Comfort for Hire

I did a graveside funeral service this morning for someone I did not know, someone who wasn't a member of this congregation. I had received a call from the funeral home. They wanted a Presbyterian pastor, and I fit the bill. The whole thing had a bit of a mercenary feel to is, and perhaps I was trying to assuage such feelings when I insisted the funeral home return the fee they had already charged the family for my honorarium. (I think I offended the funeral home employee when I said I would confirm with the family that this fee had been refunded.)

When I got to the funeral home prior to the service (they are located on the cemetery grounds), I found a room being prepared for a reception to follow the graveside service. After meeting the family I looked around to fill the time until we went to the graveside. And so I discovered that catered receptions were one of the services this funeral home offers to families. The "tastefully" displayed advertising for this service was hard to miss. And the layout of the facility was clearly designed to allow this on a large or small scale.

I had never seen this before, which may reveal nothing more than the lack of such practices in Raleigh, NC or Columbus, OH, the only places I served as a pastor before coming to the DC area. Regardless, I found myself wondering about a funeral home providing a "service" that in another time or place would have come from a faith community or from friends and neighbors.

Perhaps it is simply the very diverse and transient nature of this area, but my heart ached just a bit at the situation. Was there no community to provide comfort and care to this family? Could they only find such care for hire?

I don't know, and I wasn't about to ask the family. But it got me wondering about the level of community and care people experience in the typical church congregation. I've known many people who have felt very cared for at a time of loss, but often they have a long association with that church. What about folks who are new to a congregation? And I suspect this question may have different dynamics based on the size of the congregation.

There was a time when people were less transient, and it was more likely that multiple generations would live and die in the same congregation. In such circumstances, communities of caring could emerge in a fairly organic way. Over long years of association and friendships, a natural community emerged. Such communities can develop regardless of faith. It has happened in union halls and Elks Clubs right along with congregations. But surely church communities are supposed to be more than a natural development that grows from long association.

I wonder if this isn't a big issue for churches in an age when so many people are transient and have so little in the way of roots. If the church is to be the body of Christ, then it seems to me that people should encounter something of Christ's self-giving love the moment they arrive, and not after they are well enough known.

One of the things I love about baptism is the notion of it being an adoption ceremony. In baptism we are joined to Christ, and so we become his sisters and brothers, meaning, of course, that we become sisters and brothers to all those other siblings of Jesus in the church.

So if we are in some sense family, how are we to insure that people experience the sort of love and care one might expect from a reasonably functional family? And without having to pay for it.