In his Voice article, Pastor Treglown talks about funerals and memorial services, and so in my article I want to talk about another related service: the committal service. At this service, we look at the grave, where the deceased will be buried.

And it’s worth talking about graves. The grave is, after all, the place where the funeral service ends—in a sense. It is the place where our loved one (and one day ourselves) will finally be laid to rest.

And we do all sorts of things to bless these graves. Oftentimes we arrange for monumental masons to carve slabs of marble or other fine stones to rest over the grave, to mark them. It is a standard custom for loved ones to put flowers on the grave, both immediately after the burial and on subsequent visits, as a way to bless the grave with something beautiful. And, of course, we have a (good) habit of putting graves in cemeteries that are practically gardens. All of these things that we do are beautiful ways to bless the graves of our loved ones.

In the committal service, in the Lutheran rite, there’s a prayer that we have that is spoken over the grave to bless it:

O Lord Jesus Christ, by Your three-day rest in the tomb You hallowed the graves of all who believe in You, promising resurrection to our mortal bodies. Bless this grave that the body of our brother/sister may sleep here in peace until You awaken them to glory, when they will see You face to face and know the splendor of the eternal God, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

While nice stones and flowers and gardens are all wonderful ways to bless a grave, all these things we do knowing that there is no blessing we can bestow on that grave that is greater than the blessing that has already been bestowed on it: the blessing of Jesus.

Because Jesus died and was buried in a grave, but then on the third day rose again to life, and afterwards he gave to his disciples and to all the church his spirit—the Holy Spirit. And we, in our baptism, have received that Holy Spirit, so that even in our graves we are bound to him—so that just as he was buried, but then rose again to life, so too every Christian who has been buried will rise again to life in him.

This is our hope as Christians, so that, while we grieve, we don’t grieve “as those who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13): that our Christian brothers and sisters’ graves have been blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ, so that, just as his grave is now empty, so too—when he comes again—every grave will be empty.

-Pastor Duncan