Funerals and “Events”

In seminary, there were no classes called “How to Do a Funeral.”  Frankly, that might have helped prepare students for ministry, since…and I know this seems obvious…sometimes ministers have to do funerals, and not everybody on God’s green earth wakes up in the morning just knowing how to do one.  I guess today’s seminary students could look it up on “YouTube”—but back then nobody had even invented the internet yet, and somehow, we just had to figure out our lives without YouTube.

In fact, the closest thing to “training” for funerals I remember in seminary was reading one of the many books assigned in one of the pastoral care classes.  It was a historical and cultural analysis of funeral customs through time, called “The Funeral: Vestige or Value.”  I can’t find it now; like many of my seminary books, it would most likely be located in one of the boxes of things I have not missed, and therefore not unpacked for the last two or three moves. 

Anyway, as I recall, the book debated whether funerals were an outdated social custom or whether there was something still worthwhile about doing them.  I probably had to write a paper about the book, weighing in with my considerable experience about funerals, perhaps with some academia-laced title like, “The arguments for reforming, replacing, or renewing the funeral in tomorrow’s church.”  And to this little rabbit trail of thought, let me add that scholars and professors have the luxury to think thoughts and write books that would not always meet with the approval of folks in the coffee shop in rural America, who place a high value on “horse sense” and people who write words that are short enough to understand straight off the page, who don’t indulge in silly things like writing a word in Latin in a book clearly meant for Americans, just so they can say things like, “by which I mean to say” or otherwise have to interpret what they said after they say it.  God didn’t mean for us to write in “scholar” or “Latin,” like speaking in tongues, and then have to interpret ourselves.  People with nothing to hide just say what’s on their mind.  Period.  But I digress.

Whatever happened in seminary, it evidently didn’t prepare me for the phone call that first week.  The funeral director told me that one of my older members, someone I had never met, just lost her husband, and she wanted me to do the funeral.  He gave me the time and place for the funeral, and the address to her home.  I asked what I should do, and he said, “Well, it would be a good idea for you to go visit her.  She’s home now.” 

So I headed out to her house, and rang the doorbell.  When she came to the door, I told her I was her new pastor.  She looked at me strangely, and the first thing she said was, “Have you been jogging?”  I said, “No…why?”  She replied, “Oh, I just wondered since you have on jeans and tennis shoes.” 

She was correct.  I always wore tennis shoes and blue jeans.  That’s all we wore in seminary, except for dressing up for church.  I was puzzled by her question, but she still invited me in, and we visited about her husband for a while.  She said she thought the visitation would take place in two days, and the funeral the following day.  That gave me a little bit of time to figure out what I was going to do for the funeral, and I had no idea what a pastor does at a visitation. 

Fortunately, as part of the transition from seminary into being a rookie pastor, I had been assigned an experienced pastor in a nearby town to “mentor me.”  At our first meeting, I mentioned the incident to him.  He served a large church in a county-seat town; his office was spacious, full of books and religious artifacts, and guarded at all times by a full-time secretary.  Also, he wore a clergy collar every day.  It was quickly obvious that he did not think much of my jeans and tennis shoes approach either.  “You should dress to look like what you are,” he said.  “If you go to a hospital and walk down the hall, you can tell just by looking who is a doctor, who is a nurse, who is a janitor, and who is a patient.  So you should dress in a way that tells people what you are too.”  I wondered aloud whether a tie and coat would accomplish the same thing, and he argued that it was not specific enough—it is only by wearing a clergy collar that we can be readily identified as clergy, he said.   He said that the clergy role can provide people comfort, and even without saying anything, it is a symbol that God is in their midst.

Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine jumping from flannel shirts to clergy collars.  So I called another minister and long-time friend about his ideas about an appropriate clergy dress code.  He disagreed with my mentor’s reasoning.  “I think a clergy collar creates a professional barrier with other people…I think that it can distance us from other people.  Jesus came into the world to be like us, and I think clergy should generally dress like members of the community they serve.  If you serve bankers and attorneys, then by all means, wear a suit and tie to work like they do.  But if you are serving a rural community where everyone dresses casually, and you go to their house in a suit and tie, your way of dressing might actually interfere with creating a trusting, friendly relationship with them.”

I decided to wear my suit and tie to the funeral, and put the clergy collar question on hold.

Meanwhile, the funeral director, who was also a church member, asked me to stop by and see him at the funeral home.  Mike was a friendly, outgoing, and unexpectedly jovial person, at least if you picture a funeral director as someone who is always wearing a somber face.  We sat down in his office and he asked me if I had ever done a funeral before.  I admitted I had not…in fact, I think I had only attended about three of them in my entire life.  “Well,” he said, “I’ve trained a lot of pastors about funerals through the years,” clearly relishing the opportunity to guide me.  “The first thing you need to know is that there are two things…first there are funerals, and then there are events.”  He paused.  “Unfortunately, I can tell you that this family has events, so you’re going to have to fasten your seat belt.”  He went on to tell me that some of the extended family members did not always act as expected at funerals he had done for them in the past.  He also gave me lots of practical advice about how to conduct a funeral service—I learned more of practical value from him in that meeting than I learned by reading the whole book, “The Funeral:  Vestige or Value?”

So the day of the funeral arrived.  I wore a suit and tie, and the family gradually filled the small living room area of the funeral home, which had once been a grand old mansion on Main Street.  I sat on an old church-style overstuffed “throne” in what I suppose had once been the dining room, at the head of the casket in front of heavy drapes, low lighting, lots of flowers, and a wooden podium with an old microphone.  Once the quivery piped in organ music quit playing, that was my queue to stand up and conduct the funeral. 

I had prepared some scriptures to read, prayers, and had some ideas about other things to say that I hoped might be comforting.  Within two minutes of beginning, one of the adult men in the second row stood up in the crowded room, and threaded his way across everyone’s feet to the end of the row.  Then he walked across between me and the family members in the front row, almost bumping into my podium.  From there, he went around and stood behind me, looking intently into the casket.  I asked if he was o.k., and he said he was, and to just go on with the service.  So with this man immediately behind me and occasionally moaning audibly, I tried to make my way through my notes.  Near the end, he walked back in front of me and headed for his seat, making everyone stand or shift to allow him back through the tight row.

It took a long time to leave, because they had left the casket open.  After the service, all the relatives went past to pay their final respects, some for long and emotional farewells that left me struggling with whether to try to comfort them or give them some private time—but finally we were on the way up to the cemetery at the top of the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River valley. 

I could see what Mike had been talking about—the funeral turned out to be more of an “event.”  The final service at the graveside was brief—a scripture, a prayer of committal (I had to look up what that means), and a “pastoral benediction,” where I put my hands in the air and offer a final blessing to the people as they depart.  It almost went that way, too.  But I noticed that the man who wandered around during the service was up again just a couple of lines into Psalm 23.  This time, instead of heading toward the casket, he walked over to the large oak tree which was not far from the graveside.  Anyway, it was certainly not far enough.  And you guessed it.  There are no bathrooms up in the cemetery.  I quickly got through the prayer and benediction, thankful that people were supposed to close their eyes during the prayer.  But that’s how my first funeral ended.  It was, as Mike said, an event.

Of course, over the next six years, there were many other trips up to the cemetery on the bluff, and as I got to know the people, there were many of the funerals where I also left a piece of my heart behind along with those gathered.  It is not for me to decide whether the funerals I conducted were of any value to those left behind, but I can tell you that their lives, their love and friendship, have left a witness of faith for me to remember and be inspired by.  I may not even be a relative of theirs, but I will never forget them, and a part of them is still alive and growing in my spirit.

There was one more “event” during those years up at the cemetery.  The person who died had two sisters.  They were both older women, and how can I say this…they apparently were both good cooks and loved to appreciate the fruits of their efforts.  The funeral went fine that day, but it had been raining before we got to the cemetery.  There was a blue tent over the graveside, and green plastic grass “carpeting” laid down under the single row of folding chairs.  

The two women sat down in the chairs right in front of me, along with a couple of other family members—then the rest of the small crowd stood behind them.  All was well until it came time for the pastoral benediction after the prayer.  I had my hands up in the air to offer the blessing for the people as they departed, and right when I got to the dramatic pause before the final “Amen,” one of the women apparently anticipated the ending and leaned backward as though to stand up.  Unfortunately, the ground was still soft from the rain, so that made the back two legs of her metal chair slip off the green carpet, and plunge down into the mud.  As she quickly rocked backward, she flailed with her arms and caught her sister across the chest, and believe it or not, that was enough to get her sister to lean back and her chair went down too!  This all happened in a split second just a couple feet in front of me.  Luckily, they fell backward into the crowd of people behind them, who tried to hold them up.  But because of their (considerable) weight, both women continued their descent; slowed by the people trying to help them back up, until both of them were lying on the ground in their chairs, face up, feet in the air, in the astronaut position.  Of course, it was too late to say “Amen,” so we all stood there in stunned silence for a moment, not knowing what to do next. 

Suddenly one of the women burst out laughing, and then the other, and then everyone was laughing so hard the funeral was just over.  The scholars can argue whether that funeral was “vestige or value,” but I will never forget it, and maybe it was one of the best I have ever been to.  It ended with a laugh, with hugs and love and some real joy, and if we are to believe the message of the gospel, that might be the most fitting ending of all.