Denying a funeral site; denying dignity?

Tuesday on The Week, Jonathan Merritt goes on the offensive against churches that will not open their facilities to homosexual funerals, telling us Why some Christians deny gay people funerals — and why they must stop. This comes on the heels of the abrupt cancellation of a "gay funeral" in Lakewood, Colorado. Apparently this is a huge problem. Merritt knows of at least two cases!

In his opinion piece about extending services to those who have lived a homosexual lifestyle, to strenthen his case Merritt frames this within the broader question of "Should Christian churches extend not only dignity and compassion to deceased people who didn't believe or live according to devout Christians' standards?"

Merritt's answer is "Yes" for the following reasons:

• in the Bible there are "no standards for who can participate in such rites. The scriptures contain no prohibition against hosting funerals for those who did not live according to certain standards." 
• "if churches refuse to host funerals for those they believe were 'sinful', then churches will not be hosting any funerals at all."
• "the centrality of compassion to the Christian faith." "Jesus extended kindness without exclusions, conditions, or asterisks."
• And, the "What would Jesus do?" Merritt asks us, "Really, think about it. Can you honestly imagine the indiscriminately merciful Jesus telling a weeping family of a deceased LGBT person to scram? Of course you can't." 

To which I reply a "Yes" with clarifications:

• First, since there are, according to the Bible, no standards for who can participate in funeral rites, who will set the standard? Will it be Merritt? Whoever wants to have a funeral in any church house? The church who owns the house? Though it may be that the "scriptures contain no prohibition against hosting funerals for those who did not live according to certain standards," our church and many others do not operate on an "it's not prohibited" basis. We are not prohibited from baptizing converts in chocolate milk, but we're not about to do so.
• Second, since there are "no standards," perhaps we should not just ask whether to host funerals for those who were 'sinful', but ask whether we should be hosting any funerals at all?? In our community it is a relatively modern thing to host a funeral at the church house. They used to have services at the grave side (for the "churched" and "non-churched" alike).
• Third, does "the centrality of compassion to the Christian faith" mean we must host funerals at the church house in order to be compassionate? We should "Mourn with those who mourn," but does that command consist of hosting a funeral at a church house? If so, I dare say there is no New Testament example of mourning with those who mourn. And if a church or pastor has shown no "compassion" before death, a trumped up case of it at death is just a different version of hypocrisy, is it not?
• Finally the ambiguous "What would Jesus do?" is trotted out when one hopes to bend what Jesus would do to fit his or her own opinions. Would the "indiscriminately merciful Jesus" drive money changers out of the temple with a whip? Surely not, in Merritt's mind (But surely, according to the Bible; cf. John 2:15). And though Merritt tells us that we can't imagine Jesus telling a weeping family of a deceased LGBT person to scram, we don't have to imagine that something similar happened. Cf. Mark 5:35-43. When Jesus went to the ruler of the synagogue's house after his daughter died, He actually DID tell a bunch of the mourners "to scram".  

In the end, Jonathan Merritt concludes correctly that "pastors [and I'd say churches, too] have the right to refuse services to whomever they wish." He further correctly concludes that "constitutional protections do not exempt churches from public criticism." Though he thinks "the criticism of hypocrisy is well deserved" I am not swift to jump on his bandwagon. In fact I believe that those who flaunt a particular church's ethics and morality with their lives are hypocritical to want that church to sanction their lives in death. If they did not want to be associated with it in life, why do they want to be associated with it in death? Regardless, a church must operate on its own beliefs regarding what it thinks is hypocrisy or not. Jonathan Merritt doesn't get to decide. He only gets to complain.

I do not say that a church cannot or should not allow in their facilities the funeral of a person who has lived as a homosexual. I only say that it is up to the church and pastor to decide what they believe is appropriate -- and be left to stand before God who can see in their hearts. If you're not a member of that church, go mind your business elsewhere. Those who rush out the "judge not that ye be not judged" text are quite swift to judge the hearts of those they want to see as hypocrites!


To digress just a little, think on the New Life Ministries case of excluding the funeral of Vanessa Collier because of the pictures in her life story. Now those who approve of same sex marriage certainly wouldn't see anything wrong with the two partners kissing, but you can correctly figure that a conservative Christian church is likely to do so. To change it a bit, what if the pictures were telling the life story of a deceased who was an "exotic dancer"? Would you expect a church to allow pictures of a nude or semi-nude dance around a pole? It was intimately part of his or her life, so why not? Most of us can understand that objection, but this isn't the same thing, you say. No, it is not. But it can accurately reflect how a church and/or pastor might feel as strongly about one as the other.