Funerals are a glimpse of a culture that shares the communion of grief and works together to care for the most vulnerable of all its citizens, the dead.
If you haven't watched President Jimmy Carter's funeral, you should.
Perhaps it was PBS's minimalist livestreaming of the event that evoked the feeling of watching some weighty event that happened long ago or the crisp movements of the military guard. Regardless, the entire affair was a moving historical moment. While President Carter is a fine human deserving of all the aplomb and generous retrospective the ceremony and remarks at his funeral lavished upon him, the funeral itself highlights the deep importance of rites of separation in the project of human flourishing. Contrast Carter's funeral with those celebrated for "indigents" by a local Nashville group of clergy and laypeople, and you get a sense of the consequences for human culture of any funeral to honor the life and memory of the dead as well as to cultivate peace-full culture for the living.
Karina Elwood's review of who planned, prepared for and executed such an august occasion in Washington DC gives us a glimpse of the great care any funeral can offer the bereaved. In the case of President Carter, the bereaved is the United States in addition to Carter's family. Director of National Cathedral worship, The Rev. Canon Rosemarie Logan Duncan talks of the fine balance such a funeral must strike: “We want to make it personal as well, and to take care of [the family], because, again, they’re grieving in public... We’re also providing the space for the country to grieve.” A funeral of this magnitude is practiced twice annually at the National Cathedral. Members of the Cathedral's congregation saw to the brass tacks of the affair: Flower Guild, Altar Guild, Choristers and Directors, Clergy. Even the Sextons were likely laying down an extra layer of wax on the chancel platform, though their labor was not mentioned. The community of the US and Carter's family were certainly part of the funeral. However, the behind-the-scenes workers who saw to its manifestation are the real workers of the necessary magic required to lead a people from one mode of living--grieving--into another--metabolism of that grief into abundant living.
Now for a contrast. In 2021, a group of clergy formed a collaborative called Call the Name in Nashville Tennessee. Since then, a small group of lay and clergy representing different faith traditions and prioritizing none gather every Wednesday to pray over the bodies of those who, for whatever reason, did not leave sufficient resources to cover the cost of their burial expenses. The Indigent Burial Program of Metro Social Services makes these burials possible. Then you look at the excel list of those buried at this plot on the southwestern outskirts of town, and you see clearly that these are predominantly folks who have been "abandoned." The variety of reasons for abandonment are myriad. In death, however, this small, but mighty group weaves them back into the land of the living by calling out their name to the land of the dead, announcing their entry into the "the arms of God's mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light," as we say in the Episcopal Rite of Burial.
The measured announcement of each step taken by the members of the US military who carried Carter's casket down the Capital steps contrasts with the huddle of people standing around minivans that usher through the bodies of the poor or forgotten. The magnanimity of the US Army band's accompaniment of the casket to the National Cathedral echoes in the roadway noise of Briley Parkway that plays in the background of Call the Name's brief service. The many beautiful and moving tributes to Jimmy Carter--the President, the grandfather, the Christ-follower, the husband, the human--are summed up in the simplicity of the prayer Call the Name reads aloud to the earth and air as well as human and divine witnesses:
Introduction:
We gather today to remember the life of
_____________, our neighbor and resident of our city.
We come today to call out his/her name,
remembering him/her on behalf of all who knew and loved him/her.
This body we commit to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
May this be a place of quiet rest, free from pain and turmoil,
and may __________ be surrounded by love and light.
In the calling of his/her name, we who are here carry his/her presence
throughout our days until our own name is called.
Prayers:
(Click here for sample prayers)
Benediction:
We lift up today all who mourn the loss of _____________,
and wish for them comfort and peace.
May God’s perpetual life be found in this place,
And may______________’s name never be forgotten.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes: "For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, 'You are dust, and to dust you shall return.' All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia." (Book of Common Prayer, Rite of Burial II, p. 499)
Death is the great equalizer. As such, funerals are acts of equality-making as they recognize the humanity of the dead one and urge them to take their deserved and blessed rest among those who have gone on before. Funerals offer as much to those who remain.
Rites of passage are integral elements of the fabric of a society. While Carter's funeral fulfilled a hefty order, any funeral provides the structured space of a rite of passage ritual that tells us who and what and where we are at any given time in our life. Such rites are markers for the living, a way of measuring moments in a life at the very least, transforming a person from one thing to a wholly other creature, at most. For our dead, they affect a passage from this life into the next. For our living, they offer us entrée into the good work of cultivating gratitude and the rich work of culture building.
Anthropologist Arthur Van Gennep developed the notion of the three stages of the rite of passage in his 1909 book Rites de Passage. Simply put, these three stages are called "before, liminal and after." Within each of these stages, there are mini-rites. The "before" stages holds rites of separation. The "liminal stage" features rites of transition. Finally, the "after" stage involves rites of incorporation. Another anthropologist writing in the last quarter of the 20th century, Victor Turner, dwelled upon the middle stage, liminality.
The features of the liminal moment in a rite of passage, according to Van Gennep, requires adherence to a strictly prescribed set of actions and words that everyone involved knows (by way of training or by enculturation) and a master of ceremonies that leads the group through this stage. Turner expands the notion of the liminal period, explaining that after the rites of separation in the first stage, a person's identity becomes ambiguous, hazy, undefined. In a sense, a person enters a cocoon or chrysalis, their former identify dissolves and transmogrifying into something new and different, but perhaps not wholly separate from who they were before. Memories of the caterpillar can be seen in the butterfly's thorax and abdomen.
A funeral is a liminal moment, for both living and dead. However complicated, however simple, funerals usher the dead from the just-after-death rite of separation heralded by the cessation of metabolic functions of the body to the after-this-life rite of incorporation, of which we know nothing except by way of belief and faith.
A funeral is also a liminal moment for the bereaved and those who are present to witness. A funeral can be a ceremony of closure to the expectation of physical presence of a beloved as much as it can be the opening of the gates of grief and the evolution of worlds that can happen when we walk through these boundaries, showing up to grief and learning to what that hard human season can teach us.
Perhaps it is here that we most see the import of a funeral. Does the person who goes on before us without a funeral become stuck somehow, forever suspended between this life and next? I would answer no. What does get stuck is the momentum of open-heartedness, vulnerability and goodwill begun when death is present. Such momentum leads to peace-making, to recognition of human weakness and finitude, to wonder of beauty that emerges when nothing else matters, to the creative expressions ushering from the experience of being present to dying and death. Such is the making of human culture.
Now, does this happen after most funerals? No. We often squander this creative, world changing rite of passage by whistling past the graveyard, distracted ourselves with tasks or turning our attentions elsewhere other than attending our grief. But sometimes it does. I have seen it happen. As a priest I have helped it happen.
Political friends and enemies sat on the first three rows at President Carter's funeral. In a suspended moment of honoring a beloved dead one, seeds of peace and national flourishing may have been planted. At least, I like to think so. Attended by grand choirs, an array of altar attendants, and all the elegance of the nation's appointed sacred space affords, Carter was sent off well into his next best life, and our nation was reminded of its better self, the one that upholds the dignity of every human being, the one that strives for justice and peace.
Those who gather at the driveway that leads to the pauper's graveyard outside Nashville are accompanied by the backup beepers of backhoes and the occasional murmuration of starlings. The names of the dead--the poor and abandoned of the city--are read aloud, held in heart, their souls encouraged to find quiet rest apart from the challenge of the life that was dealt them. The times I have attended, I have felt a sense of repentance related to the inequities of our city, especially in education, housing and public transportation. Calling these names is not a charitable event; it is the cultivation of the hopeful effort to organize our city differently.
May we allow ourselves to be honored in a funeral, to be invited to move from this life to the next in whatever degree of formality. May we give the gift of this rite to our beloveds who will continue to walk through their days, so that they might forge a more peaceful, flourishing place to dwell until their bones are laid to rest. May the cultures that follow the opportunity funerals afford their communities ring with Alleluia.
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