Posts tagged “Funerals”

Sermo Dei: The Funeral of Carol Mensing

Posted on August 23rd, 2012

The last time I visited Carol in her home, she remarked, “I’m not a feminist. I’m just bossy.” It’s a great line, and I suspect I’ll always remember it. She delivered it with a smile, a smile which she so often had. For most people, 36 years of widowhood, a stroke, partial paralysis, and a wheelchair would wipe away that smile. And that would be justified. But Carol was not like most people. She persevered, and more: she found joy that went far beyond her personal sufferings and obstacles. Joy in reading, joy in her home and the water, joy in food, joy in her friends, and especially joy in her family. She loved you all. And while she enjoyed the attention of handsome…

Categories: Sermons

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Baptism, Ordination, and Burial Liturgies: What Might Have Been

Posted on July 20th, 2011

A colleague recently shared with me a booklet with proposed liturgies for baptisms, ordinations, and funerals. It is pre-ILCW and supposedly is heavily influenced by Piepkorn’s work. It’s an interesting window into what might have been, and what our Agenda might have looked like had the LCMS taken a different path instead of ILCW, giving us LBW/LW, which legacy we are still saddled with in LSB, despite the many improvements of the sangria hymnal. The booklet is below; it appears to have been purchased from the CSL bookstore, but there’s no date or copyright information in it. Proposed Rites Baptism, Ordination, Burial

Categories: Liturgy

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The rite to burial

Posted on May 8th, 2011

1. Osama bin Laden was an evil man, of that I am reasonably confident. But then, so am I. 2. I think all people, no matter who they are, deserve a kind burial.3. My thinking about funerals has changed over the years, so that I am more willing to conduct a funeral for people outside the church, and more comfortable acknowledging uncertainty about the state of a particular person’s soul after death.4. I am not the Judge. Neither are you. These are preliminary reflections I wanted to articulate before pointing you here. Howard Portnow takes exception to bin Laden being granted an Islamic burial rite that included the following prayer: O Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those who are present among us…

Categories: Theology

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Gloria Lesser funeral sermon

Posted on January 3rd, 2011

“The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” This includes both the sins a person commits and the sins committed against a person. Our sister Gloria was a sinner. She confessed, and did not deny, but confessed that she was a sinner. She was also a person sinned against, probably more than most. Her deformity caused her to be unloved and ignored, and I think that made her sometimes bitter and resentful, but mostly frustrated. Almost everything for her was difficult and challenging. The world was a scary place for her. That caused her to retreat into herself and grow quiet. But the blood of Jesus has cleansed Gloria from all sin—the sins she committed, and those committed against her, when people did…

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Funeral sermon: Julie Dammann

Posted on November 19th, 2010

Obituary Texts: Job 19; 1 Corinthians 15; John 11 Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, friends of Julie, and especially Rolf, Monika, and Paula: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a horrible thing to lose a wife, a mother, a friend. Well-meaning and compassionate people may tell you it was God’s plan. But this is not, was never God’s plan. God is love, and God made humankind out of love in order to love our race, the crown of God’s good creation. Since the fall of our first parents, sin and death have entered into the world as corruption. Death is not natural, and it is not good, even when it may be a…

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Just a shell?

Posted on November 5th, 2010

Thomas Long’s wonderful Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral has a chapter on the disturbing trend of “memorial services” (without a body) displacing funeral services, even among Christians. Long cites Thomas Lynch, a funeral director, on the insidious “just a shell” theory of dead bodies. He remembers a time when an Episcopal deacon said something of this sort to the mother of a teenager, dead of leukemia, and promptly received a swift slap. “I’ll tell you when it’s ‘just a shell,’” she retorted. “For now and until I tell you otherwise, she’s my daughter.” Lynch goes on to say, So to suggest in the early going of grief that the dead body is “just” anything rings as tinny in its attempt to minimalize…

Categories: Theology

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Funerals are for the dead

Posted on August 24th, 2010

I disagree with the common saying, “Funerals are not for the dead, but for the living.” An important function of a funeral – a Christian one, at least – is the reverent disposition of the body. I think everyone deserves a funeral. God cares about the body, and we should too.

Categories: Theology

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Pour Mama down the Drain

Posted on July 10th, 2010

It’s the logical continuation of a society that allows cremation, but I’m hard-pressed to think of anything more horrid than this: Undertakers in Belgium plan to eschew traditional burials and cremations and start dissolving corpses instead. The move is intended to tackle a lack of burial space and environmental concerns as 573lbs of carbon dioxide are released by each cremated corpse. Environmental concerns? The worship of nature now trumps the care of our own dead. (The website Groovy Green calls it an “option for eco-friendly burial.”) Under the process, known as resomation, bodies are treated in a steel chamber with potassium hydroxide at high pressure and a temperature of 180c (350f). The raised pressure and temperature means the body reaches a similar end point…

Categories: Theology

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The Pastor’s Prayer before a Funeral

Posted on May 15th, 2010

O Lord, grant me a full awareness of the powerful reality of death. Help me in this hour to speak the right word concerning the pilgrimage of [NAME] and to bear witness to Your power over life and death, the severity of Your judgment, and the abundance of Your mercy in our crucified and risen Lord Jesus. Unite us with all those who have gone before us in the fellowship of faith, hope, and love. The world passes away; may Your kingdom come. Amen. -Pastoral Care Companion, p. xxii

Categories: Theology

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Thanksgiving Matins sermon

Posted on November 26th, 2009

God made man from the earth. Our very first father, Adam, was made from the clay, but he came alive when God breathed into Adam the breath of life. And not only was Adam made from the earth, he depended on the earth for his life. The food that he had to eat came from the trees that God had planted in the earth. Even after Adam fell into sin and death, he still got food from the earth. Only, now it was tough work. Dirty. Sweaty. Before man sinned, it was easy. But after Adam turned away from God, the earth grew thorns that pricked man’s hands, making them bleed, and weeds that choked plants. So every little bit of food that came…

Categories: Sermons

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