The Art of a Good Funeral

 "All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia." BCP 499

Last year at St. Peter's, I participated in 21 funerals. An average of 1.75 per month, though the experience was not as spread out as the average. It was a record year for me. As a parish priest, I lead or participate in a fair number of funerals on a regular basis, but even for the larger, well-staffed, parish I currently serve, we had a lot of funerals. Some of the additional funerals were because of previous COVID delays, but most were simply the passing on of church and community members.

Many people tend to think that funerals are upsetting and sad, and they can be. They can also be a celebration and a gift of shared grief, human connection, and joy about life.

A good funeral is a service of celebration and grief, a letting go and holding on, a paradox of the heart.

A good funeral brings people together and allows the building of connection. 

A good funeral can open up moments of forgiveness and change.

All of which are desperately needed in our world. 

And hard work. To be present and engaged in the tough emotions of grief, sorrow, and pain.

And as hard as it will be, it will be holy work for all of us. 

Recently, I was attending the Episcopal Parish Network Conference in Jacksonville, FL, and was reminded of the generational statistics of the church. In thinking about the large proportion of Baby Boomers in the church, I also recognized a future trend of large numbers of funerals is coming. 

Yes, we as priests and pastors have always done funerals, but the largest generation will also require the largest number of funerals. And our church will never be the same afterwards.

Because we will never be the same after. If we don't have good personal theology around death, dying, and grief, then this aspect of our ministry is going to be very hard.

But we do have an influential ministry that can slowly change the world, because all those Boomers have family, children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren... and all those people are going to be watching as we preside at and help them through their grief and funerals, the end of life care. And people will notice when we do those things well and when we don't.

For comparison, the Greatest Generation was about 1.75 million adults, the Silent generation was about 23.6 million adults, the Baby Boomers were 68.7 million adults. While Millennials have surpassed the number of living adults, the Baby Boomers are starting to hit the life expectancy age.

It is going to be the currently 'young' clergy people, are going to be doing the brunt of the funerals in the next two decades.

And that this is going to be hard, holy, and important work.

It's going to be hard to do so many funerals. It's going to be holy to be in collective grief, it's going to be so important for the bringing together of families and communities and churches as the people who have been long term movers and shakers die and the memories of the church boom go to the grave with them.

In all of this, I am grateful for the good theology in the Episcopal service of Burial. And it gives us an opportunity. An opportunity to do some good pastoral work with families and be the community of God for people. If the church is smart and good enough, this will be an opportunity for good ministry to people and families who have moved away from church in the past. Because when the church is being community and living into the Good News, we know how to do end of life well.

In her book Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown writes about collective pain and grief. She says, "But the more we're willing to seek out moments of collective joy and show up for experiences of collective pain - for real, in person, and not online - the more difficult it becomes to deny our human connection, even with people we may disagree with. Not only do moments of collective emotion remind us of what is possible between people, but they also remind us of what is true about the human spirit.

We are wired for connection. But the key is that, in any given moment of it, it has to be real." (p. 129-130)

Funerals, celebrations of peoples' lives can be real moments of both collective grief and collective joy.

Brown further notes, "An experience of collective pain does not deliver us from grief or sadness; it is a ministry of presence. These moments remind us that we are not alone in our darkness and that our broken heart is connected to every heart that has known pain since the beginning of time." (p. 134)

We have to do our emotional work and our theology work before we are breaking down in the middle of a funeral. Because while sometimes that is honest and good when we have known the people and cared for them, it can also be problematic when it comes from a lack of emotional intelligence and exhaustion.

It is going to be a hard ministry in a world where death is feared and ignored. However, if the faith leaders and communities do this well, it could be an opportunity to share God's grace with millions of people who would otherwise have no experience of the good of religion, or the art of a good funeral.