the Lord, but to acknowledge that in this vale of tears there is still death, still loss, still suffering. I do want those who mourn my death to weep, not for my sake, but for their own, for it is an integral part of the healing process.

5. What’s in that coffin is just the shell of Chad -What’s in that coffin is the body that was fearfully and wonderfully made when our Father wove me together in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13-14).What’s in that coffin is the body that Jesus baptized into His own body to make me part of Him. What’s in that coffin is the body that ate the saving body of Jesus, and drank His forgiving blood in the Supper, that I might consume the medicine of immortality. What’s in that coffin is the body that, when the last trumpet shall sound, I will burst from my grave as a body glorified and ready to be reunited with my soul. It is not a shell. It is God’s gift to me. And one day I’ll get it back, alive, restored, perfected to be like the resurrected body of Jesus.

6. Let them hear “the Good News” - especially in the context of this sobering reminder of mortality, that neither death, nor life, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord, for He is the resurrection and the life.   

Chad Bird, from San Antonio, Texas, is a husband, father, poet, runner, lover of Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible, and an active Christian of the Lutheran confession.