Wednesday, September 17, 2025

It is the 17th of September 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Alright- by popular demand, we are doing some more mailbag questions because they have been pouring in, and I thought Robert’s question dovetailed nicely with Gregg’s question about the Saints.  

Robert from Paducah, Kentucky… I had to look that one up… It’s quilt city! It’s the home of Dippin’ Dots (the blending of ice cream and technology), and he was wondering specifically about the claim that he heard at a funeral about the deceased “looking down” and wondered about the evolution (or “devolution”) of the Christian funeral.

2 things about the history and practice of Christian funerals to start us out: funerals are very rarely the place for you to begin with a “well, actually” type statement. People are going to grieve, and correction might not be appropriate. You’re right… They aren’t ‘up there’ except in a manner of speech, and I, too, cringe when I’m told something like “God needed another Angel” because Angels are angels and deceased people become resurrected people, not Angels. But I digress.

Secondly, the New Testament does not prescribe a funeral, and Old Testament examples might be helpful, but might not be.

The early church opposed cremation for theological reasons. In part because there were those who practiced this and then used the urns for worship. Others followed traditions that didn’t want remains kept near the living as they were “unclean”.  Others didn’t cremate for more cultural reasons- for the same reasons that some ancient cultures (and Jewish people) would not want to “desecrate” the dead body.

It wasn’t until the imperial age during and after Constantine that “Christian Cemeteries” became a thing, and then into the Middle Ages we can see a development of a funerary tradition that included bells and incense.

As the idea of purgatory developed, so too did the prayers “for” the dead to be added to any notion of prayers “with” the dead.

The Reformation- as with Constantine in the 300s- changes everything. The Reformation was kicked off with (and in some ways BY) the rejection of purgatory and the idea that anything might be needed by the living on behalf of the dead.

As with many aspects of the churches of the Reformation, you will see the Calvinist and Puritan brands strip as much away as possible from the Medieval Catholic rites, whereas the Lutherans and Anglicans navigated a middle way, with the ceremonies only changed where they were theologically deficient.

But modern funerals are even more a mix of superstition, early church practice, Medieval tinkering, Reformation streamlining, and then a healthy dose of Enlightenment and Victorian era concern about rationality, public health, and the medicalization of death.

The Mortuary and Hospital Industrial Complex took over, in many ways, for both the church and the home as places intimately connected to life and death. As public health concerns trumped theology, death was taken (often for good reasons) to sterilized places.

Many funerals are thus a kind of collection of centuries of varied traditions, and if you aren’t using a specific historical rubric from a church, you will get a hodgepodge. Which, I’d like to point out again, is fine. Funerals are for the mourning and, when done well, for their consolation in the Gospel.

We know this much, I think- there is a chasm between the living and the dead which is, from our human perspective, unbridgeable. They are out of time, and we are in time, and thus any speculation about their prayers for us or “looking down” is ultimately unknowable.

I forget who it was- a few years ago- someone wrote in mildly upset with a “celebration of life,” and I would tie that in with yesterday’s question about saints. We can look at saints as examples and celebrate them, insofar as they were. If a funeral becomes “hagiographical,” those who knew the deceased are usually the first to smell that something is off. And so a “celebration” should include that the person was baptized and confessed and died in faith- that kind of “celebration” can honor the dead but also point to the real reason we say that death has lost its sting.

As for modern euphemisms that might bother people, please try to remember that euphemisms for death are not only really common, they are also all over the Bible: “gathered to his people” and “going the way of all the earth” and “going to sleep” are all used and so we shouldn’t be overly offended if we hear those, even if we prefer the more straightforward “died”.

  

 The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary, and while there are some rough texts today, I’ve got a few verses from Psalm 94:

Blessed is the one you discipline, Lord,
    the one you teach from your law;

you grant them relief from days of trouble,

    till a pit is dug for the wicked.

For the Lord will not reject his people;

    he will never forsake his inheritance.

Judgment will again be founded on righteousness,

    and all the upright in heart will follow it.

Who will rise up for me against the wicked?

    Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?

Unless the Lord had given me help,

    I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.

When I said, “My foot is slipping,”

    your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.

When anxiety was great within me,

    your consolation brought me joy.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 17th of September 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who prefers the Polish euphemism for death- “to fall off one's bike.” he is  Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who enjoys the German euphemism for death: Die Radieschen von unten betrachten (to see the Radishes from below). I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.