One of the most painful yet gratifying tasks for my pastoral ministry has always been preaching the funeral sermon.
It's painful because of the deep work that goes into walking with a family through the valley of death. It's a complicated time, because pastors always bear their own griefs, too. So the wounds that come to the living in the death of the deceased are carried not only by family and friends, but also by the clergy who speak the names of the deceased and speak the loving truth about their lives.
On the other hand, it's gratifying because in death ministers are able -- at really the only point in their ministry -- to see the flowering of their pastoral work. We are typically not only graced to be the last who will speak the name of the deceased in community. We are also able to see, first-hand, the fruits of our pastoral labors in the grief of the living.
So preaching a funeral is something that pastors should always think about -- what they are doing and what they are saying.
Unfortunately, though, as I learned in teaching preaching over the years, few seminarians, and later ministers, know how to preach theologically at a funeral. I've seen collections of funeral sermons over the years -- and I wouldn't preach even one of them! Poems, anecdotes, even emotionally-charged illustrations are all out of place. Those collections are always published with the best intentions, but they're so general in focus and lacking in real pastoral insight, that preachers who preach those sermons end up sounding like revivalist evangelists more than preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Even ministers' manuals aren't all that helpful. Pastors, who have all sorts of other responsibilities, will typically resort to them, in hopes that these manuals will substitute for the hard theological work of preaching well and faithfully. While denominational books of worship are concise, they're still too general. As I've told students over the years, learning to preach a funeral either happens in the day-to-day work of pastoral care, or it doesn't happen at all.
Even homiletic textbooks can't be trusted here. Most treat preaching as if preaching takes place in a vacuum, without any awareness of human grief and pastoral care -- or even the liturgical life of the congregation. John Broadus' classical work of preaching (which, to my mind, is still one of the best homiletics textbooks out there) devoted three whole pages to preaching a funeral. He noted that the grieving family "instinctively" needs to hear some words about their departed loved one but Broadus then goes on to suggest that such words should be brief and subordinate to the Gospel message of salvation. If preachers follow Broadus' advice -- and I fear they do, based on my experience yet again recently -- they aren't preaching as pastors.
Here's what I tell my preaching students: The sole comfort of preaching a funeral sermon follows Paul's wisdom in Colossians 3.12: "As God's chosen, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience ... and of all these virtues, put on love".
Preachers who want to preach a funeral sermon need to know that Jesus Christ is always the focus. Either we preach Christ crucified and risen, or we have failed to preach at all.
It's really that simple.
If you're preaching a decisionist theology ("Make a decision to believe in God in order to see this one again"), you're not preaching Jesus crucified and risen. If you're preaching that only a select number of those who have gathered in their grief will see the deceased in heaven, that the majority of those gathered will die and burn in hell, you're not preaching Jesus crucified and risen.
Period.
Our funeral sermons can eulogize the life of the deceased -- what Christians have traditionally called "the naming" -- because of Jesus Christ. God used a human being to get to us, and gives us human beings to get us to God. When God wanted once and for all to say how it is between us and God, God didn't do it through a sermon; God said it through the Babe of Bethlehem.
Most of us have a tough time thinking of God, eternal, spiritual. These things are too high for us. What we need is earthly exemplars, flesh-and-blood enactments, people who, by their lives, bring us close to God, show us how it ought to be done. Thus an incarnate God gives us those who convince us that life is a gift, that creation is an ever-unfolding mystery, and God is good. But to say all these things, we first proclaim our hope in God. Our hope that God will save all the world -- that work he began in Jesus Christ and continues in the Holy Spirit. Anything less is a hopeless word. That hopeless word, in turn, is a betrayal of our faith in the Crucified and Risen One.
Sermons that have no put on this reconciling love, this hopeful work, have not put on Christ.
Preachers who preach those sermons have, in turn, betrayed their ministerial responsibilities to preach the Gospel.
It's painful because of the deep work that goes into walking with a family through the valley of death. It's a complicated time, because pastors always bear their own griefs, too. So the wounds that come to the living in the death of the deceased are carried not only by family and friends, but also by the clergy who speak the names of the deceased and speak the loving truth about their lives.
On the other hand, it's gratifying because in death ministers are able -- at really the only point in their ministry -- to see the flowering of their pastoral work. We are typically not only graced to be the last who will speak the name of the deceased in community. We are also able to see, first-hand, the fruits of our pastoral labors in the grief of the living.
So preaching a funeral is something that pastors should always think about -- what they are doing and what they are saying.
Unfortunately, though, as I learned in teaching preaching over the years, few seminarians, and later ministers, know how to preach theologically at a funeral. I've seen collections of funeral sermons over the years -- and I wouldn't preach even one of them! Poems, anecdotes, even emotionally-charged illustrations are all out of place. Those collections are always published with the best intentions, but they're so general in focus and lacking in real pastoral insight, that preachers who preach those sermons end up sounding like revivalist evangelists more than preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Even ministers' manuals aren't all that helpful. Pastors, who have all sorts of other responsibilities, will typically resort to them, in hopes that these manuals will substitute for the hard theological work of preaching well and faithfully. While denominational books of worship are concise, they're still too general. As I've told students over the years, learning to preach a funeral either happens in the day-to-day work of pastoral care, or it doesn't happen at all.
Even homiletic textbooks can't be trusted here. Most treat preaching as if preaching takes place in a vacuum, without any awareness of human grief and pastoral care -- or even the liturgical life of the congregation. John Broadus' classical work of preaching (which, to my mind, is still one of the best homiletics textbooks out there) devoted three whole pages to preaching a funeral. He noted that the grieving family "instinctively" needs to hear some words about their departed loved one but Broadus then goes on to suggest that such words should be brief and subordinate to the Gospel message of salvation. If preachers follow Broadus' advice -- and I fear they do, based on my experience yet again recently -- they aren't preaching as pastors.
Here's what I tell my preaching students: The sole comfort of preaching a funeral sermon follows Paul's wisdom in Colossians 3.12: "As God's chosen, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience ... and of all these virtues, put on love".
Preachers who want to preach a funeral sermon need to know that Jesus Christ is always the focus. Either we preach Christ crucified and risen, or we have failed to preach at all.
It's really that simple.
If you're preaching a decisionist theology ("Make a decision to believe in God in order to see this one again"), you're not preaching Jesus crucified and risen. If you're preaching that only a select number of those who have gathered in their grief will see the deceased in heaven, that the majority of those gathered will die and burn in hell, you're not preaching Jesus crucified and risen.
Period.
Our funeral sermons can eulogize the life of the deceased -- what Christians have traditionally called "the naming" -- because of Jesus Christ. God used a human being to get to us, and gives us human beings to get us to God. When God wanted once and for all to say how it is between us and God, God didn't do it through a sermon; God said it through the Babe of Bethlehem.
Most of us have a tough time thinking of God, eternal, spiritual. These things are too high for us. What we need is earthly exemplars, flesh-and-blood enactments, people who, by their lives, bring us close to God, show us how it ought to be done. Thus an incarnate God gives us those who convince us that life is a gift, that creation is an ever-unfolding mystery, and God is good. But to say all these things, we first proclaim our hope in God. Our hope that God will save all the world -- that work he began in Jesus Christ and continues in the Holy Spirit. Anything less is a hopeless word. That hopeless word, in turn, is a betrayal of our faith in the Crucified and Risen One.
Sermons that have no put on this reconciling love, this hopeful work, have not put on Christ.
Preachers who preach those sermons have, in turn, betrayed their ministerial responsibilities to preach the Gospel.