That was an awful book, wasn’t it?  I still do not understand why the Tennessee Board of Education saw fit to make it required reading for 11th grade English.  I mean, I am sure the societal commentary was piercing and the style paved the way for a uniquely American genre of literature and all that jazz, but it just drones on and on and on.  And on.

That’s beside the point, though, and it marks the last attempt at humor for the rest of a post dedicated to a decidedly unhumorous topic:  Death.  It happens, we don’t want it to, now what are you going to do about it?

Well, for churches, the answer to that question is very important.  Generally, the church’s role is to provide comfort and counseling to the grieving friends and family of a lost loved one.  Usually that starts with a visit from the head pastor and (depending on the size of the church) might also involve a more specialized minister, a grief group, prayer teams, and of course, ordinary members of the congregation.

This past Monday, I had the unfortunate opportunity to observe the process of losing a treasured member of the congregation I am staying with.  She was a vital part of the church’s music group and clearly a source of joy and enthusiasm for anyone who came into contact with her.  She finally lost her fight with cancer, and it has hit the congregation hard.  Every time two or more members have been in the same room over the past few days, tears stream anew and intense hugs are shared by those present.  I feel bad because I cannot offer much in the healing process besides prayers, but perhaps I can at least use her death as a launching point to help us think more about how churches and individuals should respond to someone’s passing.

As for funeral services, my pastor told me, “The members of this church didn’t used to like it, but every funeral I do is a celebration of life – no matter what.”  Laughter is encouraged and healthy, from her point of view, and it is a part of remembering the life of a deceased individual as part of the healing process.  I like that.

The other thing I have noticed in the few days since her passing is that love is shared more openly throughout the church – hugs are quicker and stronger, as are the “I love you’s.”  Grief has a way of bringing people together (though it can certainly tear apart, too).  With such a small congregation of mostly elderly people, losing one member is losing a member of the family.  This death has revealed that the congregation is much more than a group of people who get together on Sundays to sing songs and shake hands – they are a caring, devoted family.

Personally, I think that is exactly what needs to happen after a death:  the community comes together to support one another, the pastor offers spiritual guidance but does not dominate the healing process, and everyone moves forward together.

A friend of mine, however, recently shared with me a story about a radically different approach to death.  Apparently in other countries, people do not accept death at face value.  When someone dies, their first reaction is not to grieve, but to call up the town pray-ers and ask God to resurrect the dead person.

My first reaction is to lament how sad it is that these people cannot accept death – they are just delaying the inevitable.  Not to mention how much it must shake your faith every time you ask God to bring someone back to life and it doesn’t work.  Of course, they claim that it often DOES work, but I’ll leave that debate for another time.

Then, I remember that there was this guy named Jesus that people claim used to resurrect dead people.  (Post?-)Modern Western Christians, though, tend to either attribute these unbelievable miracle to the parts of the Bible to human embellishment or figure that God isn’t in the miracle business anymore – at least not to that extreme.

But then I had this thought:  didn’t Jesus usually say something like “your faith has healed you” when he performed miracles?  Meaning, people were only resurrected because their loved ones had no doubt that he could do it.  Hypothetically, then, one might argue that the reason not many miracles are happening is because that kind of pure belief in a given outcome is wholly absent from our society.

Careful, though.  That’s a dangerous road to go down.  The reverse implication, then, is that the reason people are not healed is because they “didn’t believe enough” or “didn’t try hard enough.”  It’s the foundational problem with The Secret movement – what happens when you don’t get the outcome you expected?

So, what do you think?  Is consolation the best we can do in the face of death, or does the church body have other options?