“In the presence of the dying the minister is called to give both comfort and honesty, both consolation and challenge. There are times when we must be prepared to speak the truth about death. It may fall to us to be the one who says: ‘It’s now time to die.’ At other times we must confront platitudes or denials, or a spirituality that gives false hope. We share the conviction that life comes out of death, but we must not become, as Richard Giles warns, ‘apostles of false hope, trafficking the empty promise that, “everything’s going to be all right”. Even if we mean it in an ontological sense, it will be understood in a “here-and now” sense. We must be careful always to speak straight, for false assurance is the cruellest of gifts.’ We trust God’s mercy, but we cannot engineer God’s intervention. We affirm that we shall never be lost to God and that God holds us with a love that is stronger than death. In all this we are called ‘to mediate the strong and fearless love of a God who is willing to release us into the world and watch us wobble down the world. A God who, as David Jenkins puts it, “suffers rather than bashes his way through.”

From Chapter 8 — A Time to Die, of Earthed in Hope: Dying, Death and Funerals – A Pakeha Anglican Perspective. By Alister G. Hendery.

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“Ministry becomes immensely rewarding when we are able to recognise God’s presence already existing in the lives and experience of the bereaved (in what Denyer calls ‘the baggage’). It is not a matter of taking God to people (or taking people to God). That implies that God is not present in the situation. It is about recognising that God is already existing and active in people’s lives – in their suffering, grieving and dying. Augustine, who has a clear sense of God being present in all places, vigorously challenges a limited view of God’s presence – ‘present entirely everywhere at once.’ The minister’s task is to help people recognise the divine activity and presence, or as Rowan Williams describes it: ‘finding out what God is doing and joining in.’”

From Chapter 5 — How Might We Respond? of Earthed in Hope: Dying, Death and Funerals – A Pakeha Anglican Perspective. By Alister G. Hendery. Order now eBooks or Print book

“The pastoral dimension of a funeral will enable and reinforce healthy grieving. It will acknowledge where people are in their grief and give them the opportunity to express something of their experience of loss and recognise the true nature of the death. I suspect few people today consider grieving to be pathological, but many regard it with a deep sense of embarrassment and awkwardness. What we need are grievers who can express their grief unapologetically; showing us that grief is not an illness, not a weakness, not self-pity, not simply sadness, not something that we should grin and bear – but a natural, normal response to loss. It is part of being human. John’s statement, ‘Jesus began to weep’ (John 11:35) (or, as in the Revised Standard Version, ‘Jesus wept’), affirms our needs in time of grief. A grieving father wrote: ‘I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that with dry-eyes I could not see.’ That Jesus openly expressed his grief is not, however, a warrant for turning the funeral into a liturgical counselling session but an expression of the compassion of God who is present with us, sharing our pain and acquainted with our grief.” 

From Chapter 2 — Universal Dimensions, of Earthed in Hope: Dying, Death and Funerals – A Pakeha Anglican Perspective. By Alister G. Hendery.

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