Seriously Messy by Collicutt, Moore, Payne, & Slater

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For Messy Church to talk about death is a wonderfully counter-cultural thing, and I am really grateful for them producing this book.

Engaging meaningfully with death rather than avoiding it as a topic is something society at large is in need, and actually if we are honest much of the Church is also in denial and needs to get real about death.

Two quotes play together …

“it wouldn’t be a funeral without a wake.”

“In the past, certain mourning rituals, such as wearing black for a time after a death, gave permission to grieve and signalled to society that they needed space to do that. Secular society no longer has recognised social structures that support bereaved people in this way. The journalist Colin Brazier recently wrote an article following the death of his wife called ‘Let funeral be sad’, in which he said that he felt ‘ill at ease’ with the modern trend to wear bright clothes at funerals and to insit that they be only about ‘rejoicing in a life now passed’. Not to be allowed to be sad or to cry is too much to expect of the children, if not the adults, he says, and wearing black gives permission for people to be the way they feel. Having opportunities to express our grief and to have it accpeted and validated by others is crucial to the healing process.”

Or to put it another way it wouldn’t be a wake without a funeral?

Too much of current Church activity seem scared of the dark – if it is not permanently effervescent then it is deemed invalid – this is a complete abuse of the Gospel – it has no room of the Jesus who wept in the Garden, much less still the Jesus who died on the cross, it becomes the Gospel of Instagram not the Gospel of Jesus.