139. Scott, Take Care of It (BCO 61)

Chapter 61, the burial of the dead, 61-1, "The services proper for such an occasion are the singing of appropriate psalms or hymns, the reading of some suitable portion or portions of scripture with such remarks as it may seem proper to the minister to make, prayer in which the bereaved shall be especially remembered and God's grace sought on their behalf, that they may be sustained and comforted in their sorrow, and that their afflictions may be blessed to their spiritual good." So it feels a little bit to me like this sort of drops into the middle of a conversation almost.

Like, there's an assumption going into this that you should have a service for the burial of the dead, uh, and then it gives you things that are appropriate for such a service.

Any thoughts, guys? We can talk about maybe our practical experience and stuff in a minute, but just talking about the section it- itself, what stands out?

It's not something I've done a lot of research on, but, uh, the 1645 has very little for you to do.

[laughs] Um, uh, it was mostly about not ha- making a big ceremony, like, at the graveside.

So, like, the original, uh, 1645 says, "When any per- person departeth this life, let the, uh, dead body upon the day of burial be decently attended from the house to the place appointed for public burial, and there immediately interned without any ceremony." So I guess we, we kinda change a little bit in what we wanna do [laughs] around, around that.

Well, there are, like, multiple services in view, right? There is the graveside service, which is basically what Jared said almost, a very short and to the point.

And then often we have a larger funeral or memorial service that is maybe an hour or half an hour to an hour.

And so it kinda depends the service and the scope of what you'd be doing between those services.

Yeah.

And we should refer folks to the appendices C, D, and E in our-

Mm-hmm

... uh, Book of Church Order deal with the funeral service, and a child's funeral, and a graveside service.

Mm-hmm.

The, uh-

I think there have just been so many abuses of praying for the dead-

Yeah

... and having superstitions or talking to the dead.

When we talked to the guy from the ARP, that's what they said was they wanted some sort of instruction that they're not to talk to the dead as if they were still alive.

Hmm.

Like, that was some sort of a ceremony that was popular in Canada or something.

Hmm.

So, I mean, there's-

Hmm

... maybe a swinging of a pendulum away that we're now kind of like, "Okay, you, you do need to do s- some things, but just make sure that you're not praying for the dead or, or having some s- strange ceremony surrounding it."