An especially sad funeral

A friend’s family recently experienced the tragic and unexpected death of a baby. The funeral was today at an exurban evangelical megachurch. Weird beyond words and sadder than I could have imagined.

There were four large screens at the front of the auditorium. Before the service two screens were showing movies of sunsets while a pianist played selections from the Windham Hill catalog. The outer two screens were dark throughout. A large bare cross made of copper tubing and a small cross carved into the podium were the only visible signs that the auditorium was to be used mainly for Christian purposes.

After the dozens of family members were ushered in, the presider strode to center stage and read portions of Psalm 27 and Matthew 18 (“let the little children come to Me”). During the opening prayer, the pianist started playing chords in a familiar progression that I couldn’t quite place. After the prayer concluded, the pianist segued into Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” which he sang well.

The parents of the dead baby came to the podium next where the baby’s father read a touching letter to her. Understandably both of them cried quite a bit.

The pianist then sang “Amazing Grace”. The sermon was lengthy, but contemporary-casual. It was followed by a music video of “My Daughter’s Eyes” and then a reading of Psalm 23. The closing prayer didn’t have any musical accompaniment.

Of course this was a sad event. The death of an infant is a very sad time for all. For those who reject infant baptism, it’s sadder yet. But this funeral added unnecessary sadness throughout.

Jesus was mentioned only three times: once in the reading from Matthew (which wasn’t discussed at all during the sermon) and by “in Jesus’ name we pray” at the end of the two prayers. The sermon focused primarily on the inevitability of difficulties in earthly life and featured reading of scattered verses from the Pauline epistles and the minor prophets. Nothing approached mature theodicy. It still boggles my mind that a putatively Christian funeral would include only cursory mention of Our Lord. Changing just a few words here and there would have effectively changed this funeral to a completely secular one. Is that all the deeper that expressions of faith may be made in our depraved culture?

Probably because of the preacher’s rejection of infant baptism and semi-Pelagian outlook, there was no serious discussion of the baby’s fate – just a “now she’s your little angel”. Well at least that aspect of the preacher's theology was no worse than the rest of it.