Celebrating Life

In yesterday's Worcester newspaper, The Telegram and Gazette, a local columnist wrote an article entitled "Celebration of life replaces usual service." There, Dianne Williamson told the story of a woman who died at fifty and eschewed "the traditional wake and funeral service" for a less traditional event intended "to focus on life rather than death."

Let me be clear: I have no quarrel with the myriad ways people have before them in a post-Constantinian context to choose practices that are meaningful to them, and no desire to force Christian burial on anyone. But the suggestion that Christian Burial is focused on death, rather than life, just ain't so!

In a few hours I will preside at the Burial Office and celebration of Holy Eucharist for a man whose life was just two years shy of a century. I guarantee we will be there not to focus on his death, but to celebrate his life. Moreover, we will be gathered to set his life in a larger context. I often tell families planning for the funeral of a loved one - especially if their loved one was an active member of my congregation and they are not - that while a funeral is indeed about the deceased it is not all about them. The Burial Office is an Easter liturgy, which is to say that we celebrate Christ's victory over death. Even at the grave we make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! If we leave a Christian funeral and do not feel that we have celebrated life then it's not been done right, or we weren't paying attention.

But here is the thing: sometimes "celebration of life" is code-language for denial of death. It means we don't want a corpse present, or even ashes, because that would be "such a downer." We want to gather to celebrate the life of the deceased, but we are scared out of our wits about their death because it suggests that one day we, too, will die.

But to truly celebrate life, we must be willing to face death. Easter morning doesn't begin at the empty tomb: it begins with the Lenten reminder that we are all dust and it passes through the hard realities of Good Friday. Celebrating life actually means something more than denial when you acknowledge the pain and grief of death.

Now my point here is not to pick a fight with a local columnist. My larger point is that there is good news here that Christians have to share with the world. There is something in the tradition worth claiming and affirming and offering to a culture that denies death: the good news that life is stronger than death and that hope trumps despair. The good news that nothing in all of creation, not even death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ. My hope and prayer today, as people who are not regular members of my parish leave, is that they will know that they were indeed there to celebrate life and that it may even mean that they ponder anew how they will choose to live their days.