Top Funeral Songs 2018: 1. My Way

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and here is number 1 (no surprise to those of us who frequent crematoria) - 'My Way' (Frank Sinatra)

Why it's good for a funeral:

It celebrates individuality.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

The sentiment in the song is the direct opposite of Christian discipleship.  Without (presumably) intending to be,  it is about as deeply offensive to Christian faith as it is possible to be.

Line that's most like a Christian song:

And now, the end is near

Line that's least like a Christian song:

For what is a man, what he has got, if not himself then he has naught.

A Quote from (singer) Frank Sinatra:

'Alcohol may be a man's worst enemy but the Bible says, "Love your enemy"'.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

Because if I did it my way it was a waste of a whole life.

A better Christian alternative:

This is a hymn we sang (yes, I was there) at the memorial Service for Martin Lloyd-Jones in 1981.  If you can spare the time, absorb it and reflect on how opposite it is to the sentiments of Sinatra's mistakenly much-loved croon.

Here is a recording of that singing:

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 2. Time to say Good-bye (orig. Con te partiro)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 2 - 'Time to say Good-bye' (Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman) . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

It IS 'Time to say Good-bye'.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

Its English translation from the Italian is widely regarded as gobbledygook [see example below].

Line that's most like a Christian song:

Then I know you are here with me

Line that's least like a Christian song:

Mm. A lot to choose from, including lines shouldn't be in any song.  How about
'over seas that I know now, no, they don't exist any more.'

A Quote from (singer) Sarah Brightman:

'We are all made up of stars and all of us are billions of years old.  That's what I believe, at least.'

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

Because even if I did want a secular song I'd want one that I'd understood.

A better Christian alternative:

'When we all get to heaven
What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus,
We'll sing and shout the victory!'

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 3. Over the Rainbow (Eva Cassidy)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 3 - 'Over the Rainbow' (Eva Cassidy) . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

It has wistful longing, reflecting feelings associated with Eva Cassidy's own early death from cancer and, more recently, Ariana Grande's response tribute to the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017.  Though originally it hails from Judy Garland and The Wizard of Oz.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It rather misses the point of a rainbow which is SomeONE over it rather than someWHERE.

Line that's most like a Christian song:

What a wonderful world.

Line that's least like a Christian song:

Someday I wish upon a star.

A Quote from (singer) Ariana Grande's grandpa:

"You know what you should end with? 'Over the Rainbow'" [so, after the Manchester bombing, she did]

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

It may be a wonderful world but by my funeral I'll have seen the last of it.  And it's not that wonderful compared to where I trust by the grace of God I might be going.

A better Christian alternative:

All the wonderful world - but with soul and a hope.

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 4. Wind beneath my wings (Bette Midler)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 4 - 'Wind beneath my wings' performed by Bette Midler  . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

It thanks God (just about).

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It's all about the other person - presumably the dead one - so a bit late to sing it to them.

Line that's most like a Christian song:

Thank God for you.

Line that's least like a Christian song:

So I was the one with all the glory.

A Quote from (singer) Bette Midler:

'I celebrate everyone's religious holidays.  If it's good enough for the righteous, it's good enough for the self-righteous I always say.'

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

It seems doggerel to me, and I'm nobody's hero.

A better Christian alternative:

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 5. Angels (Robbie Williams)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 5 - 'Angels' - (Robbie Williams)  . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

Great melody and sort of other-worldly.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

Angels have their uses but they're a poor substitute for their Boss.  Death is a big deal and needs the Boss.

Line that's most like a Christian Song

And I know I'll always be blessed with love

Line that's least like a Christian song:

I'm loving angels instead

A Quote from (singer) Robbie Williams:

Sometimes I feel like I'm sailing on a sunken dream.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

Nothing against angels, but this song is like requesting the funeral director's window cleaner instead of the director themselves - how about loving God instead?

A better Christian alternative:

[Hail the day that sees him rise]

Highest heaven its Lord recieves

Yet he loves the earth he leaves

Though returning to his throne

Still he calls us all his own.

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 6. Supermarket Flowers (Ed Sheeran)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 6 - 'Supermarket Flowers' performed by Ed Sheeran  . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

It was written for a funeral and it has God in it - although strangely the God in this song says, "Hallelujah" (which means Praise God . . .).

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It's a personal tribute song with little to do with anyone else's loved one.  A bit like listening to the funeral before the one you're at.

Line that's most like a Christian song:

So I'll sing Hallelujah

Line that's least like a Christian song:

'Poured the old ginger beer down the sink'

A Quote from (singer) Ed Sheeran:

Everything will be okay in the end.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

It's about someone else's family and private grief.

A better Christian alternative:

Hallelujah! sing to Jesus,
  His the scepter, His the throne;
Hallelujah! His the triumph,
  His the victory alone . . .

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 7. Unforgettable (Nat King Cole)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 7 - 'Unforgettable' performed by Nat King Cole  . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

Funerals help us remember - to make someone more unforgettable.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It's nothing to do with death, life in general, or life beyond death - just a sweet romantic song.

Line that's most like a Christian song:

It's incredible that someone so unforgettable thinks I'm unforgettable too.

Line that's least like a Christian song:

'Darling' [It's the one word in the song that means, however hard you try, you can't associate it with your relationship with God!]

A Quote from (singer) Nat King Cole:

'I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money'

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

I have no interest in being unforgettable - at least by humans. 

A better Christian alternative:

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 8. You Raise Me Up (Westlife)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 8 - You raise me up, popularised by Westlife, covered by half the music industry . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

Norwegian Rolf Lovland originally wrote the music for his own mother's funeral. (Brendan Graham wrote the lyrics).

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It doesn't contain God (unless you supply him by how you mean the words).

Line that's most like a Christian song:

You raise me up to more than I can be

Line that's least like a Christian song:

[Not applicable - as Brendan Graham was for a while a Catholic Seminarian it all has Christian echoes]

A Quote from (writer) Brendan Graham:

'Keep a green bough in your heart and the singing bird will come'.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

It is so much like a hymn I might as well have a real hymn which honours God rather than one that reflects a hopeful ideal.

A better Christian alternative:

.

[There is a Redeemer . . .]

When I stand in Glory

I will see His face

And there I'll serve my King forever

In that Holy Place

Thank you, oh my father

For giving us Your Son

And leaving Your Spirit

'Til the work on Earth is done

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 9. We'll meet again (Vera Lynn)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and number 9 - We'll meet again, sung by Vera Lynn:

Why it's good for a funeral:

It sounds hopeful.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

Dying is not much like going off to war (the song dates from 1939 and the hope of sunnier, post-war times down the track).  Over 99% of UK military personnel outlived the Second World War.  The percentage for general death survival hovers around 0%.  (Though at the time of writing Vera Lynn is closer to cheating this statistic than most of us - she's aged 102!)

Line that's most like a Christian song:

We'll meet again

Line that's least like a Christian song:

Don't know where

A Quote from (performer) Vera Lynn:

Seeing a severely disabled five-year-old smile, or his parents laugh, reminds me that giving up isn’t worth it — persistence can be so rewarding.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

I wasn't alive in World War 2.

A better Christian alternative:

.

[Ten Thousand times Ten Thousand . . .]

O then what raptured greetings

On Canaan's happy shore.

What knitting severed friendships up

Where partings are no more!

Then eyes with joy shall sparkle

That brimmed with tears of late;

Orphans no longer fatherless

Nor widows desolate.

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 10. Always look on the Bright Side of Life [Eric Idle]

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs now contains no Christian songs or hymns at all - for the first time.  So let's take a look at the merits and demerits of the top ten, starting with 10th place : Always look on the bright side of life;

Why it's good for a funeral:

It makes you feel you can laugh.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It doesn't give you any grounds to laugh in death

Line that's most like a Christian song:

You know, you came from nothing

Line that's least like a Christian song:

Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true

A Quote from (writer) Eric Idle:

Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

The song is originally sung to the Jesus figure (Brian) on the cross in Monty Python's Life of Brian film.  So not only is it meaninglessly defiant rubbish, it's origin is blasphemous too.

A better Christian alternative:

On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise,

And the glory of His resurrection share;

When His chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies,

And the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.

[A brightness of a better sort.]

Just Me

At the beautiful memorial service for a lady from our Church today we heard read once again that most familiar of Christian funeral passages, John 14.  Including the simple phrase said by Jesus to his disciples, "You believe in God; believe also in me."  It is so simple and yet so profound.  How easy it is to associate the Christian faith with a great deal of activity or an accumulation of knowledge or family connections or heritage or musical inclinations or local meetings in a community.

It is about Him.  It is about trusting Him.  It is as available on the deathbed as the Sunday School, in the workplace or the clinic on the aircraft in the pulpit.  

You can be a Christian if needs must without almost everything - just not without Him.  The disciples Passion Week mistake centred on the catastrophic decisions they made to dispense with Him.  Running away they chose safety instead, in Judas Iscariot's case money.  And when they got there - that is, away from Him - they found they had nothing really.

Trust in ME.

Days to Remember: 9. The danger of parking outside the Church (Part 2)

The relatively unusual experience of a minister is to travel in a hearse while fully conscious (before the later single trip more universally undertaken).  Nobody who has spent any time in local church ministry is short of funeral stories, though public blogging is not the most pastorally sensitive way to disseminate them.  I will stick with just one from my time in Wycombe.  It's about that busy street outside the church where, on the snowy night previously reported, people nearly died. 

 

The service was over.   It is a few hundred yards to the town cemetery and the easiest way as minister is to take the hearse there and walk back.  I sat in the rear seat, my head adjacent to that of the deceased.  

 

She'd had just a tenuous connection with our premises through another church. As best I recall, apart from the family and friends only our church funeral functionaries (me included) had been present.  The funeral directors, unusually, were from out of county.

 

 

'Nice cars these hearses,' I often thought, 'shame about the function.'  In went the ignition key.  A kind of electronic whirring but nothing resembling an engine sound.  And again.  And again.  I thought, 'This is going to be interesting.  I wonder what they do when the hearse won't start?'  Unfortunately it turned out that the driver was also thinking, 'I wonder what I do when the hearse won't start?'   The Funeral Director was pulled away from the family gathered by the other funeral car to be told the news.  He then seemed to think, 'I wonder what you do when the hearse won't start?'

 

It became clear that in their home town they would have had a spare car as a rule.  They were not in their home county, never mind town.  They started ringing local funeral firms with whom they were connected.  These helpful funeral firms were being helpful by helping other people have their funerals.  There is a limit to the number of available hearses of course.  Hope dwindled. 

 

A few minutes later and a phone call came in.  One of the local companies had a spare hearse in a town a few miles away.  We sat, we waited, with reasonable dignity the transfer was eventually made.

 

I figured that the person (perhaps not quite the right word) for whom this was the least traumatic was the one whose head silently reclined a few inches from mine in her coffin.  RIP meant Rest in Peace for her, and Ring in Panic for everyone else.

Hayley - Episode 1

Hayley Cropper has just had Coronation Street's very own Humanist Funeral.

What with her bumping herself off the week before we have been exposed to the 21st Century wrestling with the caveman/woman's problem.  Death.

Tribute to Corrie for introducing death in a more real way than soap operas and light entertainment normally do; and for raising big issues in wise ways.

 

I'm sure the screen-writers would say that it is not their place to provide the answers.  That's why you get a telephone number if you or someone you know wants to end it all. 

 

The trained person on the phone won't provide any answers - because that's what they've been trained not to do as well.  They will help you explore why you feel as you do.

 

It's like buying a lovely book of Cryptic Crosswords that intrigues you.  Only to find that when you are stuck there are no answers in the back.

Joy

Today our Church is rockin' to the sounds of a Caribbean funeral.   If you've never heard Tony Campolo's well-travelled story about a similar experience to this then it is here (and even if you have heard it you'll like hearing it again) . . .

 

Hang in there and you'll hear this:  When you were born you cried and everyone else was happy.  That's not important.  What's important is that when you die, even though everyone else is crying, you're happy.

Hearing

I owe this story to an elderly lady who told this tale about - an elderly lady!

The vicar dropped by to visit the lady who had been taken ill.  Because of her age and the seriousness of the illness it seemed time to prepare for the End.

"Vicar," said she, "You will take my Funeral Service when I pass away, won't you?"

"Well yes, of course, when that time comes."

"You'll do it, won't you?  Not the young curate?"

The vicar was a little alarmed.  He had thought the young curate was quite competent and  liked.  "Yes, I'll do it.  But may I ask why you insist on it being me rather than my colleague?  He's very caring."

"Oh, I do believe he's very kind.  But in the services I can never hear a word he says."

Rites

 

Saturday I was conducting a Wedding.

Sunshine, specially printed Orders of Service, specially chosen music, reunited family and friends, invitations to eat, specially smart clothes, flowers,  official certificates, smiling faces, photographers, bubbles, excitement, congratulations, toasts . . .

Yesterday I was conducting a Funeral.

Sunshine, specially printed Orders of Service, specially chosen music, reunited family and friends, invitations to eat, specially smart clothes, flowers, official certificates, faces in tears, no photographers, no bubbles, no excitement, no congratulations, no toasts . .

In every wedding there is a funeral.  Say it after me . . .

until we are parted by death

What a miserable thing it appears to be that in our most glowingly romantic hour we intone our certain end.  For a Christian this is greatly mitigated by its opposite, courtesy of our Saviour:

In every funeral there is a wedding.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea.  And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God.  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." 

Pipes

On Monday I went to the funeral of a lady who had been involved with our church many years ago.  The service was in a little village chapel.  The chapel was in a little village lane (we were directed to park in something between a car park and a farmyard).  The chapel looked like a house (as all good old-fashioned non-conformist chapels do).  There was ice on the roads and as it didn't, from the outside, look like a building that had benefited from heavy investment I feared there might be ice on the pews. (It was pleasantly warm in fact). 

We walked in.  The entrance was sufficiently narrow to make me grateful I'd lost weight recently, not a funeral director's favourite kind of entrance.  But on this occasion I was congregation not platform participant and as I finished squeezing into the pew, designed for that earlier generation that was rather less than my 6 foot plus, my eyes were transfixed by the pile of metal material in the corner of the room.

My initial thought was that a local farmer may be using that corner to store old pipework.  Pipes stood behind the single keyboard organ as if they had been thrown there.  Some were straight others at various angles, there were gaps where pipes seemed to be missing, some looked kind of rusty.  Perhaps an old space satellite had landed in the village punching a hole in the chapel roof which was now repaired.  However, in the end, I was forced to conclude this pile of pipes had really been the organ, uncased, disused and left in miserable decay in the corner of the chapel.

An older lady stood up.  Well she stood more than stood up on account of not being young enough or tall enough to do the 'up'.  She had a music bag!  And then the horror dawned.  She was making her way to the pile of pipes!!  I braced myself.  Here I was, with a grieving family and some thoughtful and kind members of my church sitting beside me and I was about to hear the most pitiable example of what passes for church music played on an instrument that the local museum would laughingly refuse to consider as a free gift.

Christine climbed and sat on the organ stool.  She spread out her music. She began to play.  A J. S. Bach prelude floated from the corner.  There were no missing notes.  There were no missed timings.  There seemed, after all, no missing pipes.  Simply masterful music beautifully played by a more-than-able musician on an instrument that my ears told my eyes was not as ugly as my eyes had imagined.

Some chorales and hymns later I was remembering not only a lady I had often visited but (thanks to Christine) also the words of the Lord Jesus,

Stop judging by the way things look, but judge by what is really right.