Todd E. Johnson

Resurrecting the Funeral Sermon

“Funerals with a Personal Touch” read the title of an article in the Chicago Tribune.1 The piece described the growing trend to hire “funeral celebrants” to make a funeral more personal. Many people, particularly baby boomers, find traditional funerals rote, boring, and impersonal. The funeral celebrant’s role is to bring the deceased person to life (if you pardon the pun) by weaving together elements of the person’s life—some familiar, some lesser known— into a complete narrative. It appears that this new vocation has met a market niche and is expanding rapidly. Roman Catholic theologian Dennis Martin has described this phenomenon as the passing off of pastoral responsibilities to managers and therapists, something he implies is more of a Protestant tendency to appeal to the needs of the people rather than the tenets of the tradition. This raises the question about the differences between Protestant and Catholic funeral practices, and particularly the distinction between Protestant and Catholic approaches to preaching at funerals. Within American Protestant traditions there are a variety of approaches to preaching a good funeral sermon. These definitions range from eulogizing the dead and expositing the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, to evangelizing the non-Christians in attendance. This is notable not only because of current funeral trends, but also because of the avoidance of the practice of preaching funeral sermons—and even funerals altogether—among the first generations of sixteenth-century Protestant reformers. To understand the pastoral and theological issues one faces in the preparing a funeral sermon in the Protestant tradition today, one must understand its history. Once the historical and theological antecedents of Protestant funeral preaching are understood, one can make better decisions regarding the funeral sermon in pastoral praxis, and also evaluate funeral orations on the fringe of the tradition.

Ambassadors of Reconciliation? Observations and Lessons Learned from Evangelical Churches

These are interesting days for Protestant worship in North America. The cover story of the US News and World Report ‘‘Christmas issue’’ this past year was on the resurgence of traditional ritual in North American religions. Here the latest trend in religion was identified: Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike are returning to their ritual roots, recovering practices discarded in the liturgical reforms and innovations of the previous few decades. From Catholics gravitating to the Latin Mass to Jews increasing the use of Hebrew in their liturgies, the article paints in broad and anecdotal strokes the trend toward the recovery of traditional rituals. With this as a backdrop, this article goes on to describe the recovery of rituals by evangelicals who have been more typically adverse to things liturgical than not. It describes how some evangelicals are looking for Sunday morning to become more than a ‘‘glorified Bible class’’ by the inclusion of the historic creeds of the church and weekly communion. It is not uncommon for churches that historically defined themselves over-against the liturgical tradition—in particular the Catholic liturgical tradition—to commemorate Ash Wednesday, including the imposition of ashes. There has been more than one label used to describe this trend to juxtapose the evangelical or free church worship traditions with more traditional ritual elements, often concurrent with the increased use of electronic technologies in worship. What is interesting about this trend is that there is a range of ritual elements that are drawn from and some that seem to be excluded. For example, included are the use of chant, icons, and candles. Noticeably absent is the recovery of penance or reconciliation church traditions. In a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal, a reporter declared that confession had made a comeback in both Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. Since Pope Benedict XVI’s instruction to make confession a priority in the life of the Catholic Church, Protestant churches have begun to reconsider confession and reconciliation in the life of faith. For example, the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church is making attempts to restore confession.

Hoping to Death: Baptism, Eschatology and Ethics

It was indeed a perplexing question. Peter Gilmour, pastoral theologian and columnist for U.S. Catholic, had agreed to contribute to last year’s issue of Liturgy on funeral rites and death rituals, which I was guest editing. Given Peter’s wit and insight, I thought he was a logical choice to make poignant, yet somewhat lighter comments about this grave topic (pun intended). Peter did not disappoint, as he passed along preliminary ideas he had about eccentric (though increasingly more common) funeral practices. Then about a month before deadline came Peter’s e-mail with this provocative question: ‘‘Have you ever heard of a baby being baptized at a funeral? Is it too far out to include in my essay?’’ The fact is I had never heard of a baptism at a funeral. As a hospital chaplain I had requests to baptize stillborn children—a sort of baptismal funeral— but a baptism as a part of the funeral I had never heard of. The story, as Gilmour recounts it, describes a mother who died of complications three days after giving birth to a healthy child. The choice was made to baptize the child at the mother’s funeral, to interweave the sorrow and joy of the life of this family into the fabric of this liturgy. On the one hand I feared using this example, as it could easily be perceived as overly sentimental. The death of the mother, the birth of the child, it could too easily be seen as so much emotional chain pulling. On the other hand, there were some profound theological truths in this combination. Paul’s image of baptism as death in the sixth chapter of Romans points beyond death to resurrection. It is this understanding that links baptism and death in the funeral liturgy, as a pall is placed over the casket and the casket is sprinkled. The connection is made between the promises made at baptism and the promises claimed in the Christian funeral. In this very simple, yet profound rite, the central Christian themes of the lordship of Christ over one’s life, and the hope that comes from Christ’s dying and rising, are manifest. I told Peter that I thought that including this illustration would be fine. In retrospect, I am still convinced that the illustration was apt. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that this particular case could lead (or mislead) one exclusively toward the eschatological theme of personal salvation alone, negating the corporate dimension of the rite. Certainly the typical funeral in North America addresses the individual and his or her eternal destiny.