Faith Works 2-26-22

Faith Works 2-26-22
Jeff Gill

Rehearse a funeral, just to get it right
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Could we see worship services as "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals"?

That's what I've been meditating on recently, and the more I think about the two-sided image, the more I like it.

Last week I was mulling the experience of a birthing class as preparing people for an event that's both natural and utterly unlike anything else, a process much anticipated but equally anxiety producing. In spiritual terms, everyone likes to talk about new life, but when it involves dying to self, that's not so popular.

And birthing classes really do spend a fair amount of time on reminding everyone, from mother to cheerfully uncertain spectators, that breathing is a really good idea. Focus on the basics, and breathe, and just take things one step at a time.

Okay, so maybe worship practices and effective preaching can be compared to a birthing class, but what about that odd phrase "funeral rehearsals"?

We are coming up quickly on the doorstep of Lent. Ash Wednesday is March 2, and many Christians will be looking for ways to spend the 40 days and intervening Sundays 'til Easter in penitent contemplation, preparing hearts for resurrection joy by adopting certain spiritual disciplines along the way.

That's another way of saying "funeral rehearsals." I know, funerals don't tend to have rehearsals, and that may be the problem. Wedding preparation classes and rehearsals before the big day for the bridal party to walk through where they go and what they do so the event can be appreciated for what it's supposed to be . . . that's normal, right?

I think we need to prepare ourselves for funerals, too. For dying, and for death. Now there's a Lenten thought, right? My late friend Father Tom Shonebarger liked to talk about "contemplating our mortality" and he was in no way a gloomy person. His point was that we prepare ourselves, mind and body and spirit, for the fact that we will leave this life.

Once in making preparations for a funeral, there was a divided opinion in the family about having the service at the church building or in the funeral home. What prevailed was a few key people saying they didn't want to remember the casket and funeral and finality every time they came back to Sunday services.

I did not press, and we followed those wishes, but I'll share now long after the event that I wished not that I'd argued in that particular case more vehemently, but that in general I'd reminded people of why a church funeral can be truly redemptive and ultimately supportive.

Yes, it can be hard to come into a space where Christmases and weddings and happy times are in your mind, and put a coffin or an urn in the center aisle. But I truly believe that part of being a member of a church family is that you find ways to weave it all together, the baptisms and the departing, the celebrations and the grief, and you prepare in advance and sort out after the fact that the 23rd Psalm has a variety of applications, but you'll never hear it again the same way after hearing it at a graveside. That's not a reason to avoid using it there, it's part of the depth and richness and power of scripture.

Likewise, when you have a church home or just in your mental map of the congregations and church buildings you've been part of, there's something deep and rich and important about that intersection of aisle and altar, before a communion table not just for sermons and Christmas pageants, but also for home goings and farewells. Yes, that first Sunday back is wrenching in a different sort of way than the funeral itself, but that inner realization of what's at stake and why it happened may help the mourner heal all the better, not to say more quickly.

Many of us lost out in these last couple years on funerals as we'd rehearsed them. I pray each of us found our own way to realizing it wasn't all about having the events and activities play out exactly as we'd imagined, the few times we let ourselves contemplate mortality for those we love.

It's arranging the furniture of the heart, developing practices of the spirit that we need to rehearse, not just for an upcoming Lent. Maybe every Sunday in some ways. Even for ourselves.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still working on his metaphors for many things. Tell him how you keep worship in front of you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.