Applause

It’s always the simplest questions that get under our cultural radar and penetrate to the heart of something important.
Like when my four year old asked me when I was at theological college: “Where is God?” I approached my doctrine lecturer who said that was a hard one and over the years I have realised that much of what we think about heaven is not theological but cultural. It’s full of clouds and angels with harps because the Greek heaven was full of these things and we are still essentially a post Greek culture. The bible sees heaven as a city, built by God, with open gates to all point of the compass as a sign of welcome.
Yesterday a good friend asked me why we don’t applaud at funerals. I wasn’t sure but I suspect somewhere deep and culturally funerals are really times for sadness, which is right but also a weird kind of embarrassment because we have failed through our faith, or our intelligence to keep this person alive. Maybe there is a deeper feeling that good people didn’t ought to die and therefore applauding at the funeral, acknowledging that this was a good person, challenges our notions of fairness. If they were good enough to get applause, why weren’t they good enough to live longer?
The bible again is quite clear that our time on earth is fixed by God but is not dependent on our goodness or badness, for all life no matter how short is God’s gift and grace.
Today I conducted the funeral of a youngish father with two small children in front of me. Thinking about what my friend had said about applause I asked the congregation to applaud the diseased so that his children would have something tangible to remember from the service, something that would lodge in their memory to remind them just how much he was loved by others.
It was very moving to see the smiles on their face at this tribute to one of God’s creatures. There might be more applause at future funerals I think.