Neil Darragh notes that while to bury the dead is a traditional work of mercy it nevertheless benefits those burying as well as the dead. 

“Bury the dead” seems odd among the seven traditional “corporal works of mercy” — feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, bury the dead — in the sense that it is not clear who the beneficiaries are. Those to whom mercy is shown clearly benefit from the other works. Who benefits from an act of burial? Does the dead body? Burial of a body is hygienic and so benefits those still living. Presumably those who do the burying are also better off for carrying out a virtuous act of respect. But in what way can the dead person be said to benefit from this act of mercy?

To “bury the dead” goes to the heart of what we are doing at Easter and what we think happens to us at death.

In Christian belief, it is not the physical act of burying a body that matters — whether that is in the earth, placed in a vault, buried at sea, or cremated. What matters is that we “bury” with respect. Hence the horror of bodies left to rot, bodies lost somewhere and never recovered, mass graves, and especially acts of desecration. Burying the dead displays an attitude and is most clearly expressed in our funeral rites.

Three Spiritualities of Death

Most of the Christian or Christian-backgrounded funerals in New Zealand are likely to express one or more of three spiritualities of death. We can see and hear these different spiritualities being enacted in most of the funerals we attend. Some funerals make a definite option for one or other, but many funerals combine two or three together depending on who is speaking or acting at the time and what formal ceremonial is being followed. Two of these spiritualities are traditional and one more modern.

Spirituality of Remembrance

The more “modern” attitude is non-committal, or ambiguous, about whether there is any personal continuity of the individual person after death. Nevertheless, it may express some other kind of continuity, such as the dead remaining in the memories of those who loved them, or more negatively, as still influencing the lives of those they have damaged, or as a dispersion into the larger forces of the cosmos.

In this case, funerals are focused on the bereaved who are left behind, rather than on the dead person whose reality is uncertain. The funerals focus on dealing with grief, bringing a sense of “closure”, and retaining memories. They can be desperately empty. But they may be also a “celebration of the person’s life” — though focused on the past rather than the present or future.

Such funerals may also have a public function. The memories of the dead person may be directed towards encouraging good attitudes and behaviour in the attenders (especially the young). Ordinary secular funerals are often like this. And Christian funerals can be like this when the dead person’s family, or the funeral celebrant, are uncertain about non-sensory realities and treat Christian stories of resurrection and life after death as important but mythical. It also serves as a lowest common denominator at mixed funerals where the funeral celebrants or speakers want to be “inclusive” of everyone there, including the agnostic.

Spirituality of Passing On

A more traditional attitude is belief in a disembodied soul that leaves the corruptible body after death and goes into another state of existence — “passes on”. The hope is that the dead person has gone on to a better life.

Funerals can celebrate the bodily life of a person but death can also be seen as a liberation, a merciful release from distress, if the dead person is ill or suffering. We can be sad that the person has gone, but the sadness is for us rather than for the dead person.

Many of the funeral rites of the Christian churches are like this. For example the prayer of commendation says: “Receive his/her soul and present him/her to God the most high”. These rites are not just about memory and celebration of the dead person’s bodily life but also pray for the future wellbeing and a commendation to God of the living soul of the dead person.

This spirituality can have its aberrations, the most common of which is an excessive focus on life after death which can belittle living life now.

Spirituality of Resurrection

The strongest Christian tradition however is centred on the resurrection of a transformed body. Death is a transformation of the whole person — body and soul. It is not simply the cessation of a human life, nor the release of a disembodied soul, nor the resuscitation of a corpse (as in the case of Lazarus — John 11:38-44). The funeral rites are not just about celebrating what has gone, or release, but about our accompaniment of a person through a difficult, perhaps painful, transition. From the point of view of the living, the stilled and disintegrating body is withdrawing all sensory contact with us.

A Christian death is not a movement into anything known. It is a surrender into the care of a benevolent Creator made with trust, but without knowledge of what it will be like. If we did not trust God very much before death it may take some time after the point of death for that surrender (“letting go”) to become a truth, rather than just a hope.

In this spirituality, our funeral rites will include celebrating the dead person’s life because it is a God-like life that enables death to be a surrender into God rather than just a closedown. The rites will also deal with the grief of the living. But primarily the rites are our last act of companionship and accompaniment of the person. In death “life is changed, not ended”. This central belief is founded on Christ who “embraced the pain of death and so passed into glory”. This is the path the disciple of Christ hopes to follow. This is the central Christian belief that is celebrated at Easter and which Christian funerals re-enact.

This kind of spirituality can have aberrations too. The desire to create faulty, even foolish images of what it is like after death, is almost overpowering — spirits with misty outlines of a body or visions of a paradise like an idealised life on earth.

At best, our imagination can help us to understand the nature of transition rather than what life is like after death. It is like a seed that dies in the ground and produces a new and different life, like the butterfly that emerges from the chrysalis, or like the child who lets herself fall from a height knowing she will be caught by someone she trusts.

Burying the dead is a respectful act of letting the dead go on a journey that we cannot possibly understand, or control, and where we have no idea of how long it might take. Our funeral rites are intended primarily to accompany and commend this person into that unimaginable Benevolence that has already made sense of living.

Published in Tui Motu InterIslands, Issue 203, April 2016.