When It Rains....

I am preparing for the third funeral in two weeks.  This is the tip if the iceburg.  All of the sudden, this has been a season of death.  Death has touched many people in our church, colleagues, friends and beyond.  They say these things comes in threes, but that's wrong - death comes and comes and comes.  To some, it comes as an avalanche, and I am amazed at people's resilience: going to one wake after another, one funeral after another.  My parishioners teach me about endurance during these times. 

One thing that comes clear as I do multiple funerals is how different each one is.  My funeral liturgy seldom changes.  Even eulogies seem to cover the same basic things. Yet each funeral is defined by a particular person who has died, and the particular impact they made on their loved ones. 

Funerals are totally unpredictable.  They are filled with irony.  The families who don't think anyone is coming are overwhelmed by a steady stream of people coming to pay their respects.   The funerals you think will be huge end up being pretty manageable.  The people who are usually strong as a rock melt down with grief, while the emotional members of the family turn into the rock everybody holds on to.

I sometimes feel that the saddest funeral are those without tears.  Somehow, if there is no grief, something is lost.  In many ways, our tears are the best tributes we pay to the departed.  This past week, I have had the privilege of seeing family members offer eulogies, and somehow, the best ones are not the most articulate, but the most honest.  People listen for words, but they feel the tears, the emotions, the grief, and this is what touches them the most. 


I do a lot of praying before funerals.  I pray for the family and people there.  I pray that God will give me the grace to lead the service with grace, honesty and integrity.  I also pray for people coming with an emptiness in their lives.  Not necessarily an emptiness left by the death of the loved one, but something fundamentally missing in their lives.  I have talked a lot about funerals as tributes to the deceased, but underneath it all, a Christian funeral is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the promises given through him to his faithful followers.  Before the funeral, I pray that this message of Jesus Christ comes and touches someone who really needs to hear this good news.  I pray that it sink down, and send them on a journey that will lead them to a faith community, where their emptiness can be filled with God, where they can know the strength that a faithful relationship with Jesus Christ can bring.  This might be the only time in their lives that they actually hear the Good News that we all need hear.

Through prayer, I have come to realize and know in a clear way that beneath every funeral, surrounding every funeral, enveloping all the grief and sadness that is part of a funeral is the love of God.  It is there, even when the grief is hard and raw and desolate.  I know it, I feel it.  It is available right then, right there.  And it never lets us go, never leaves us, no matter what.