Yea and Amen! If you get a lot of youngish children, call them forward and have a children’s address which allows them to ask the questions they want about death and dying, and gives the opportunity to proclaim their salvation through faith in Christ.

The first funeral I remember was for a neighbor, when I was maybe three or four years old. Attending a Lutheran school I had opportunity to attend funerals for not only my elderly relatives but my classmates’ parents, and even a classmate himself. (And I truly mean opportunity in terms of faith in the resurrection.) I think that key distinction is between “funeral” and “memorial service” – one is to glorify Christ and offer comfort and hope, the other is to edify the deceased and attempt to detract from the despair of death outside Christ.

Might cremation be desirable when the deceased has been disfigured by injury or disease?

McCain response: I’d say unless there is no possible way the body can be prepared for viewing, there is no good reason not to have a viewing. I do not believe cremation is the only alternative if a viewing is not possible. I’d still prefer to have the body there, in a closed casket if absolutely required.

I can understand your view, but I’m unsure if you are in favor of open casket only, or if closed casket funerals are contained in your definition of the body being present. Choosing an open casket may have ramifications you aren’t aware of. For example, I have a pathological fear of dead things, any dead thing, even mice. Seeing my grandmother in her open casket when I was 18 is branded on my mind forever, and has pushed out many of my memories of her alive. Do you think I would be wrong to refuse to attend a viewing in the future? Another example: we recently had a four month old baby in our family pass away. His mother decided to have a closed casket because she felt the sight of a tiny two-foot casket at the front of the church was sad enough without having everyone gawking at her dead baby. What are your thoughts on this? Both of these funerals were conducted with the full LCC Lutheran funeral liturgy, only one was open- and one was closed-casket.

McCain: I think an open casket and the viewing of the deceased is important, for the reasons Pastor Peters indicates in his blog site. Our times have “sanitized” and “sentimentalized” death. I can’t speak to what is “right” or “wrong” for you to do. But your personal phobias certainly do not, in my opinion, change the point of Pastor Petersen’s posts. I suspect we see fewer people with these problems if we did not try to push the reality of death as far from us as possible.

I don’t know – we had memorial services in the church for both of my parents,and Jesus was glorified, we received comfort and hope. We held a service at the cemetery for the interment as well. I didn’t feel it detracted at all that the bodies were not at the church. I wonder if it is a regional custom, because it’s fairly common in my church. A church service was held, liturgy and sermon, hymns were sung (the great “crying hymns”, as my cousin said). I found great comfort in it all. I asked the organist to play the Hallelujah chorus for the postlude – what better way to rejoice that a Christian is now Home, for which we give glory to God?

Poetry often crystallizes an important point. My wife and kids were initially offended by the following poem we read by the fire last night in our volume of The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America – at least when they first started hearing it. They wondered what that horrible poem was doing in the book. However, once I read the entire poem to them and explained the importance of coming to grips with death and the gruesome nature of it, they love the poem for the hope it ends with. It does no good to hide death from the eyes of anyone. Salvation’s sweetness lies in understanding the bitterness of death. Law and Gospel.

THE DEAD SISTER

“Oh, dearest grandpa, come and see
My little sister Jane;
She’s in the parlour fast asleep-
Why don’t she wake again?

“I’ve called her, but she will not hear-
She’s still as she can be;
she will not even turn her head,
To give one look at me.

“Is it because I was unkind,
That now she will not speak?
I would not give her what she asked,
Not let her kiss my cheek?

“But I am sorry for it now,
I’ll not do so again;
I’ve been to get my box of toys
I’ll give them all to Jane.

“Why was she placed in that cold room,
To sleep there all alone?
She has no other covering
But one sheet o’er her thrown.

“Poor little thing? she must be cold,
For chilly is the air,
Her crib has blankets soft and warm,
Why don’t they take her there?

“They’ve dressed her nicely all in white,
A cap is on her head;
It cannot hide the pretty curls
That round her neck are spread.

“Come see how beautiful she looks,
Although her lips are pale;
Her cheeks are white as mamma’s flowers-
The lily of the vale.

“You need not tread so softly now,
They say she’s freed from pain;
It made me very glad to hear
She’d ne’er be sick again.

“Oh! how I wish that she would wake
And come with me to play;
Papa this morning gave me leave
To stay from school to-day.

“Dear grandpa, come and wake her now,
For she has slept so long;
She’ll kiss your cheek and sing for you
Her pretty little song.”

“My Child,” the weeping grandpa said,
While sobs convulsed his breath,
“Your sister ne’er will wake again-
Her sleep is that of death.

“She’ll never join your sports, my boy,
Nor kiss grandpa again,
For God hath taken to himself
Our darling little Jane.

“It grieved us much with her to part,
But He knew what was best,
And called her to a brighter world-
A home where all are blest.

“For had she lived for many years,
Much grief she might have known,
But pain or sorrow cannot reach
The place where she hath gone.

“Come look upon her lovely form,
Which cold and senseless lies;
The soul that gave it life has fled;
It is the body dies!

“And when ’tis buried in the grave,
“Twill moulder into clay;
But God hath said ’twill rise again
Upon the judgment day.

“‘Tis then that those who loved in life,
Once more will meet again;
And we will see amid that throng
Our darling little Jane.

“Upon that day, the assembled world
Around their Judge will stand;
The dead will rise from earth and sea,
To hear their Lord’s command.

“He’ll say to those who loved him here,
Come dwell with me in light;
The wicked he will bid depart
For ever from his sight.

“Our darling Jane will then be found
Among that happy band,
Whose dwelling-place will ever be
In God’s own blessed land.

“Then let us love and serve him here,
That, when that day hath come,
With her we may be summoned too
To heaven’s bright, happy home!”

Is cremation wrong for Christians?

McCain: That is an ongoing debate among Christians and people of good intention and will can disagree. I think that no matter what we do with the dead bodies of our loved ones, everything depends on the attitude behind our practices. I have heard Christians saying, “Oh, the body doesn’t matter, so we can burn it up.” Now that is a horrible attitude, but one increasingly common. In fact, the body *does* matter and if it did not, our Lord would not have taken on human flesh to redeem us so that our bodies would be raised on the last days. On the other hand, if we are treating our Christian dead as if we have to preserve their bodies for as long as we can, as if this is somehow something that is of help and aid to them, that is problematic on the other side of the coin. I think much is involved in this question that goes to motive and “why are you cremating?” This is, of course, a separate issue from the point of this post. Even if a person chooses to be cremated, I think that it is important for there to be a time of viewing of the dead body of the loved one. Cremation can always take place afterward.

My father passed away in April. His body was cremated immediately. We held the service in the church with no body nor even ashes.

I don’t think any of us missed the body or the casket. We said our good-byes on this earth. We know the next time we will see him will be before the Lord’s throne. We have the hope of the resurrection (which the pastor preached quite powerfully). The death was not sanitized, but the message of conquering death was made clear.

We had a slide show of my father’s life. I made it myself. It went for three minutes with a hymn in the background. One thing that was made clear in the slide show was that my father, in many ways, had been dying for the last five years. He’d suffered through the amputation of both legs, my mother’s death, and the death of three of my brothers. He had a stroke the week before Easter. You could see him aging and weakening, but you could also see the hope of Jesus that he held fast.

I understand where the pastor is coming from. I agree with many of his arguments. But not all–and certainly not in all circumstances.