Epworth recently laid to rest one of its faithful saints: Sally Reid. Her ashes were placed in the Epworth Memorial Garden, alongside the remains of others who have gone before us. They are the Church Victorious; we are the Church Militant. One day we will all be reunited. Occasions like this cannot help but raise questions for those who participate in the ceremonies that mark the end of life. This is an area fraught with misunderstandings and poor theology.
A popular anonymous funeral poem includes the lines “I am not there/I did not die.” This might sound like pleasant sentiment, but it’s untrue. A person did die. The body is still here as evidence. In fact, we go out of our way to maintain evidence of a person’s life and death in the form of tombstones in specially designated burial places. Stone tablets serving as reminders for future generations of various events have been around for thousands of years. Archeologist have found many throughout the area of Ancient Israel. They are known as stele. So while the Church didn’t invent stone markers, we took the concept and remade it as a way of saying, a person lies here. This person was created and endowed with inestimable value by our loving God. This is now sacred ground.
For the Christian, death is both an enemy and a friend. Revelation 21:4 tells us that in the end “there will be no more death”. God will bring death to an end because it is an enemy. At the same time, death is the only gateway through which we may enter eternity and be with Jesus. That means that as Christians, there is likely a small piece of us that longs for death and an end to our daily struggles.
The way we care for the dead directly relates to how well we care for the living. The military understands this, going to great lengths to honor its fallen heroes. Our values are expressed in the final rites we perform for the deceased. Our bodies are not mere shells; we are embodied souls, meaning that we should care for the body even after the soul is gone. The ceremonies we perform after one dies are some of the most solemn duties we have as a community, and at the same time are community-creating. They say, you are here because you belong, and you recognize how important it is to carry our recently deceased on the last leg of their earthly journey.
A Christian farewell isn’t about the one who is now in the ground, except in recognizing how his or her story fits into God’s larger story of redemption. Funerals serve as reminders of God’s goodness, permanence, mercy, and promises to which the rest of us cling, at a time when we most need to be reminded of these things. Ultimately, the Christian funeral is the gospel proclaimed and enacted.
