The Liturgy of Death

I recently picked up Voices of Lament , and edited volume by Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, which is 30 reflections, poems, and liturgies by Women of Colour, reflecting on and inspired by Psalm 37. I haven't read much of it yet, but I was very struck by a comment in the introduction, which cites Jeremiah 9:17-18 and the summons for the wailing women to come, 'the most skillful of them'. Robinson makes the point that yes indeed, these are professional mourners. And they are skilled. Why? Because they "had learned and practiced the spiritual discipline of mourning."

Photo by Rhodi Lopez on Unsplash

Professional mourners appear a few times in the New Testament. My mind goes first to Matthew 5:21-42, where Jesus is coming to the house of Jairus, whose daughter has died. I think our (my) natural cultural reading is to find the idea of professional mourners laughable, strange, and inauthentic. Partly this is because of a very modern or post-modern idea of authenticity, in which acts and words are only genuine if they spring spontaneously from the person's true inner self in the moment. It's why, in other contexts, the influence of Pentecostalism and Charismatic theologies finds liturgy to be inauthentic, and only spontaneous prayer to be genuine, which is undergirded by an (erroneous) belief that the Spirit only works in spontaneity.

But if we recast our view here, we get a better understanding of what's going on I think. Professional mourners' job is to help us mourn, and their skill is in teaching us to do it well. But what does "doing it well" mean?

My friend Charles recently pointed me to the book Accompany Them with Singing : The Christian Funeral by Thomas G. Long. In that book, among other things, he makes the case that the primary work of a Christian funeral is not to cater to the psychological process of grieving. Not that it's not meant to do that, but that the more we do and have tailored funerals to psychological processes, the more we have watered down and de-theologise the richer possibilities of funerals and funeral liturgy.

Precisely the power of liturgy in its formula, its ritual, its sameness, is to ingrain in us patterns. Patterns of being, as well as becoming. Long draws on the analogy of driving the same trip over and over, so that the journey is so automatic, he often cannot recall the drive. Then he writes:

... my body knows the way home.

That is what we want in a Christian funeral. We do this again and again, every time someone dies, because it is important for our bodies to know the way home. (p19)

And so what we are doing in liturgy is replaying on a grander scale the drama of redemption and the movement of life to death to life, to ingrain in us the pattern. Long goes on in his book to treat the theology, and thus the practice, of Christian Funerals.

I am learning a lot on my conversations recently with my two friends, Ryan and Charles. Ryan points us to this recent article, The Dance of Devotion by Kelsey Osgood. Osgood explores the idea of self-denial, and how we applaud it when its aimed at some external good (e.g. becoming an Olympic athlete), but are appalled by it when it seems pointless, i.e. religious devotion for the sake of devotion.

We might call this the triumph of the therapeutic - our society has come up with all kinds of ways to treat our human condition, our modern problems. Self-care in 1000 varieties. How to cope. How to train the brain to better habits. How to manage social media better. How to self-medicate. Some of which are good and wholesome and fine. All of which are ultimately attempts to use technique to solve our underlying problem, as Ellul would say. And Alan Noble would echo.

Liturgy, good liturgy, is not meant to be mere secular technique, aimed at helping us cope. It ought to help us cope, but it ought to also help us not cope. To come face to face with the overwhelming immensity of life's unbearableness in a world in which shalom has been broken, we are out of the Garden, and our best attempts to fix ourselves and each other end up breaking us more and hurting the ones we love. Christian liturgy ought to tell a better story than self-help. It ought to draw us back into the story of redemption, to our only comfort in life and death, which is not a drug that will help us through the sleepless night, nor a cure that will make the clouds part in the morning and the sun shine on our day, but a deep truth that will help us abide, and a profound hope that will one day carry us home, to a world in which shalom is restored.