Posts Tagged ‘funerals’

Heaven can’t make it right

September 5, 2020

Pentecost 14 – 2020

Matthew 18:15-20

Marian Free

May I speak in the name of God, in whom we have our beginning and our ending. Amen.

Those of you who have written a eulogy for a loved one will know how difficult the task can be. If the deceased has lived a long and rewarding life it is impossible to condense that life into just a few paragraphs. If the deceased is young, it is even harder. How do you make sense of the lost potential and find words to honour a life that was too short? Perhaps the most difficult eulogies to write are those for people whose lives have caused pain and trauma for others. I attended one such funeral. The deceased was known to have been an abusive person and I waited uneasily for the eulogist to stand and extol them, to gloss over their defects and to make out that theirs had been a good and worthy life. Thankfully, I need not have worried – what was said was an honest reflection of the life of the deceased. It referred to the usual things: birth, marriage and work and while it did mention the person’s achievements, it didn’t shy away from mentioning their negative characteristics. While the eulogy didn’t directly name the abusive behaviour, it did make clear that the deceased had at times acted in such a way as to cause harm to those closest to them. The eulogy allowed us to farewell someone whom we knew – not some idealised figment of the imagination.  

Clearly, I believe that honesty at a funeral is important. Those present need to feel they are saying farewell to someone whom they know, not to a romanticised stranger. That said, a funeral is not, I believe, a place to settle scores or to air dirty linen – something that Bill Edgar has turned into a successful business. Edgar, a private detective, has morphed his role into what he calls “a coffin confessor”[1]. Clients can employ him to gatecrash funerals where he exposes the secrets and the hypocrisy – not of the deceased, but of the living. For a figure of $10,000 Edgar will attend a funeral to interrupt a eulogy and inform the congregation that the eulogist was trying to have an affair with the wife of the deceased. Or, he might be paid the same amount to escort from the church members of the family who had not visited the deceased for thirty years or more. If anyone tries to prevent Edgar from carrying out his instructions, his client will have pre-empted the situation and have authorised him to take the body away for a private ceremony.

Edgar justifies his role by saying that he has to respect his client’s wishes and by asking: “how many funerals have you been to and listened to absolute rubbish?” 

Surely though, funerals are for the living and not for the dead, they are an opportunity to honour a life and to draw a line in the sand that helps family and friends to acknowledge their loss and to begin to adapt to absence. They are not the place to open or to rub salt into wounds, to exact some sort of retribution or to expose unresolved issues. Employing a “coffin confessor” in the end says more about the person employing him than those whom they see as having caused the injury.

As a culture we are not very good at dealing with conflict – but imagine reaching your deathbed being so bitter and so angry that you would want to cause irrevocable harm after you have gone. Imagine nursing a festering wound for months or years, not wanting it to heal but instead unleashing all its pain when the relationship has no opportunity to be restored, when no redress can be made, and no apology offered? Imagine how unhappy a person must be at the point of dying if they have stored up the hurts and grievances of a lifetime instead of confronting them? I wonder what satisfaction they think that they will get from exposing the perpetrators of that harm, when they themselves are no longer around to see the effects of their action? 

One wonders what sort of vision such a person has of the afterlife? Do they really expect to spend eternity filled with malice and unhappiness – nursing their grievances but secretly pleased that they have been able to unleash havoc on those whom they hold responsible for their pain? Indeed, do they believe that there is a place in heaven for those who wish to lick their wounds and to gloat over the retribution that they have exacted on those whom they have left behind? 

Today’s gospel points out the danger of not resolving conflict in this lifetime. In dealing with differences in the community, Jesus seems to be suggesting that what we bind and loose in the present is somehow bound and loosed for eternity; that there are some things that heaven itself is unable to undo. He implies that those issues that we do not deal with in the here and now cannot be dealt with in the hereafter but remain an integral part of who we are forever. The hurts we inflict, the injustices we create or sanction and the injuries that we harbour stay with us unless we are able to seek and to offer forgiveness, to work through our differences, and most importantly to let go of our egos. 

There is no room in heaven for the sort of self-centredness that demands retribution from the grave and that wishes harm on others. Heaven cannot and will not make it right and it will be too late for us to make changes once we are dead. Any bitterness, resentment, frustration, fear, hurt or self-righteousness that we carry to the grave will remain with us. The endless joy and peace that we had hoped to inherit may be out of our reach in the future if in the present we are unable to find ways to be at peace with ourselves and with each other.  

Let that not be us. May our deaths find us to be the people we hope to be for eternity.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-02/coffin-confessor-bill-edgar-reveals-secrets-of-dead-at-funerals/12619946

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Life not death

May 9, 2020

Easter 5 – 2020
John 14:1-14
Marian Free

In the name of God who empowers and directs our lives. Amen.

As is the case with much of John’s gospel, today’s passage is complex and is filled with a number of different ideas that cannot be adequately dealt with in one sermon. The passage is the beginning of Jesus’ farewell speech, spoken after Jesus had washed the feet of the disciples and after Judas had been exposed as the one who would hand Jesus over to the authorities and who had gone off into the night. In the previous verses Jesus had announced that he would be with the disciples only a little longer and he had told them that they would not be able to follow him. In response, Peter had brashly said that he would follow Jesus even if it meant laying down his life for him. In reply Jesus had said that not only was Peter’s an empty promise, but that before daybreak, he would deny Jesus three times.

In our passage then, Jesus was addressing disciples who were confused, anxious and perhaps even frightened. Nothing made sense to them. Jesus appeared to be speaking in riddles. He had said that they could not follow him, but now he was saying: “You know the way”. Jesus has not given them a road map but has suggested that their relationship with him was all the direction that they needed. In essence, Jesus was saying, that if the disciples had found him, then they had already found the Father, that is they had already reached their destination. This relationship – with Jesus and therefore with the Father – Jesus had gone on to explain, was not passive but active. If the disciples had grasped the unity of Jesus and the Father, not only would they know the way, but they would enter into that relationship. In turn, their relationship with the Father through the Son, would empower them not only to do the works that Jesus had done, but even greater works! It was no wonder that the disciples were overwhelmed.

The first 6 verses of this chapter are regularly chosen as the reading for a funeral. Those who are grieving find comfort and reassurance in the knowledge that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. However, if we leave it there and don’t explore the wider context, we miss the point of this and the subsequent passages. That is to say Jesus might have announced his departure and reassured the disciples of his return, but he is not preparing his disciples for death. He is equipping them for life. Jesus’ death will not be the end of the disciples’ life together, it will herald a new chapter in the life of the community, a life, we will discover that is enlivened and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 14 begins what is known as Jesus’ ‘farewell speech’. A farewell speech was a well-known literary genre in the Old Testament and in the Graeco-Roman world. It “highlighted the speaker’s impending death, care of those remaining, the regulation of discipleship, thanks to the gods, an accounting for his life, consolation to an inner-circles of followers, didactic speeches and political and philosophical testaments” . There was a great deal of variation in content and expression. For example, Deuteronomy in its entirety is Moses’ farewell speech. He recounts the escape from Egypt; reminds the Israelites of their covenant relationship with Yahweh, the responsibilities that that entails and the consequences of failing to live up to Yahweh’s expectations. In Genesis the final chapters record Jacob’s farewell speech to his sons which takes the form of a blessing for each one of them.

In John’s gospel Jesus’ farewell speech prepares his disciples for the future. He tells them that he is going away, promises that he will send the Holy Spirit, encourages them to love one another (to the point of death) and to be strong in the face of opposition. Jesus’ words were not intended to provide comfort for the dying or the grieving but instruction for the living. It is Jesus who is dying, not those to whom he is speaking. He does not want the disciples to put their lives on hold waiting for his return or for their own deaths. Rather his expectation is that their relationship with him – and by extension with the Father – will ensure that even in his absence they will continue to do what he has done and to do much more besides.

Jesus begins his speech with the words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled”, words that he repeats towards the end of the chapter. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus’ words could not be any more pertinent in today’s climate. In recent weeks we, and the community around us have lived with uncertainty, anxiety and perhaps even with fear of death or the loss of a loved. Even now, as the restrictions are being lifted, we do not have a clear road map of the way ahead or of what the world will look like. Some things will never be the same and we will not know the true cost to the community for some years.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Faith in Jesus enables us to face the present with resilience, confidence and even, dare I say, a sense of wonder as to what this time of seclusion might have had to teach us and the church of which we are a part. As we begin to come out of isolation to a future that is as yet unknown, we do well to remember that Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life” and that in fellowship with him we can and will face whatever it is that life has to throw at us.

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