In praise of memorial services

In truth, I don’t much care for memorial services. The purpose of them is to speak well of the dead; literally, to eulogise. Such events work well for the powerful, the famous and the righteous. “A man of rare ability and distinction, rightly honoured and celebrated, he ever directed our attention away from himself,” said the Dean of Westminster of Prince Phillip. Memorial services don’t require much religion either, which is part of their popularity in a secular age. They are sandwiches of hymns and readings and speeches — and songs can be easily substituted for hymns, poems for Bible passages.

So said Giles Fraser in a recent Unherd column.  I happen to profoundly disagree.  It is noticeable that while Cranmer's Burial Office - quite rightly - has a robust focus on grace in Christ and the hope of the resurrection through Christ, Anglican funeral sermons quickly recognised the need to pay tribute to the deceased.  Consider, for example, Jeremy Taylor's sermon at the funeral of the Lady Frances, Countess of Carbery.  After expounding the Christian hope of the life everlasting in the first half of the sermon, he turned to his second duty:

I Have now done with my Text, but yet am to make you another Sermon. I have told you the necessity and the state of death; it may be too largely for such a sad story; I shall therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life, which if you imitate and write after the copy, it will make, that death shall not be an evill, but a thing to be desired, and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune.

He continued with "a plain narrative of a life":

she had the art to secure her eternall interest, by turning her condition into duty, and expressing her duty in the greatest eminency of a virtuous, prudent and rare affection, that hath been known in any example ... As she was a rare wife: so she was an excellent Mother. For in so tender a constitution of spirit as hers was, and in so great a kindness towards her children, there hath seldome been seen a stricter and more curious care of their persons, their deportment, their nature, their disposition, their learning, and their customes ... But the religion of this excellent Lady was of another constitution; It took root downward in humility, and brought forth fruit upward in the substantiall graces of a Christian, in charity and justice, in chastity and modesty, in fair friendships and sweetnesse of society.

Now, perhaps it might be thought quoting from the funeral sermon of a 17th century aristocratic lady only proves the point made by Giles Fraser: "Such events work well for the powerful, the famous and the righteous".  The powerful and famous will always have their memorial services and their eulogies.  But so too should the churchwarden, the retired teacher, the former doctor, the choir member, the great-grandparent, the quiet and humble World War Two veteran.  If memorial services and eulogies are a privilege, the privilege should be extended, not abolished. And it is this which happens in funerals and memorial services in ordinary parish churches week by week.

Between "the powerful, the famous and the righteous" and the other category mentioned by Fraser - those "about whom no one has a good word to say. I have buried paedophiles. I have buried murderers. No one wanted to come to their service" - most of us are to be found, whose ordinary, unremarkable lives will end with funeral services attended by family, friends, and neighbours. Yes, at the end, when Cranmer's words from the Burial Office are read, we will claim no merits, plead "shut not thy merciful ears to our prayers", and rest "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life". 

But as the long Anglican tradition of funeral sermons recognizes, there will also be gratitude for grace and goodness of God seen - however disjointedly and opaquely - in the life that has now passed.  This understanding, it must be stressed, is deeply theological. In the General Thanksgiving, we offer solemn thanks for "our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life": so, no, a funeral service should not ignore that for which we give thanks throughout our lives.  In the Communion Office we affirm that being "in love and charity with our neighbours" is a good thing.  In praying for civic peace and communal well-being, we affirm that the virtues and actions which make for such peace and well-being are praiseworthy. And as Richard Hooker said, "wisdom hath diversely imparted her treasures unto the world ... her ways are of sundry kinds" (LEP II.1.4): the wisdom evident in the skill of the plasterer is to be celebrated alongside that of the English teacher; the wisdom seen in gardening is to be celebrated alongside that seen in the work of the writer of local history.

To say that such recollections and thanksgivings are evidence that "Memorial services don’t require much religion" is to propose a desiccated view of Christian religion, and certainly not - to quote John Hughes - a characteristically Anglican "sense of all creation being in God and God being in all creation, through Christ".  Or, as David Bentley Hart puts it in You Are Gods: 

One cannot contemplate a flower, watch a play, or pluck a strawberry from a punnet without being situated within an irrefrangible intentional continuum that extends all the way to God in his fullness.

It is this theological vision which should underpin memorial services, unveiling and gathering up in thanksgiving a life's participation in, and experience of, the abundant goodness of God.

This is also closely related to another theological difference with the critique Giles Fraser offers of memorial services:

But fundamentally, Christianity isn’t much interested in morality, it’s interested in love. 

To begin with, love takes on and is expressed through particular forms: marriage, parenthood, dutiful son/daughter, friendship, communal and public service, patriotism.  Love is not a disembodied, empty value.  Love is given expression in the outworking of a Christian moral vision of the human person and human relationships. This is what we see in the Catechism's answer to "What is thy duty towards thy Neighbour?".  

It is this moral vision - given in the Commandments, in the Summary of the Law, and in the apostolic expositions of the call to "walk in love" (note how Saint Paul gives concrete moral expression to this in Ephesians 5 and 6) - which moves us to recognise in the general confession at Mattins and Evensong that "we have offended against thy holy laws" and to then petition that "we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life". Fraser is correct: "without God, morality inevitably becomes a kind of cancel culture".  This, however, quite clearly does not mean that "Christianity isn't much interested in morality".  It is precisely because the Christian moral vision is a participation in God's goodness, light, and truth that we both confess day by day "We have erred, and strayed from thy ways lost sheep" and give thanks for "our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life".

Anglican practice at death holds together both truths.  Cranmer's funeral rite recognises that, in the face of death, our hope is in grace alone through Christ alone.  The traditional funeral sermon recognises that thanksgiving is to be offered for those signs, tokens, characteristics, and experiences of grace and goodness known over a lifetime, what the Prayer for the Church Militant terms "their good examples". It is the erroneous suggestion that "Christianity isn't much interested in morality" which blinds us to the latter. 

One last thing.  Fraser states that memorial services are popular in a secular age because they are religion-lite, "sandwiches of hymns and readings and speeches - and songs can be easily substituted for hymns, poems for Bible passages".  Are we really saying that all the richness of Scripture, of the liturgy, of hymnody cannot be presented by the Church in a way which meaningfully and evocatively gathers up gratitude for and recognition of those signs, tokens, characteristics, and experiences which were a reflection of and participation in God's goodness and truth in a life? If memorial services are religion-lite, it is because the Church has a theologically deficient vision, a failure to recognise - in the words of Alison Milbank and Arabella Milbank - "how the personal opens to the ecclesial, and how a life, lay or clerical, becomes exemplary and generative". Addressing the matter of preaching at the occasional offices and rites of passage, they continue:

This whole section is inflected by the theology of gift ... In contrast to much gift theory, we stress not only the originating gift of God but its call for response and being taken up as gift and giver in acts of reciprocal exchange.

There is indeed a deep and rich theological vision which can underpin memorial services and the memorial-like aspects incorporated into funeral sermons.  If, however, the Church can do no better than a self-fulfilling prophecy that memorial services are religion-lite, in which poems and pop songs can replace Scripture, liturgy, and hymns, are we really to be surprised that a secular culture is unmoved by the Church's ministry and witness at such times?