Funerals

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Ligon Duncan
We do want the service to be personal, but we want to remember we’re here to worship God. We’re not here to worship the person. We’re not here to talk about how good the person was. We’re here to talk about how good his God was, or her God was. Though, I’ve wanted to be warm, I’ve wanted to be personal, I’ve wanted to comfort the family members, the major thing that I could do is I could preach the Word and proclaim the gospel. There’s nothing more comforting than that.

Matt Smethurst
Welcome back, friends to this episode of the everyday pastor from the gospel Coalition on the nuts and bolts of ministry. My name is Matt Smethurst, and I’m LIG Duncan. LIG, you at one point said that an older minister told you, you know, young league walk to a wedding but run to a funeral. What did he mean by

Ligon Duncan
that? Yeah, credit where credit is due. That was Dr Bill Harper, one of my wonderful ruling elders at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson. I’m a 35 year old punk the new the new minister at the church, and Bill, early on, knew that I was having to make some decisions about weddings and funerals. What are you going to concentrate on? And he just said to me, little advice, walk to a wedding. Run to a funeral, meaning weddings are important, and we talked about that. I really think they are, but funerals are super important in the sense that you can get into the lives of your people in and around a funeral in ways that is very hard to do anywhere else in the Christian ministry, and I did find that there was an openness, a vulnerability, a need that I encountered with my people ministering to them in the case of a death, and then in preparing for a funeral that I didn’t get many other times in their lives, Bill was just urging me to make a priority of funerals, and I was already inclined that way. Matt, I was born an old man. I mean, my my mother has always said I was, I was a little old man. And so I like older people. I get along well with older people, even when I was 35 I liked older people. Is

Matt Smethurst
that why we struggle together?

Ligon Duncan
You are so patient with me, Matt, we get along just fine. But so I have never had difficulty relating to old and I don’t know why I’m talking about older people, because it’s not just older people that die. People of all sorts of ages die, and you have to be prepared for that. But I will say that so many almost no funerals will have no older people to deal with, like, even if you have a child die, there will be parents and grandparents. And so I was already inclined to invest in the importance of funerals. And I just I got to the point where I loved preaching funeral sermons. My elders would say, you know, I think that may be the best thing that you do is preach funeral messages. And I did try to vary the messages. There’s a lot of material in the Bible to preach from about death. You mentioned

Matt Smethurst
with weddings, you would try to do a new message each time. Same with funerals. Or, yeah,

Ligon Duncan
I did. I really, I tried to do that, and oftentimes it was based off of wheat. I always tried to get hold if it was a Christian, I like to get hold of his or her Bible. And sometimes Christians will tell you what their favorite verses are and what verses they would like to have read at their funeral. And so sometimes it would be based off of their own Bibles and things you could tell what had meant. Oh, absolutely. They would have marginal notes. They would have things underlined. They would have cards stuck in the scriptures. It won’t surprise you that John 14 is a passage that came up often that was important to people. Psalm 23 was a passage that came up often. Psalm 103 and talking about God being merciful and gracious and patient in his loving kindness. Romans eight came up often. Passages of comfort from Revelation. There are certain scriptures that stand out to people. I had standard scripture readings that I would use, but I would vary those if there were significant things in that person’s Bible, in their requests, in their life, that was important to their children. Like I had, one man read the book of Proverbs to his children growing up every day, they would just constantly read through the Proverbs one chapter a day and and so not surprising, his kids, there were some passages from the Proverbs that they wanted, because if funerals are for the living, right, I mean, the person whose Bible I’m looking at is not going to be there to hear me preach the sermon, but his. Her children, or her children who knew the passages that were important to them, knew those and cared about them in that minister to them. So I was, I was always trying to think about the family and the people that were going to be there in the service while honoring the requests and the and the experiences in the particular scripture passages that the that the deceased loved didn’t want it to feel like a cookie cutter, or that we were just sort of going through the motions and moving on. I would go to passages like revelation, 1413, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. And I’ve, I’ve preached many a funeral message about that, but I would always try to personalize it for Psalm 116, precious and

Matt Smethurst
the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Yeah, yeah. Would you in the funeral service have a time for family members to share? Because, of course, I think we want to preach the gospel and we want to give Minister biblical comfort, but I think also it’s a wise practice to let people share remembrances in

Ligon Duncan
that day again, there’s, you know, we’ve talked about the need for a wedding policy. I think you need to think about a funeral policy, about what you are and what you aren’t going to do. And we, here’s how we tried to think about that. One is we were a capital city church. We were just a few blocks from the state capitol. We were in the middle of the major medical center for the state our funerals were almost always at 11 o’clock or one o’clock on weekdays. We had to work around a day school schedule. We had a day school on the property, and we had to move everybody’s parking to the other side of the parking lot in order to provide space for people to park for the funeral. So there’s some logistical challenges because of that, we wanted to keep funeral services to about 45 minutes, because most people were gonna take their lunch hour and come from the hospital or come from the Capitol or come from their law offices, or wherever trying to get down there go that. So we tried to keep funerals fairly short so that they could do that. And it’s harder to do that when you when you have family members participate in that service, it tends to elongate. Now, you know, in the Methodist tradition, there is actually a place in the funeral liturgy for there to be testimonies from the family and even from members of the congregation. And I have seen that done in small churches beautifully. Now. I’ve also seen horrible train wrecks when you’ll get an emotional family member that really just can’t quite hold it together, and the remembrances that are shared, some can sometimes get inappropriate. And you know, people nervously laugh at funerals because it’s it’s it’s a sobering thing, and and people don’t know how to handle it sometime. And so I’ve seen train wrecks in testimonies and in, you know, eulogies, things of that nature. We did all of that at the graveside. So if there was a family member that was going to give testimony, or something like that. We did that at the graveside service, which usually our people attended graveside services pretty well. I mean, we it was not uncommon to have 150 250 people at a graveside service, but you always have the family and close friends there, and that provided a less pressurized situation for people to share personal remembrances that makes sense, but I I’m not in principle against doing that. One of the things that I love, that my elders emphasize to me, is we do want the service to be personal, but we want to remember we’re here to worship God. We’re not here to worship the person. We’re not here to talk about how good the person was. We’re here to talk about how good his God was or her God was. And so my elders gave me so much freedom to make sure that it was God centered, that we were focused on the gospel, that we were focused on Jesus Christ. And I often had congregation members that would leave me instructions, do not talk about me in the sermon, talk about Jesus, talk about the gospel. And so though I wanted to be warm, I wanted to be personal, I wanted to comfort the family members, I knew the major thing that I could do is I could preach the Word and proclaim the gospel. There’s nothing more comforting than that, and there would also be a scripture reading, or there were and again, very often the Scripture again, because we had a multi staff church. I had a lot of associate pastors that helped me. One of the best was Brewster ware. And Brewster knew everybody so well, he would often. Do the scripture readings and lead in with, you know, the last time that I talked with Joe, before he passed away, he was talking about this passage, and I want to read this to you. And he just had this wonderful way of quickly personalizing what we were about to read in ways that got unbelievers even to listen to what we were doing, because, as we talked about with weddings, you’re going to have a lot of unbelievers at funerals, their friends, their colleagues, who want to pay their respects, and it’s a gospel opportunity. And so I wanted to make sure that we were being clear with our gospel proclamation and what our hope was. Our hope was not that this was a good person. Our hope was in the gospel of Jesus Christ, my my personal assistant for many years, was an amazing woman named Missy re Brazil. And Missy had a battle with cancer and passed away. And she was beloved. She was revered and beloved. And so I could, I could start off by saying some things that I genuinely felt and that everybody in the congregation would have genuinely felt about Missy re, and then say, but Missy re would not want me to talk about her today. She would want me to talk about her savior. And it just that gave me permission to go into the preaching of the Word and of the gospel. And I loved that. And with

Matt Smethurst
a church member whose death is fast approaching, it’s it’s a good thing to try to talk to them about what they want their funeral to be about. And if they’re a mature Christian, they’re going to say that very thing. But to give them the chance to think about, you know what, what hymns have meant most to you, if possible, invite their input, so that there can be that kind of personal touch, and people can know this isn’t just random scripture readings and songs, but this, this is what the Lord used to sustain this saint who is now in his presence. Let’s just address the reality of preaching funerals for unbelievers. It’s been wisely said you shouldn’t preach them into heaven or preach them into hell in that moment, but rather, preach the gospel as you’re staring out on people who are still, you know, you said earlier, funerals are for the living. You’re looking out on people who are thinking about mortality, who are mortal themselves and and what an opportunity to, not so much talk about this unbelievers current state, but rather to use it as an opportunity to talk about the reality of death and judgment And hell and the need for gospel grace, any wisdom you would commend about preaching an unbelievers funeral

Ligon Duncan
Well, I think in general, we preach three different kinds of funeral sermons. One is for a person that we know was resting and trusting in Christ alone for salvation, and that there is a as close as we may have been to that person, there is a special kind of joy as a pastor, being able to preach that brother or sister home, knowing where their hope was. That’s my favorite kind of funeral. The other kind is where you know you’re preaching the funeral of an unbeliever. I think the hardest is when you just don’t know. And I would say to my congregation very frequently from the pulpit, don’t. Don’t make me preach that funeral sermon at your funeral. Don’t. Don’t make me not know. That’s good. Just live a life. So I know that this the greatest gift that you could give to me, your pastor, when it comes time for me to preach that message. So we’re all going to have to preach those kinds of funerals, and then we’re going to have to preach them in different kinds of settings. So you’re going to preach the funeral of a believer who died, from the world’s standpoint, way too young. You know, there’s going to be somebody who dies at 38 of glioblastoma, and has four beautiful kids, and leaves her husband a widower. And you know, and everybody they know she loves the Lord. They know that she was a wonderful wife and had a great marriage, and their breath is just taken away. And they’re wondering, Lord, why do you take the good ones? Why do you, you know, why don’t people like that die at 38 and they’re really horrible people that live to be 100 you know. So, Psalm 73 you know, yeah. And so you have that kind of a situation, then you have the death of a good saint, you know, that’s live of Christian life well, and died at 92 and you kind of can’t be, you know, that you’re not stunned by that, that he died in his sleep at 92 but then you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have funerals for unbelievers in hard circumstances. So you may have an unbeliever who is a child with the congregation, you know, who died of a drug overdose. I. Or who took his own life, and in those moments, there is a tremendous temptation and even pressure to preach that person into heaven. And I just think gospel, Bible believing ministers have to really resist that temptation to assure where there is no assurance to be given. And I think in that context, that’s, that’s where you entrust yourself to the providence of God. You point the family to the comforts of God, and then you just, you just get up on your hind legs and preach the gospel and just say that you know the loss of this life reminds us all that life is short and eternity is long, and we too will meet our maker, and we need to know who our trust is, and then just launch in to the gospel. The gospel will be comforting to a believing family. You can do the personal work that needs to be done with a family with them, personally and privately, without having to process that in front of everyone, I would say the only other tricky thing that I would mention, and it can happen, by the way, even with in a believing, in a funeral of a believer, a funeral of unbeliever, a pastor should not assume that all families are grieving in the same way and for the same reason. I have seen pastors who approach comfort the family simply as comfort for their sense of the loss of that person, when in fact, very often, I realize that there have been tremendous tensions between that person and those who were living on the pew. You might have had a father who was who was distant or or actually not even in relation to his children. You can’t just look down to them from the pulpit and say, I know that the Lord will come. I know that you’re missing your dad. They there may be a sense in which they’re missing their dad, but there may be a tremendous sense of unresolved conflict. They

Matt Smethurst
might be grieving the dad he wasn’t right. God,

Ligon Duncan
I never had the dad that I wanted to have. And so again, that’s why knowing your people, that’s where Dr Harper’s words to me run to a funeral, knowing my people helped me know how to comfort them. Sometimes I would send them messages that I knew that the rest of the congregation wouldn’t understand. And I could look at them and I could say, I know what you’ve gone through the last two weeks, because we will have processed it together. And I want you to know the Lord will comfort you. And they knew, and I knew, and I didn’t have to tell anybody else there. And so I tried to lock eyes when I could. I didn’t want to just turn into a blubbering idiot up there. I wanted to be able to help people, but there were times when I wanted to lock eyes and just make sure that they knew, that I knew, and that there was comfort for them even in that so I think that’s one thing that I want to bear in mind at a funeral. Not every kind of suffering is the same. Not every kind of response to the loss of a loved one is the same. Sometimes there’s been unresolved stuff for years, and they realize I’m never going to be able to get that resolved in this life. And so the more aware of you, of that you because sometimes people in the congregation do know it, and if you just act like it’s not there, they’re kind of sitting back there saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s

Matt Smethurst
counterproductive, right point, right? Yeah, would you encourage young pastors and small church pastors to make themselves available in the community, to do funerals for people who don’t have a church?

Ligon Duncan
We often, let me say, our funeral home, our major funeral homes in the area would often call upon our pastors, and we considered it a privilege. We were a larger church. We had pastors on staff, and oftentimes you had people that didn’t have pastors, or they didn’t have connections to a church, and we just knew it was going to be a great gospel opportunity. We loved that opportunity, with first responders in the area. Oftentimes you’d have firemen or policemen or others, and there would be no pastor in the family. So that that, yes, we tried to do that as much as we could.

Matt Smethurst
It’s a very sensitive time where, obviously, people, someone has just died. Actually, it can. It can surface family conflict. So whether it’s decisions about how the service is run, or the timing of things, or whether to bury or to cremate, I mean, I’m sure we could just come up with a lot of scenarios, any advice for helping navigate through. Potential disputes.

Ligon Duncan
Well, one thing is just this, and I’ve ministered in the southeastern United States for most of my life, and I have found that my culture often deals with death through denial. Now I don’t think that’s entirely unique to the southeastern United States. I’m sure there are plenty of people that deal with death by denial. But, I mean, I’ve seen it in extreme forms, to the point that families would not want to tell children that that a parent was dead, you know, and I would go, they’re going to know that their dad is dead. So one of the things that I had as an agenda of mine, in my culture, was to pop the balloon, or to change the metaphor, to name the elephant in the room, just so that we were all on the same page that we were not going to deal with this by denial. We’re going to face the reality that death is because, you know, very often, even it’s more common today, and I’m not, I’m not getting ready to get on my high horse and preach against something, but I just saw this the other day. A minister in our congregation in our denomination had passed away, and they they are announcing the celebration of life. Well, that’s a new that’s a new language that’s being applied to funerals. And nothing wrong with that in and of itself, unless we’re not wanting to face the reality of the finality of death, you know, if we’re if we’re renaming the thing, so that we don’t have to think about the fact, yeah, this person is dead, his his body is in the ground, and his soul is either with God, or his soul is apart from God. And I don’t want anything, the name that we name it, or the way that we talk about it, to detract from that reality, we try to anesthetize ourselves from death. And I think one thing a minister can do is make sure that death is real to everyone there, because you have a room full of people there for a funeral who are trying to do anything but think about death. And so we want to show we can think about death realistically with hope. As Christians, we’re the only, we’re the only ones who can. Matt, yeah, that’s and I just that’s an agenda of mine, just because I’ve seen a lot, even in Christian families of you know, not wanting to face up to the fact that this is the end, this is the end of this life.

Matt Smethurst
Yeah, pastors, if you’re not aware of Matt McCullough’s book, remember death. It’s true, and his follow up book, remember heaven. Both of those are really worth reading, reading with your fellow leaders and commending to your people. And in remember death, Matt talks about the euphemization of death and how, yeah, we use language that is not used, you know, it’s well intentioned. It’s not wrong in and of itself. But even, you know, Celebration of Life memorial service at funeral homes, they’ll often refer to the to the corpse, you know, or to the dead person as the departed, right? We just want to make sure that we’re we. We remind our people, we are the people who can stare death in the face, because we have a Savior who stared it in the face, who obeyed to the point of death, even death on a cross, who went into into the grave and emerged the out the other side, so that we could have hope that he we follow him as he has, as he blazed that trail, just as we kind of wrap up this episode. LIG, how should well, just out of curiosity, this just pop popped into mine. What hymns Do you want sung at your

Ligon Duncan
funeral? Oh, I’ve thought about this a lot, and even, you know, I’ll turn 65 this year, and I thought I need to go ahead and get this written down, because who knows how sweet the name of Jesus sounds. And I believers here the John Newton him that I think that’s one that I would want to have sung. Greatest thy faithfulness is another. Our congregation loved to sing that song at at funerals, and it allows you to sing the gospel. It allows you to praise God in time of loss. Those are a couple that I thought of, and I’m still working on my final list, because I love singing at funerals, and my congregation sang well at funerals and visitors and unbelievers that were present. I think we’re always struck by the way that the congregation Sung. I mentioned Missy Rui Brazil, the lat we walked out on for all the saints. And you know, it was all like I’m from. In fact, I’m sure I didn’t get through that hymn on on the way out, because that is another hymn that we have often sung at funeral. So I do your counsel earlier on. Think about what hymns you want sung at your funeral. That’s a really good word to pastors to their people, you know, think about what you want sung at your funeral.

Matt Smethurst
Yeah, absolutely. The. Sands of Time are sinking. That’s one of my absolute favorites. Just the way that those verses build on one another until at the end you’re singing, you know, I stand upon his merit, yeah, I know no other stand, yeah, not even where glory dwells in Emanuel’s land. You know, the bride eyes has not

Ligon Duncan
her garment, but her dear bridegroom’s face.

Matt Smethurst
You will not gaze at glory, but on the king of grace. So yeah, it’s just just beautiful. And we need to remind our people week in and week out, that one day we will read deaths obituary, one day we will all get to attend the One funeral we actually want to attend, and that’s the burial of sin and death of death, all because of our resurrected KING Amen. Friends, we hope this episode of the everyday pastor has been encouraging to you as you’ve thought about how to prepare for and conduct funerals. Please like and subscribe and leave a review so we can help other pastors learn about this podcast and find fresh joy in the work of ministry.