Being Resurrection Communities

Challenged by the last evil, the church is where we our fundamental beliefs are restored.

By Rob Moll

In his monumental book covering the history of death in Western culture, French historian Philippe Aries paints a picture of how a strong community responded to the death of one of its members. It is a picture of a wound that is treated and healed. It is an example of a culture that understood death and knew what to do in response to this “last evil,” as the apostle Paul called it.

Throughout the Western world, and for nearly a thousand years, Aries writes, “the death of a man still solemnly altered the space and time of … the entire community.” The family of the deceased prepared the bedroom and as the community was altered with the sound of the church bell tolling, “the house filled with grave and whispering neighbors, relatives, and friends.”

Those closest to the deceased visited the home, but the whole community filed into the church for the funeral services. “After the long line of people had expressed their sympathy to the family, a slow procession, saluted by passersby, accompanied the coffin to the cemetery.” Following another service at the grave, intended to lay the deceased at a final resting place, there to await resurrection upon Christ’s return, the grieving family was still not finished with the mourning ritual. “The period of mourning was filled with visits: visits of the family to the cemetery and visits of relatives and friends to the family.”

This was an intentional process, one that typically led to a specific, intentional end—the reintegration of the grieving back into a healthy, meaningful life as part of a community. “The danger with grief at bereavement,” writes J.I. Packer, “is that, having surrendered to it, as willy-nilly at first we must, we
should never get beyond it.

This process of visitation, public mourning, followed by more visitation had its intended effect. “Little by little, life returned to normal,” Aries writes. The community, stricken by death, “reacted collectively, starting with the immediate family and extending to a wider circle of relatives and acquaintances.” This process worked well because death was a public event. Kings and queens died publicly, as celebrities do still today. But for all people, death “was a public event that moved, literally and figuratively, society as a whole. It was not only an individual who was disappearing, but society itself that had been wounded and that had to be healed.”

It was a response to death that was common to the Western world, based upon the Christian faith, and that was effective in helping the bereaved move from the initial shock and devastation of a loss and toward a healing posture of strength amid suffering. Unfortunately, our culture has lost this common response to death. Today, we want to hurry along the period of mourning, and we expect life to return to normal. We’re quick to provide a meal following the funeral, but our kind thoughts lapse too quickly, while the bereaved are forced into a solitary grief. They must find their own way out.

Recovering Tradition
The traditional Christian funeral can provide a structure for how Christians can think about responding to a death in the community. The traditional services involved a wake or
visitation at the home, a procession to the church for a service, and a graveside service laying the deceased to rest. This can provide a structure for the church community’s long-term response to a member’s death.

Visitation. The wake or visitation allows the community to tangibly respond, consoling and offering food or assistance in the days ahead. This can be essential for both the bereaved and for the rest of the community. It forces the grieving to remain part of the community at a time when the greatest temptation is to withdraw. It can be a challenge to overcome awkwardness, to know what to say to the grieving, but it is essential for families in mourning to know that they are not alone.

In this initial gathering, a grieving community is rejoined together and begins to heal. All grieving communities need to simply be together in the initial days following a death. The community has been injured, and this stitching back together is an important beginning to the healing process. The church has rallied together, and this is the most important first step in responding to a death.

Funeral. The funeral service provides a different sort of healing. While the visitation brought the church community together, the funeral directs the expression of grief toward common remembrance and worship. The swirling emotions of grief and heartbreak are given shape as the community ties its sorrow into the larger gospel story. The church’s response is that, yes, this life is full of sorrow, sometimes incredibly painful. But we do have hope in the redemption of our suffering through Jesus Christ whose death on the cross defeated death. Again, this can be difficult. While suffering, who wants to spout out explanations that may not feel very meaningful?

Who wants to say that God will make it all alright when we feel nothing more than the loss of a loved one? Of course, it is exactly this time at which it is most important to express our core beliefs. Over time, as the community continues to heal, it is this conviction that the church relies on and that is reconfirmed as its deepest belief: Christ has overcome death and through him God will make all things right.

Graveside: The graveside service is often left off the list of mourning events following a death. But traditionally, this service has been an essential part of the community’s journey with the deceased to the final resting place. In some of the oldest cemeteries in the US, gravestones typically have an inscription reading something like, “Here I lie, awaiting the resurrection.”

Of course, the “sleeping” Christian is not waiting but in the present experience of life with God. As Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43, NIV). But while the deceased Christian enters into eternal life, the grieving community can express its experience of waiting. The grieving community has the opportunity to reflect the many ways in which we yearn for resurrection, for God to put all things right.

And this hope in resurrection is what makes Christian mourning unique. Christians ought to mourn. When a love one dies, a part of us does too. We will continue to miss the presence of a good friend or beloved family member. And yet we Christians have hope.

Death is the last evil, according to the apostle Paul. However he also says in Romans chapter six, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:5, NIV). As churches and wider Christian communities respond to the death of a beloved member, we have been given the tools to recover: faith in what Christ has done, hope in the promise of resurrection, and love as experienced by those around us who offer comfort and assistance.

Rob Moll is director of publications and author of The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come (InterVarsity Press, 2010).