While reviewing the oral history I had my mother record many years ago, I came to the part where her father died just as she entered her teens. She recounts how he was laid out in a coffin on the dining room table. I thought how nowdays we are exposed to death generally at a far later age and how quickly the body is whisked away (unless it’s Maori, of course). 

Moll surmises that, “Our culture simply doesn’t know what to think about death. Through medicine and science we know more about death and how to forestall it than ever before. Yet we know little about caring for a dying person. We don’t k now what to expect or how to prepare for our own death. And we’re often awkward at best when trying to comfort a friend in grief.”

With increasing cremation, many have never visited a graveside. In some cases the coffin is absent at what has become just a memorial service. Moll reminds us that, “Christian funeral is more than a memorial. It allows grieving people to accomplish two things: (1) worship God, who – contrary to our immediate experience of mourning a dead loved one – has defeated death, and (2) reknit the community that has been fractured.”

The church so often slowly adopts the culture of the day, but this book argues that the Christian funeral is an important part of the Christian life. We celebrate the life of faith, and as we accompany the deceased to their earthly resting place we are reminded that we too will one day “go the way of all mankind” (1 Kings 2:2) but that Christ has assured our resurrection from the grave. 

By Rob Moll
IVP, London 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-3736-6

– David McLeod-Jones