My friends Tom Spacht and John Ogasapian raise good comments.
Permit this one, with which perhaps some will wish to disagree.  Let's
agree to disagree in kindly manner and be friends.
 
        Many funerals take place in settings other than church buildings:
secular halls, gymnasia, and most often undertakers' places of business.
Sometimes the Church's clergy conduct them, sometimes not. In such
settings, perhaps almost "anything can go."
 
        When those planning the funeral seek to take it into a church,
they imply that they have chosen to seek the Church's agenda in that event
and not simply their own.  That means Word and Sacrament, at least for
many of us, along with the various good works out in "the world" which the
Church seeks to promote and champion in whatever relationship a given
theological system understands good works.
 
        Marva Dawn has eloquently written (_Reaching Out Without Dumbing
Down_) about God being both the object and subject of worship. It's
another way of discussing the Church's agendum at the time of worship as
prayer, praise, proclamation and sacramental acts. That's WORSHIP.
 
        But so often in weddings and funerals we tend to seek to make the
Church and her particular church building into a theatre for our own
purposes. This places ourselves as over against God in the place and time
where God should be, to quote Marva Dawn again, both object and subject of
the event. Of course, in theological terms, such attempts at displacing
God simply re-play the original sin, i.e., seeking to make one's self more
important than God.  It is against precisely this problem that Marva Dawn
writes.
 
        Nothing in this discussion implies that worship which also
involves a rite of passing, whether baptism, marriage, confirmation,
funeral, etc., cannot be personalized.  I can.  The issue is: How?
 
        But in a self-centered age where so often we judge matters
according to their convenience to our wishes, we find this line of
thinking very difficult or unacceptable.  Then we hear the inevitable
sorts of retorts: "Who are YOU to judge?" or the like. Indeed, I stand in
danger of being flamed in response to this comment.
 
        What happens in the Church is for the Church and not "the world"
to define and discipline, and while the Church is of divine institution,
for some amazing reason God has entrusted humanity with a great deal of
influence on how his Church goes about her work. So it is, in fact,
humans, acting in prophetic roles, who must continue to seek clear
understandings of God's purposes, including His purposes for the Church,
and then discipline her life accordingly, despite all the failties and
errors of her ways from time to time.
 
        Funerals apart from worship?  Sure; we have them all the time. But
if we wish to have them in the Church, let's not expect to take over
the Church and her sacred spaces for purposes of our own glory or
convenience.
 
        One caveat:  it's important to remember that the Church of England
exercises a theology of the Church in her relationship to the government
quite different from anything we havein the United States. I would welcome
commentary about this relationship in Canada.
 
        Finally, I realize that this discussion is somewhat afar from the
stated purposes of Pipe Organ List, and let me apologize to anyone who is
offended for my commentary.  I'll not post further on this topic.
 
                                                Karl E. Moyer
                                                Lancaster PA