Obituaries and Eulogies

                I’ve reached an age where I religiously read the obituaries.  I never know what sort of story I’ll find; they run the gamut from succinct to saccharine, poignant to pontifical, as if volume or vocabulary will somehow express the very being of a life and the significance of its loss. Dates are noted, geography reviewed, families and loved ones named.  Accomplishments are boasted, significant changes woven through, illness acknowledged as a venue for bravery and as a reason for gratitude at care received.  I can only speculate what of the story has been omitted, changed, emphasized, downplayed.  “Never speak ill of the dead” is an adage that has held its own, even in these post modern times.

                Speaking of the dead, eulogy is the oral cousin of obituary, a verbal rendering of honour to the deceased.  In the absence of public funeral observance and memorial gathering, eulogy has seeped its way into obituary as the only opportunity to praise the life of the dead. Blurred though they may become, each stands with its own integrity: obituary a written telling of biography, eulogy a lived experience of honouring someone at the end of their life.

                It seems to me that the gospels stand as Jesus’ obituary - written witness to the events of the life of the One whom we title Messiah.  Distinct from that, our lives as disciples and the life of the church that springs up from his death, are Jesus’ eulogy, a continued telling of the story of God’s grace and an honouring of the life of the dead.

(Rev. Dr.) Murray Groom