Sergius
Gary Hall
Seabury-Western
Septermber 25, 2007
I’ve done a lot of funerals in my time—my last parish, in Pennsylvania, had an 11-acre churchyard cemetery and columbarium on its grounds, so we did about three a week there—and I’ve become fascinated over time how with the advent of cremation funerals have morphed into weddings. What I mean by that is this: when I was first ordained, in the mid-1970s, cremation had not become the standard it is now in polite Episcopalian circles, and so the funeral usually followed death by about the traditional three days. For those three days the distraught family placed themselves in the hands of the priest. So in the good old days, funerals were usually elegant, dignified, and brief.
Now that cremation
has made possible the infinite delay of the funeral (or, more accurately, “memorial
service”), the family has unlimited leisure time to think about what pathology
they want to work out in relation to the deceased. This usually means that
funerals, like weddings, expand over time. Special music is requested—if
I never hear “Over the Rainbow” or “Wind Beneath My Wings” again
I will die a happy man—and a list of eulogizers is compiled. In the
early days of my parish ministry I spent my time fighting with photographers
and mothers of the bride. (A priest friend of mine used to say he would only
marry people who could prove they have no living relatives.) In my last
days of parish ministry I spent my time trying to whittle down the list of nine
people giving remembrances to three.
Doing three
funerals a week for four years in my last parish job I had plenty of occasion
to listen to what eulogizers tend to say when they talk about the deceased. I’ve
heard a lot of beautiful and touching memories. But when eulogizers begin
to speculate theologically, we’re usually in trouble. And over the
years what I gleaned from most eulogies was a kind of popular theology (heavily
influenced by Hollywood) of what happens to you when you die.
What most
people tend to say when they ascend the steps of a pulpit to remember a departed
friend of relative usually involves a projection and extrapolation of the deceased
person’s hobby stretched out into eternity, rendered rhetorically as a
firm conviction. So we get sentences like this: “I know that
today he’s playing golf with Jesus in heaven.” “I know
that today she’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner for Jesus in heaven.” I
once heard someone actually say, “I know that today he’s up there
sailing with Jesus in heaven,” and I wondered about the physical geography
of that. I wonder what they’ll say at my memorial service. “I
know that today he’s up there with Jesus watching Law and Order reruns
in heaven.” You get the idea.
How they know
these things for a certainty is beyond me. I’ve never once heard
anyone say, “I know he’s sitting at his desk returning e-mails in
heaven.” Nor have I heard them opine, “I’m sure today
he’s swabbing out the latrines in hell.” In our popular theology,
we seem to be absolutely convinced that at death everyone gets a first-class
ticket to heaven to pick up their favorite leisure time activities. Never
ever have I heard anyone say anything about the possibility of judgment.
Hear again
part of what Jesus says to us today:
"The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”—Matthew 13
Now I’m not suggesting that we read this pericope at any funeral
I can think of. But I am concerned that we as leaders of Christian
faith communities at least try to be coherent in our funeral practices. And
whenever I say the creeds which continue to shape our common life I come
across these statements about Jesus coming again to judge the living and
the dead.
Because
we live in a culture that has confused sin and low self-esteem, we seem to
be unable, corporately, to think about judgment. Yet here it is in our
Gospel today. Jesus compares the reign of God to a fishing expedition that
casts the net inclusively and then puts them through what we might call in
the church an “evaluative process.” It seems to me that if
we are to be intellectually and theologically honest with each other at the
time of death, we need to remember two things about what it means for us, as
followers of Jesus, to live and die under God’s judgment.
The first
is that we human beings and what we do matter. God created us in God’s
image. God takes us seriously. So it makes eminent sense that each
human life would be lived under judgment. I can’t presume to speculate
on what will happen to me when I die (though I do hope it’s the Jerry
Orbach and not the Dennis Farina Law and Order episodes they show
there), but I do know that, for my life to have mattered, part of God taking
me seriously will be to put me in touch with the consequences of my own virtues
and sins. I don’t believe my life has been a prelude to eternally
walking on the beach with Jesus. I believe that my life has been in Thoreau’s
words, the “nick of time” that I have been given to improve. How
I did that, whether I sided with God and God’s causes or with the adversary,
all this matters. For my life to matter I have to be accountable. So
there is judgment, and the promise of judgment is actually a gift.
The second
is that the other side of judgment is mercy. Boss Tweed used to say that “it
is less important to know the law than it is to know the judge.” As
Jesus’s companions, you and I know the judge. This doesn’t
mean that we get some kind of Tammany Hall special favoritism when called to
account for our lives and decisions. But it does mean that the one judging
us went to the cross. God now knows what it is like to be human—to
be finite and limited and dependent and contingent—and it is that One,
and not somebody else, who will do the judging.
One of my
favorite prayers in the Prayer Book, which I always sneak into a funeral or
memorial service between the more flowery orations, is the one that asks Jesus
to set “his passion, cross, and death” between his “judgment
and our souls, now and in the hour of our death.” [BCP, p. 489] Part
of the pain of death is that I will have, finally, to come face to face with
my own failures and sins and omissions. And part of the joy of death
is that, in pronouncing judgment, God will look at you and me and see Jesus. That
is why the crucifixion of Jesus matters—less as a “sacrifice for
sin” than as an experience in the life of God. God knows us and
knows what it is to be us. In Boss Tweed’s words, we “know
the judge”.
And so we come to the table around which we stand together and give thanks. God both loves you and takes you seriously. Because of the cross we are subject to judgment and open to mercy. The Good News is that there is judgment and that we know the judge. You can go golfing in eternity with Jesus, but only if you really want to. Amen.