PARISH PRACTICE NICHOLAS HENSHALL


Invited on to sacred ground Z


It is becoming more common for parishes to involve parishioners in an accompanying role in funeral liturgies, and priests need to listen carefully to the wishes of the bereaved


oe Baranovsky died at the age of 31 – the mother of a young child and at the heart of a loving family. Yet planning her funeral was a remark-


able, even joyful experience. Friends and family developed with me


something that was both Christian liturgy and a profound personal statement of lament and hope. Zoe’s favourite colour was purple – so everyone wore purple. Zoe’s coffin was painted purple. For once I had no need to explain my choice of a purple stole, its liturgical significance radically transformed by the personal context. Every Christian community has extraor-


dinary experiences of funerals. In west Newcastle, more than half the funerals I took were of people under the age of 45. One of my first funerals at Derby Cathedral was of a local wayfarer who had frozen to death in the street outside. I have chanted an entire Requiem with only one mourner for company, and I have led the mourning for Brian Clough with 15,000 people in a football stadium. In Harrogate, I have had to stop a fist fight at a funeral; and I had the tragic experience of accompanying the police to tell a family that the headless body of their son had been found on the railway line. And, in between all that,


I’ve had almost every imagi- nable human encounter, human emotion, and glimpse of the mystery and compassion of God. People in grief come to the


Church needy and bleeding, certainly; they also come hes- itant and afraid. They wonder if


it is alright to ask for a


members of our congregations, we earn rather than assume our place. Where I live there is a genuine marketplace


for funeral ministry, with secular “funeral celebrants” on the books of all the funeral directors. Whatever else, they challenge us to think through what we are doing as Christian communities. I know from some 23 years’ ordained ministry – if we can but be attentive and discerning – there is a core priest-shaped ministry at funerals, perhaps especially for those way beyond the bounds of institutional faith. The staged rites have the power to take people across thresholds and to help them stand in a larger space where they can begin to grapple with their grief and maybe see that the God of whom we speak is present there. In a culture profoundly ill at ease with grieving we can, in our continuing care, help people recognise the length and the demands of the journey, and that tears may be our friends on the way. But I am the servant of the encounter,


TO DO


Christian funeral if they haven’t been to church for many years. But, they should find wisdom and resources to share – and, perhaps, an invitation (without presumption) to think about their own journey of faith. This is privileged access for us, and we need to see it that way when grieving people allow us to walk on their turf, on their sacred ground. We are there as interpreters of their deepest experience of pain and loss. But we go as guests invited. It is not our right or prerogative, but theirs. Even with regular


16 | THE TABLET | 24 September 2011


Build and train a lay bereavement-support group Seek out training and resources from the local hospice and community bereavement services Use the authorised rites creatively, especially the rich understanding in Catholic and Anglican liturgy of the rites as stages on a journey


never the master – adviser maybe, friend perhaps, someone the grandchildren know from school most likely. But they hold the ring. And unless I take that seriously, I will simply end up mouthing empty ecclesiastical platitudes to a congregation not expecting better. When I seek to control, it is


my agenda that emerges. Attending a funeral recently of someone I knew well and whose well-lived life had been full of fascinating detail and genuine service, I was appalled that during the homily the priest spoke exclusively about what she had done in church, ignoring her remarkable min- istry beyond the building.


Every pastor and every parish should know


that there is no such thing as a “standard” funeral. Although the words of the liturgy are nearly identical, the people are different. And that sets the agenda. Even the 20- minute slot at the crematorium can be both extraordinarily personal and a real act of worship that holds out the promise of Easter. The way in which our culture marks and memorialises the dying process and death is


changing continuously. It is becoming more common for parishes to involve parishioners in an accompanying role in funeral liturgies and some dioceses offer training programmes for this ministry. Local hospice and community bereavement services also provide training and resources to help lay people develop the skills they need to offer bereavement support or counselling. Even where the local priest, minister, or vicar is still seen as the appropriate officiant at the funeral rites, each new experience brings fresh challenges to pastoral practice and theological boundaries. We may not be comfortable with some of the requests people make; they may not suit our tastes or traditions; but we need to work with people to make unique contributions. Planning a teenager’s funeral some years ago, I was horrified at the family’s choice for the closing music – the Chris Rea classic “The Road to Hell”. Only under the guiding hand of the local head teacher could I bring myself to tolerate it. But crafted into the liturgy it became a genuine cry of lament into which words of hope could be spoken. This is all profoundly theological. If the


key characteristic of the God who invites us into his friendship is self-emptying love, then that is the nature of the love we are asked to live by, to demonstrate, and to share in pastoral ministry. That does not mean we simply have to take what people say. There is always room for clarification, suggestion, even (depending completely on the relationship we have worked hard at) for question and challenge. But there is clarity about where power lies – with the other person, and with their narrative and needs. Only if we are prepared in this way to walk beside others in the depth of their need will we earn the privilege of standing with them by the graveside of their child, their husband or their mother. And there we can speak a better word, a word of Gospel hope. It is only by finding ourselves often literally on the slightly uncomfortable marginal place at the end of someone else’s sofa with the telly still switched on, and the kids engrossed in a computer game, that we will begin doing our job.


■Nicholas Henshall is vicar of Christ Church, Harrogate.


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