Funerals for unbelievers

[Caroline]

There's no back story to this question, just I wondered today...

How do Reformed people have a funeral for an unbeliever? I have not yet seen one, and I'm curious. I can think of several possible scenarios:

1. Random people call up a Reformed pastor to ask him to do a funeral for their loved one. Would the pastor agree to preach a funeral for strangers who may or may not be believers?

Or a more difficult scenario:

2. Believer asks pastor to preach a funeral for his or her unbelieving parent. How would a pastor tactfully handle that situation?

Or perhaps another awkward situation:

3. Someone who attended the church for a length of time but never made a profession of faith/ was baptized, etc. (for whatever reason, or even just that they were thinking about it but had not yet acted on it). Would you give that person a Christian burial?

So far, we've buried a number of elderly people who had been faithful church members for years and were sent off with all confidence, but I wouldn't think that is always the case.

 

[py3ak]

Mr. Winzer spoke to this awhile back, when he had occasion to attend such a funeral. I think his observations are very wise.
http://www.puritanboard.com/f22/family-funeral-16359/#post209451

 

[Andres]

I don't know how a pastor would handle things, but when my father passed away at the end of 2011, I chose not to have a funeral service for him because I really didn't think that he was a Christian. He had never been a believer his entire life but I did share the gospel with him on his deathbed just weeks before he died. Of course, I don't know his heart at the end, but because he was never in church and had been a pagan his whole life, I thought it weird and a bit phony to do a Christian funeral at his death. He was a veteran so we had a very nice burial at the local veterans cemetery and that was it.

 

[Jack K]

My dad, a Reformed pastor, has been asked to do Christian funerals for non-believers many times. He always agrees, provided they don't mind that he speaks Christian truth. He says there's no need in a funeral to make any pronouncement about the faith or non-faith of the deceased. He simply points to God as the giver of life and the one who provides a way of salvation through Christ. He thanks God for the life that was given and urges those present to put all their hope for the next life in Christ.

He says funerals for non-Christians are hard and sad, but often they're still good opportunities to preach the gospel.

 

[Caroline]

Thanks! Yes, now that I consider it, I can see how that is possible--offering the gospel, while not making sweeping statements about whether the deceased went to heaven or hell. I have to admit that I am uncomfortable with the evangelistic tone even of some of the funerals I have participated in. I keep wondering whether that is appropriate or not. I'm not making any judgments of the pastor--for all I know, the family may have requested an evangelistic message. But I do wonder...even if the person was a believer, is a funeral really the right moment to say, "Mrs. McCave died, and so will you! Where will you spend eternity?"

I think part of my recoil is just my own fear of my extended family ever getting hold of my body after I died and holding a funeral service, wherein I would no doubt be roundly condemned as an apostate and my death would serve as a warning to anyone considering becoming a Presbyterian. It seems like there is something particularly fragile about a funeral because the deceased can no longer speak. It is as though everyone can finally say something and the dead cannot argue, but that seems like it makes it all the more important to say very little and let words be gentle.

I used to say that I do not care what is said at my funeral, as I will not be there anyway, but I find that I do actually care. It seems poor sport to take someone's body and use it in any manner, even if it is to make an evangelistic point.

But I am curious to hear other thoughts on it.

 

[Andres]

is a funeral really the right moment to say, "Mrs. McCave died, and so will you! Where will you spend eternity?"

Maybe not in those exact words, but I think a funeral is an excellent time to share the gospel.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Ooh! I've done a lot of funerals. At the risk of sounding morbid, I prefer them to weddings. Why? No one is listening at weddings. At a funeral service there's a dead body (usually) on display. That really helps get peoples' attention. I've been able to share the Gospel at 100% of the services I've conducted.

I've had one VERY challenging funeral - it was a suicide - not my only suicide funeral, but the circumstances were highly unusual. But I got counsel from other ministers and charted a middle course and it went well.

 

[Curt]

I have done numerous funerals for unbelievers and have always made it know to those arranging the service that the Gospel would be part of the service. Nobody has ever complained about that and I always do take the opportunity to evangelize.

A couple of years ago, my favorite uncle died. Although he was ten years older than me, we had spent a lot of my (mis-spent) youth together, drinking and partying. So now here I was, the "Christian" relative - and a "preacher" to boot, being asked to speak at the interment at the veterans cemetery (no formal funeral service). I spoke of our times together, the troubles we'd gotten ourselves into, and then I preached the Gospel. I got glaring looks from the cousin who'd recently gotten out of prison for murdering his first wife, but others paid attention.

I don't know if anybody was converted by God's use of that sermon. I do know that they heard the Gospel. That was my job. God is sovereign.

 

[py3ak]

I think part of my recoil is just my own fear of my extended family ever getting hold of my body after I died and holding a funeral service, wherein I would no doubt be roundly condemned as an apostate and my death would serve as a warning to anyone considering becoming a Presbyterian.

Donate your bodyto science! It eliminates funeral costs, and even your extended family doesn't want to take on the biomedical industry.

 

[Mushroom]

No one is listening at weddings. At a funeral service there's a dead body (usually) on display. That really helps get peoples' attention.

Had to wipe coffee off the screen with that one, Ben.

I've heard some good sermons at unbelievers' funerals. Completely appropriate.

 

[Caroline]

Ooh! I've done a lot of funerals. At the risk of sounding morbid, I prefer them to weddings. Why? No one is listening at weddings. At a funeral service there's a dead body (usually) on display. That really helps get peoples' attention. I've been able to share the Gospel at 100% of the services I've conducted.

I've had one VERY challenging funeral - it was a suicide - not my only suicide funeral, but the circumstances were highly unusual. But I got counsel from other ministers and charted a middle course and it went well.

But that is more or less my point. A dead body on display as an attention-getting mechanism seems like poor use of a person's body. I would not want my body used that way, even if it were effective. But perhaps some people may feel differently, and maybe the key is just to try to abide by the wishes of the person in question. I can imagine some people saying, "Take the opportunity to remind my unbelieving relatives of their own mortality!" whereas I would say, "I'm not a carnival sideshow. If you make a spectacle out of my dead body for ANY reason, that wailing in your attic will be my very unhappy ghost."

But also, I suppose it would all depend on how it is done also. I have a friend who went to a Pentecostal church where the pastor brought in a coffin and said that it contained the body of a man who had lived his whole life in sin and now had died and gone to hell, and that he wanted them all to look at it so they would remember what that looked like. She became so upset that she went into premature labor. As it turned out, there was no body in the coffin, he was just freaking them out, but that sort of thing makes me squeamish of funerals that are heavy-handed with evangelism.

On the other hand, I asked my pastor once if he would have anything nice to say about me at my funeral (I said it when I was much more ill than I am now and thought it was possible that my funeral was not so far distant), and he said, "Many nice things, and also much about God's grace to sinners like you." And I thought that was the most awesome funeral sermon idea EVER. So I suppose the gospel can still be presented without pounding on someone's coffin and shrieking, "This could be you!" (not that I've ever seen a Presbyterian minister carry it that far).

Ruben, I'm actually more concerned about the funeral than the ultimate end of my body. I am sure my family wouldn't dig me back up out of the ground, but if they got to plan my funeral... At this point, though, I've signed several plans giving my pastor sole authority over the preaching at my funeral, including directions that if he were on vacation, I must be put on ice until he returns, but under no circumstances should anyone else be allowed to preach. My family is more freaked out by pastors than by the biomedical industry. Sometimes their superstition about pastors works to my advantage. They think he can strike them all dead. They don't argue with him.

 

[py3ak]

In that case, he should require them to wear silly hats to the funeral. If people thought I could strike them dead, that is the first way I would use my power.

 

[Caroline]

Indeed, that idea has already been raised. My pastor would never go for it, though. He gets sort of nauseated by people who think he can strike them dead. And by now, I've dragged enough ex-cultists into his presence for that to be a moderately frequent phenomenon. By now, his knee-jerk reaction is to hide his hands behind his back (because that's where they think the power flows from) and explain that he has never killed anyone as far as he knows, not that he has ever tried.