One friend wrote:

News reports of a family's not being allowed to have the Australian flag draped over the coffin for the funeral of their late father at a Uniting Church underscore some of the reasons for the ambivalence that a lot of Aussies have about the church.

Nathan replied:

I would take a different stance on this depending on whether or not the person was a member of my congregation. When we are burying members of our congregations, then we, like the family, are one of the related parties with a right to a say in how the funeral is conducted and what sort of symbolism is employed. When we are just clergy for hire for people outside of the faith, we might as well fit in with what they want as long as it doesn't violate our integrity.

The purpose of a symbolic drape over the coffin is to indicate the person's primary identity and allegiance. In a funeral which includes any concept of passing to a new life beyond death, the drape over the coffin is making a statement about the identity which is being trusted to ensure one's admission to that new life. A flag on the coffin is saying, "This person departs this life and presents themselves to God as a loyal Australian."

Therefore, the Church's traditional stance has been that in a Christian funeral, the only symbols that are to be placed on the coffin are symbols of the Christian faith and of the person's absolute dependence on their identity in Christ. Traditionally (and beginning to make a welome comeback) the main symbol was the white funeral pall draped over the cross as a symbolic reminder of the white baptismal robes and therefore indicating that the person's trust is in the passion and resurrection of Christ, and in their own immersion into that passion and resurrection through baptism. The pall also has the added value of hiding the coffin and thereby making it clear that we do not believe that the status symbols of an elaborate and expensive coffin are of even the slightest value when we appear before God.

In addition to the pall, symbols such as an open bible, a cross, and the Easter candle can appear on or alongside the coffin.

To allow a flag on the coffin in the funeral of a committed Christian would be contradictory, and tantamount to idolatry. It would be suggesting that the person's nationality is more important as they pass fromthis life to the next than their identity in Christ. It is, of course, best to be educating your congregation about this before someone dies and the question arises in a time of fragility and grief.

However, the majority of funerals we conduct will not be for people whose trust in Christ is their defining allegiance and identity, and so as I see it, we might as well allow them to use what ever symbols are meaningful to them. But in that case, we'd probably be best not to confuse the issue by pretending that it is a Christian funeral. It is not too hard to make the distinction between a Chrstian funeral, and a Christian minister conducting a secular funeral.

What do others think, and how do you handle requests for non-Christian symbolism in funerals?

Peace and hope,

Nathan

~~~

In response to

To allow a flag on the coffin in the funeral of a committed Christian would be contradictory, and tantamount to idolatry.

Another responded:

This seems a little strong for me Nathan. Can I deny that I am Australian, that I served in the war (in this case), and this affected the way I lived out my life? Does one symbol negate another?

Men who went to WW2 did so seeing it as part of their christian duty and as service to their country. To deny that link in the present time could also be read as saying that the person, in so going to war, denied their faith. After all, the symbol is one part of a rich tapestry of their life, and it speaks to the congregation. God might be looking at other things...

And in response to

However, the majority of funerals we conduct will not be for people whose trust in Christ is their defining allegiance and identity, and so as I see it, we might as well allow them to use what ever symbols are meaningful to them. But in that case, we'd probably be best not to confuse the issue by pretending that it is a Christian funeral. It is not too hard to make the distinction between a Chrstian funeral, and a Christian minister conducting a secular funeral.

What do others think, and how do you handle requests for non-Christian symbolism in funerals?

He wrote:

I have no problem with this. When conducting funerals for people with no connection with the church, I prefer to let the person's life story be prominent, with accent on those aspects which give insight into God's kingdom (something I seek to draw out in reflection). And in the end, whether christian or non, I will commit the person into the gracious hands of God, and will proclaim the christian hope for all whose trust is in Christ.

One might give pause to wonder why the family chose a christian minister to conduct the funeral in the first place...

A more simple response, perhaps, is this: I am uncomfortable with the artificial dualism implicit in your approach....

~~~

In response to

After all, the symbol is one part of a rich tapestry of their life, and it speaks to the congregation. God might be looking at other things...

Nathan replied:

Part of the problem that we've got here is that the modern church in a society with a strong death-taboo has so seriously truncated the rites which surround death, that we have trouble doing justice to anything.

Traditionally, the rites for the death of a Christian had several parts spread over a few days, and the different parts had different foci. The basic pattern looked as follows:

The Prayers at the time of death (if possible)

The Vigil, which focusses on lament and solidarity with the bereaved

The Funeral which, in the face of death, is a celebration of Christ's resurrection victory

The Committal, which commits the body to the elements and expresses hope for the day of resurrection

The Wake, which is a celebration of the person's life and a sharing of the stories and memories

The rise of the secular funeral industry saw most of these rites collapsed into one time-constrained event, with a focus on commemorating the life of the deceased person. This model has become so dominant, that most church funerals (especially in church's that don't have a prayer book to preserve the memory of our own traditions) now simply employ the model and assumptions of a secular funeral and add prayers and hymns.

Apart from the fact that such a rite does not allow us to adequately celebrate the stories of our faith, it also causes numerous pastoral problems. Often we pastors find ourselves having to choose between providing for adequate expression of our grief and lament, and proclaiming and celebrating the resurrection in the face of death. How could an event of less than an hour ever be expected to do justice to both of those in ways which will really provide signposts for the people who are making the journey from devastation to hope?

We will be far better served if we can reeducate our people so that they expect and can enter into a progression of rites that give space and guidance for the full range of emotions and proclamations that comprise the Christian response to the death of one of Christ's faithful ones.

And to get back to our opening question, we will have less problem with issues like whether you can have a flag on the coffin at the funeral of a Christian. The answer will be an easy no, because the funeral is not about the life of the person, it is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ into which this person has been immersed in baptism and is now being even more fully immersed in death. The funeral would therefore be expected to downplay the individuality of the person, because the whole point is that in Christ we all come before God on exactly the same footing, utterly dependent on the grace of God. In Christ there is no Australian or gentile, Collingwood supporter or Carlton supporter, police officer or war hero; all depart this life and come before Christ on the basis of one identity alone, as disciples of Christ.

The Vigil invites a greater level of focus on the individuality of the deceased person, as we lament the loss of them, but the real place for celebrating the individual life of the person is at the Wake. This is where the eulogising belongs, and where the flags and uniforms and medals and footy scarves belong. Here they function to symbolise the different aspects of the person's story as we celebrate the life that has ended and the place that their memories will play in our ongoing life. But in the funeral itself, such symbols confuse the story of Christ and make it look as though we think that being a war hero or a police officer or whatever it is is part of what assures us that they will be raised with Christ in glory.

However, I readily concede that as long as our people's expectations of funerals is shaped by our society's norms instead of the counter-cultural norms of the Christian community, then we will be under pressure to try to do everything in an hour and to subordinate our celebration of the gospel in which the person placed their hope to a eulogising of "the rich tapestry of their life".

~~~

The original poster came back with:

The family chose the church and minister because their father had been an active member of that church for decades. In the light of this, the question is not: why choose that church or minister, but rather: why did [the pastor] choose to act in a way that would be too easily seen to reinforce a popular view that churches love to wallow in their own irrelevance.

Nathan's response:

When is it "wallowing in irrelevance" and when is it "claiming our distinctiveness"?

One of the dangers of a quest for relevance is that we end up becoming so relevant to the aspirations of modern society that the gospel can no longer be seen to be saying anything distinctive about our living and our dying. The church can become very "relevant" by simply fulfilling the role that society allocates to it, but it will lose its integrity if it does. To use a computer metaphor, society is very happy for Christianity to be an add-on module to our lives, but not for it to overwrite the operating system of our lives. Society is happy for us to baptise their aspirations and run programs to entertain their children, but as soon as we start asking questions about the values, allegiances and symbols that they build their lives around, we have overstepped our socially-prescribed role. And since crucifying us is no longer fashionable, the easiest way to bludgeon us back into submission when we overstep is to denigrate us as "wallowing in irrelevance".

If we are to proclaim that this Christian is now standing before God clothed in nothing but the righteousness of Christ, it is pretty undermining if they are lying before us clothed in a national flag or some other symbol that speaks of an entirely different allegiance. A flag draped on a coffin is a very very powerful symbol. Place it there in a context where you are trying to proclaim the absolute centrality of Christ and our identity in Christ, and it will powerfully undermine your message and assert the centrality of something else. I have no objection to the RSL conducting their rites. I'm even happy to let them do so in the church building. I don't care whether they go before or after the Christian funeral. But when we just put all the rites into the blender in the name of relevance, it always seems to be the primacy of our allegiance to Christ that seems to get reduced to just another aspect of the rich tapestry of our lives.

If that is wallowing in irrelevance, I reckon I'll keep wallowing.

~~~

Nathan Nettleton wrote:

The rise of the secular funeral industry saw most of these rites collapsed into one time-constrained event, with a focus on commemorating the life of the deceased person. This model has become so dominant, that most church funerals (especially in church's that don't have a prayer book to preserve the memory of our own traditions) now simply employ the model and assumptions of a secular funeral and add prayers and hymns.

Another responded:

Cause and effect? Why the rise of the secular funeral industry? Perhaps the church was becoming too detached from the realities of the people of the time? Would the secular industry have risen with such force if the church had recognised the voice of the people?

And if we go back further, hasn't it always been the pattern of the church to adopt secular realities and impregnate them with gospel meaning? I can think of Christmas, Easter...

Nathan:

Apart from the fact that such a rite does not allow us to adequately celebrate the stories of our faith, it also causes numerous pastoral problems. Often we pastors find ourselves having to choose between providing for adequate expression of our grief and lament, and proclaiming and celebrating the resurrection in the face of death. How could an event of less than an hour ever be expected to do justice to both of those in ways which will really provide signposts for the people who are making the journey from devastation to hope?

Other:

I'm with you in the articulation of this struggle Nathan, but not the solution. Sure we look back to the past to gain some insight into the reason the rites were there in the first place (indicative of itself how the rite has come to take prime of place over its purpose), but we need to creatively reinvent them for expression in our time. On the other hand, I'm not that certain that we don't have a place for adequately celebrating the stories of our faith: surely it is the prime time to celebrate the present story in the person's life?

Nathan:

We will be far better served if we can reeducate our people so that they expect and can enter into a progression of rites that give space and guidance for the full range of emotions and proclamations that comprise the Christian response to the death of one of Christ's faithful ones.

Other:

So they can match OUR expectations of what a person should do in death? Isn't the placing of an Australian flag a rite and a symbol which allows people to enter emotional space?

Nathan:

And to get back to our opening question, we will have less problem with issues like whether you can have a flag on the coffin at the funeral of a Christian. The answer will be an easy no, because the funeral is not about the life of the person, it is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ into which this person has been immersed in baptism and is now being even more fully immersed in death. The funeral would therefore be expected to downplay the individuality of the person, because the whole point is that in Christ we all come before God on exactly the same footing, utterly dependent on the grace of God. In Christ there is no Australian or gentile, Collingwood supporter or Carlton supporter, police officer or war hero; all depart this life and come before Christ on the basis of one identity alone, as disciples of Christ.

Other:

Again, I differ here, Nathan. The funeral IS about the life of the person AND about how it points to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Old and New Testaments are full of the stories of people because they are the vehicles by which faith is passed on from generation to generation. In Christ our individual distinctiveness is present, but subsumed under the banner of Christ. While I appreciate the theological perspective that we are all equal before Christ, we are not all the same. How we carry these two important aspects is part of the challenge of the funeral service.

Nathan:

The Vigil invites a greater level of focus on the individuality of the deceased person, as we lament the loss of them, but the real place for celebrating the individual life of the person is at the Wake. This is where the eulogising belongs, and where the flags and uniforms and medals and footy scarves belong. Here they function to symbolise the different aspects of the person's story as we celebrate the life that has ended and the place that their memories will play in our ongoing life. But in the funeral itself, such symbols confuse the story of Christ and make it look as though we think that being a war hero or a police officer or whatever it is is part of what assures us that they will be raised with Christ in glory.

Other:

In the past, this neatly packaged distinctive worked well - at least for a time, but it clearly doesn't today. So the question may not be 'how do we bring them back?' but more 'how do we create the space for all of these aspects?', and how do we ensure the distinctive call of the gospel is found.

Nathan:

However, I readily concede that as long as our people's expectations of funerals is shaped by our society's norms instead of the counter-cultural norms of the Christian community, then we will be under pressure to try to do everything in an hour and to subordinate our celebration of the gospel in which the person placed their hope to a eulogising of "the rich tapestry of their life".

Other:

It seems to me that we can claim the higher ground, and watch the march to funeral celebrants (and marriage celebrants) continue, or we can recognise the opportunity to engage with people at an important time of their life, and sow seeds for the kingdom. In other words, we need to see funerals as somewhat of a mission opportunity (although I rankle a little at the exploitational implications of such language) to demonstrate the love and grace of God for people who would otherwise not hear it in such a context.

After all, is the funeral service "ours"?

~~~

And another:

Nathan, you will note that I said to be seen as wallowing. If there was any sense of accusation, it echoes comments I have picked up frequently through our involvement with long-term unemployed people through our church's Creative Living community ministries, via regular conversations I have through sports chaplaincy in the local footy club and at the Warrnambool and Simpson speedways, and through conducting hundreds of funerals on call with various funeral directors.

I apppreciate the way you've listed and defined the components of prayers, vigil, funeral, committal and wake. Yet I'm sure that only the immediate family and close friends would be or could be involved in all five of these elements.

The traditions you espouse are alas more aligned to a village setting within a (gasp) Christendom than in the more scattered, mobile and secularised society we live in today.

We no longer have the luxury of time to focus primarily on liturgies which - while carrying industrial-strength quantities of depth, reassurance, mystery, wonder and significance for those of us within the loop - are often seen as self-indulgent and exclusive (or irrelevant) by the very people who need to see and respond to God's grace.

I am so thankful to be pastoring in a community that's small enough for me to regularly build on contacts and conversations through funerals and weddings for rock-solid Christians and for those I refer to as spiritually homeless.

That said, while making no claims to be infallible in my funeral involvement, could I simply plead for us to take ourselves less seriously and approach our funeral involvement with the desire to glorify God, to honour the deceased and to offer comfort and clarity to the bereaved.

~~~

Nathan again:

This is one of the rare ones where the cause and effect lines are pretty clear. The secular funeral industry arose when the demands of public sanitation and health saw the relocation of grave yards out of the church grounds and usually outside the town. Once you had an industry that had taken the preparation of the body out of the hands of the family, and the transporting and burial of the body out of the hands (and grounds) of the churches, the shift in the public perceptions of who set and maintained the norms of funeral practice was underway.

In Christ our individual distinctiveness is present, but subsumed under the banner of Christ.

Nathan:

Yes, and that's about as good a summary as you could ever get for why a national flag should not be the most prominent symbol in the funeral of a Christian. How can you proclaim that the person's individual distinctiveness (which includes their nationality and their national service) is subsumed under the banner of Christ, when the most obvious visual statement in the room is saying that this person's Christian identity is subsumed under the banner of the nation?

Other:

It seems to me that we can claim the higher ground, and watch the march to funeral celebrants (and marriage celebrants) continue, or we can recognise the opportunity to engage with people at an important time of their life, and sow seeds for the kingdom.

Nathan:

I think you are missing the point that I am only claiming the higher ground here for the funeral of an active Christian. If I am conducting the funeral of someone who did not claim that their allegiance to Jesus Christ was the primary definition of their identity, then I am not going to argue for the use of Christian symbols in their funeral. People will march off to funeral celebrants when they want a non-Christian funeral, and why shouldn't they. I am happy to do minimally religious weddings or funerals whenever I am asked, and I never try to force my Christian perspective onto someone else's ceremony. But when we are talking about rites for members of our congregations, that is a different matter. Then it is our job to lead and teach and prepare our people.

After all, is the funeral service "ours"?

Nathan:

Well, if it is a funeral for a member of our church, then yes it is "ours". We are followers of one who called us to put our allegiance to him ahead of even our allegiance to our families. If we are first and foremost members of the family of God and the body of Christ, then surely it is the body of Christ whose norms and practices determine the nature of the rites to be observed. If I die tomorrow, I don't want people expecting that my wife and daughter should be able to work out how the funeral rites should be conducted (let alone my parents!). I hope that the rest of the Church will gather around them and provide uncompromisingly Christian rites which will both honour God and tenderly carry my wife and daughter (and the rest of the congregation) in their journey from grief to hope.

Again, I am only digging my heels in over funerals for those who belong to the body of Christ. When I am simply a ritual-presider-for-hire, the funeral is not the church's and I see my task as being to sensitively shape and conduct a rite which will say the sort of things the principal mourners (usually the family) want to say, and which will provide them with comfort, support and a sense of being respected and cared for in their grief. I've done some of them with absolutely no religious references at all, and in some cases my doing so began a chain of connections that eventually led to conversions and baptisms.

But when someone commits themselves to Christ and his body, then the banners under which they live and die are our business.

Other:

Not sure about your clear "cause and effect", Nathan, although I would agree that it provided a doorway.

I'll take your point about the differentiation between an active christian and others, but don't necessarily agree with the "ownership of the rite" stuff. It is a very institutional and hierarchical view of the community of faith, together with a very priestly view of the ministry, and of the person's place in the institutional context. In our present context a funeral service is the celebration of the christian faith in the context of a person's (many-facted) life. Each aspect ought to be represented in the context of the celebration, and (immediate) family members ought to have something of their own perspective in shaping the funeral service.

Many of the rites you refer to seem to have a Middle-Ages context at the earliest. I'm not sure that we need to raise one stage of history's celebrations over another, although I am not advocating that we ignore them altogether. For example, the use of incense in a funeral harkens back to an era when the smell of the body needed to be shrouded in something more beautiful. The practice is maintained but the meaning changed to mandate it.

We speak of the importance of incarnational ministry, yet at the time of death want to somehow deny that? Surely we can have both present, and demonstrate an important, even central aspect of the christian faith? Don't our parting words bring all the symbolism back to the central message of Christ? In fact, in a service where the flag is draped over the casket, it is removed before the burial... but then, so is the baptismal cloth, which tells us that all fades into nothing when we are buried, and only Christ is left.

~~~

And another:

I can sympathise with this position, Nathan, though I would be unable to divorce Jesus from the procedings, as I'm sure you would agree. However, I'm always happy to see religious references get the boot.

I would be interested to hear how each of you would handle the insistence of the family and/or the Freemasons of having a Masonic rite as part of the service. Again, you could look at the two cases of a person who was also a Christian and one who was not. This is not a rhetorical question; we have been in this position, as I'm sure have many of you.

And why don't we take it further - suppose they or their family were spiritualists, or in some other occult group, etc? Again, this is not a rhetorical question, but one we are all likely to face more in the future with the burgeoning of 'alternative spiritualities'.

We encountered it with an elderly lady whose husband had died. She was a member of the "I Am" cult, and refused to allow the body to be removed from the house for 3 days until "all the life had left his cells". At the hottest part of summer this so traumatised the family that some of them are still not speaking to each other, and some refused to attend their father's funeral. How then does one bring the love of Christ into the ceremony for the members who do come?

Masonry has certainly caused us some headaches, especially when the masonic involvement only became evident after planning for the funeral was complete. [My pastor-wife] was to take the service, but we decided that if masonic rites had to be included then we should get someone else to officiate at the funeral. She found a Uniting Church minister who was willing to take over. I slipped outside and interceded during the masonic ritual. While handling this as sensitively as we were able, we felt that the integrity of the Gospel and our identity as Christians had to override the wishes of the family in this case.

At the funeral of a Christian friend in his local church we were surprised to discover he had been a Grand Master. A Christian funeral was held with the masonic ritual at the end. Interestingly, a neighbouring dog barked loudly and disturbingly right through the masonic ritual. It was silent at all other times!

~~~

To this:

I'll take your point about the differentiation between an active christian and others, but don't necessarily agree with the "ownership of the rite" stuff. It is a very institutional and hierarchical view of the community of faith, together with a very priestly view of the ministry

Nathan responded:

I'm not saying that the rite is owned by the pastor, but by the congregation. The pastor has a leadership role within that, but as I suggested, the shaping of the congregation's expectations about funerals should be ongoing. When faced with an actual death in the congregation, we pastors can expect no more than what we have led our people to desire and expect.

Other:

Each aspect ought to be represented in the context of the celebration, and (immediate) family members ought to have something of their own perspective in shaping the funeral service.

Nathan:

In practice, I agree, and would always seek to give the family as much input as they wished. However, if it is to be a Christian funeral and the family are not Christians, then the "something of their own perspective" may be operating within narrower parameters than they expected. When there is a real clash of expectations and requirements, as with the question about masonic rites, I would be suggesting that there be two separate services.

Other:

Many of the rites you refer to seem to have a Middle-Ages context at the earliest. I'm not sure that we need to raise one stage of history's celebrations over another, although I am not advocating that we ignore them altogether.

Nathan:

I'm not seeking to elevate that particular set of rites. I was just trying to make the point that it was not the traditions of the Church that gave us the present pattern of trying to do everything in one 60 minute service with a focus on celebrating the life of the deceased. I was trying to show that the Church's heritage would point us towards something more multifaceted, with time and space for more things.

Other:

We speak of the importance of incarnational ministry, yet at the time of death want to somehow deny that? Surely we can have both present, and demonstrate an important, even central aspect of the christian faith?

Nathan:

I agree, and that's why I think we need to recover a pattern with a small series of rites, instead of just adopting the all-in-one secular funeral model with a few prayers added. Then we can have times to adequately celebrate the many gifts that this person brought to us and leave us with, and we can also have times where we face the fact that death is the great leveller and that at this point, all their achievements count for nothing and only Christ remains.

~~~

Nathan again:

In a way it seems quite ironic that we would have baptists defending the placing of a flag on the coffin in a Christian funeral. The idea of placing a flag seems to be a hang over from the state church assumptions that went with Anglicanism and the other state churches. In the Church of England, there is no problem draping a Union Jack over the coffin, because in the state church mentality, being a good Christian and being a good subject of the British crown are considered to be one and the same thing. The symbols of nationalism are assimilated into the faith and the two are equated. But isn't that precisely one of the things our Baptist forebears took their dissenting stand over?

Incidentally, the real issue in this case was not over the flag on the coffin at all. The issue over which the minister took his stand was whether he should be expected to conduct the RSL's rite. He was happy for the RSL to conduct its own rite, including a flag, after the Christian funeral, but the RSL's expectation was that he would conduct their rite for them, and that he would assimilate it within the Christian funeral service.

This suggests that what we are dealing with is precisely the state church mentality. There is an expectation that the church should fulfil its social prescribed role of baptising the aspirations, symbols, and rituals of the nation. [The Uniting Church pastor] doesn't seem to have even suggested that there is anything wrong with the RSL rite. He has just made the obvious point that the RSL rite is not one of the Christian rites that he was called and ordained to preside over, and so it should rightly be conducted by someone who belongs to the traditions from which the rite comes. In principle, this is the same as the point about why we would not assimilate a masonic rite into a Christian rite. Even if I thought being a freemason was compatible with being a Christian, it would still be the case that since I am not one, I can't be expected to conduct their rites for them.

But in an organisation like the RSL, where a state church mentality is dominant, the belief is that the church should unquestioningly baptise and assimilate all that they stand for. They therefore cannot tolerate the suggestion that a Christian minister might not regard presiding at RSL rites as part of his or her job.

I would have thought (naively hoped?!) that with our heritage of opposition to state church assumptions, we Baptists would have been jumping to [the Uniting Church pastor's] defence.

~~~

Another:

In all our analysis about the significance of symbols, sacred or secular, I feell we are missing a huge point, and that is the greater need for us to care for grieving families.

This applies whether we are dealing with total strangers, or with pillars of the church.

I believe that it's more than a little hypocritical to decry a flag that people have served under to secure the freedom which enables us to express our cute sanitised political points and barely relevant theological jargon. Especially if we then choose to overlay mediaeval symbols and drapes with an almost first-century significance.

Is this little more than the kind of sacerdotalism that Baptists would support even less?

~~~