Notes from a modern funeral in a post modern time.

My duty today was to go to a funeral. One of the pro photographer’s friends was burying his mother. I turned up to support her, and she turned up to support the grieving family. This woman was born in 1929, married in 1959 (at thirty) after supporting her widowed mother for at least a decade, and had three children. I lost count of the grandchildren. Her husband of 55 years was leading the mourners. Her faithful, and his faithful service to their church and their children was celebrated.

This woman was born just before the depression, lived through the war, and saw the new century in. She had confidence, even though times were hard: and even though she married later than most in the 1950s she had the courage and integrity to raise her children.

The one son left in Dunedin is faithful in the same church where she worshipped for at least thirty years.

The moderns had confidence. Regardless of what we say, and how we boast, and the proxy measures we have used to say we are doing better than the generations before us, we are not. For the true measure is two-fold:

• We have the courage to wed, and stay wed
• We have the courage to produce the next generation

As a child, I was one of four: (all adopted). Our family was around the average size: I knew plenty of families of five or six. Two was considered a small family. Now that is consdiered ideal: three is seen as big, and one or no children is common.

The big problem was that modernism has a cost. While everybody was rushing as fast as they could to see how much good they do for people, they forgot the people they were taking from. This is hardly a new thing. It’s SO easy to do good with other people’s money. I

The big thing about the Blue model is that the people who believe in it probably don’t actually have to experience it. they relate to studies like this one where it’s filled with surveys filled with answers from people who want to make the survey sound good. What so many of the those studies don’t understand is that when taking those surveys, there is a built in bias because people want to make the survey a success. So they give the answers they think will make the survey look good. Which ends in results like this.

The real answer to whether people actually believe in the future is how many kids they are having. Which is not what is happening. Globally, in just about every nation, birthrates are down. It’s become so serious a problem that in Denmark, supposedly the happiest place on earth short of Disneyland, according to the study above, the birthrate is 1.75 and they are making ads trying to get families to make babies.

What I find — again and again — is that the liturgical reforms that the moderns pushed through — generally in the 1960s ad 1970s — lack depth.

And poetry. I reserve particular scorn for the NZ prayer-book, which was written by people with a tin ear, when poets and believers were living. The free churches have never had the book of common prayer, true, but their old book of order had depth if not poetry.

It was to the Anglicans we turned for the depth and prose that sung even when times were bleak. This is the start of the 1549 rite for the dead.

WE brought nothyng into this worlde, neyther may we carye any thyng out of this worlde. The Lord geveth, and the Lord taketh awaie. Even as it pleaseth the Lorde, so cummeth thynges to passe: blessed be the name of the Lorde.

MAN that is borne of a woman, hath but a shorte tyme to lyve, and is full of miserye : he cummeth up and is cut downe lyke a floure; he flyeth as it were a shadowe, and never continueth in one staye.

In the myddest of lyfe we be in death, of whom may we seke for succour but of thee, o Lorde, whiche for our synnes justly art moved? yet o Lord God moste holy, o Lord moste mighty, o holy and moste merciful saviour, delyver us not into the bitter paines of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secretes of our hartes : shutte not up thy mercyfull iyes to our praiers : But spare us, Lord most holy, o God moste mighty, o holy and mercifull saviour, thou moste worthy judge eternal, suffre us not at our last houre for any paines of death to fal from the.

I COMMENDE thy soule to God the father almighty, and thy body to the grounde, earth to earth, asshes to asshes, dust to dust, in sure and certayne hope of resurreccion to eternall lyfe, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall chaunge our vile body, that it may be lyke to his glorious body, accordyng to the myghtie workyng wherby he is hable to subdue all thynges to himselfe.

I HEARDE a voyce from heaven saying, unto me: Wryte, blessed are the dead whiche dye in the Lorde. Even so sayeth the spirite, that they rest from theyr labours.

WE commende into thy handes of mercy (moste mercifull father) the soule of this our brother departed, N. And his body we commit to the earth, besechyng thyne infinite goodnesse, to geve us grace to lyve in thy feare and love, and to dye in thy favoure: that when the judgmente shall come which thou haste commytted to thy welbeloved sonne, both this our brother, and we, may be found acceptable in thy sight, and receive that blessing, whiche thy welbeloved sonne shall then pronounce to all that love and feare thee, saying: Come ye blessed children of my Father: Receyve the kingdome prepared for you before the beginning of the worlde. Graunt this, mercifull father, for the honour of Jesu Christe our onely savior, mediator, and advocate. Amen.

ALMIGHTIE God, we geve thee hertie thankes for this thy servaunte, whom thou haste delyvered from the miseries of this wretched world, from the body of death and all temptacion. And, as we trust, hast brought his soule whiche he committed into thy holye handes, into sure consolacion and reste: Graunte, we beseche thee, that at the daye of judgement his soule and all the soules of thy electe, departed out of this lyfe, may with us and we with them, fully receive thy promisses, and be made perfite altogether thorow [through] the glorious resurreccion of thy sonne Jesus Christ our Lorde.

O LORDE, with whome dooe lyve the spirites of them that be dead: and in whome the soules of them that bee elected, after they be delivered from the burden of the fleshe, be in joy and felicitie: Graunte unto us thy servaunte, that the sinnes whiche he committed in this world be not imputed unto him, but that he, escaping the gates of hell and paynes of eternall derkenesse: may ever dwel in the region of highte, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the place where is no wepyng, sorowe, nor heavinesse: and when that dredeful day of the generall resurreccion shall come, make him to ryse also with the just and righteous, and receive this bodie agayn to glory, then made pure and incorruptible, set him on the right hand of thy sonne Jesus Christ, emong thy holy and elect, that then he may heare with them these most swete and coumfortable wordes: Come to me ye blessed of my father, possesse the kingdome whiche hath bene prepared for you from the beginning of the worlde: Graunte thys we beseche thee, o mercifull father: through Jesus Christe our mediatour and redemer. Amen.

That is the service in the time of Shakespeare: a time of plague, wars, insurrections and risk at work, in childbirth, at the hearth and at the forge. It was a time where death came violently and with a randomness that we cannot fathom now: where a woman would bear five or ten babes to have two or three live to adulthood, and many a man would bury two or three wives due to the risks that giving such births entailed.

Where the low-risk way to live was to be celibate, and either join a nunnery or monastery or be a fellow of a university, where the married were banned until the late Victorian era. It appears more blunt and bleak than the modern one.

But it does not make it simple, or talk down to us. The priestess (the NZ Anglicans have fallen greatly) talked about life as akin to an egg and death as hatching into a new and better life of love in God. That may be true, but the idea that we shall rest from our labours with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob until the general resurrection where we shall arise in glory to possess the kingdoms prepared for us is richer by far.

If you are a liturgical church (and the Anglicans are) then use the liturgy. I come from the non liturgical and reformed branch… but I note this: the woman who we mourned wanted two songs, and one of them was from the evensong. It is liturgical, it has depth, it has beauty. Somehow, in the modern era, we lost our senses and our ability to make our words sing. May it return.