After attending a funeral someone remarked, "If the pastor had left out the obituary, I would not have known who had died!" To make funerals fully effective, we must learn to personalize them.

We live in a society that has become depersonalized. From checking accounts to credit cards, we are reminded to "please use your account number on all correspondence." Even the medical staff dealing with life-threatening illnesses end up manipulating machines rather than relating to the human beings before them.

We who are clergy must determine how to balance the paradoxical claims of Christian faith that "all are equal in the sight of God" and "our God is a personal God." Many emphasize individuality in life and then equality in death. Because of this they conduct funerals without mentioning the deceased except for the reading of the obituary. Such funerals are impersonal.

We have taken a step toward overcoming this difficulty when we recognize that being equal in the sight of God does not necessarily mean that we are all the same. Paul asserts that we each carry the image of the man of dust and of the man of heaven. Each individual is both/and rather than either/or. When the community of faith gathers for a funeral, it celebrates the presence of both in the deceased.

Because of this it seems entirely appro priate to combine the sermon and the eulogy. While praising a person's life (eu logy) we can provide religious instruc tion (sermon).

The family and friends of the deceased will think his spiritual qualities--love, patience, kindness, and so forth--more important than his possessions or even the events in his life. These qualities re veal the values the person held. Often these values are not only enduring; they are Christian. By incorporating these personal values and relating them to God's desire for all His creatures, a sermon can remember the individual while offering joyful thanksgiving to the Creator.

I conducted the funeral of a man who had done menial labor for the same dry cleaning establishment for the last 21 years of his life--not an obviously meaningful existence. Conversations with the family led me to establish as the theme of my sermon the loyalty he showed to family, employer, and church despite receiving few overt rewards.

After the service one of the man's friends said, "I now see John in an entirely different light." Finding and referring to his qualities had affirmed his worth in the eyes of those who mourned his death and had highlighted one of the Christian virtues.

How to go about it

To prepare this synthesis of eulogy and sermon, the pastor can ask the deceased's family about four aspects of his life: work; group associations, either formal or informal; hobbies or favorite things; and personality traits. (One could also use Paul's list of spiritual gifts or the spiritual fruits to organize the sermon.) Adding to the sermon scriptural passages directly related to the qualities of the individual will affirm his life and add spiritual con tent to the message.

In our society work holds a great deal of meaning. When speaking of the de ceased's work, remember his skills and abilities as gifts from God and as a contribution to society.

By means of the groups to which a person belonged, we can see further into his/her soul. Membership in a church, in service organizations, or even in informal groups can be revelatory. Groups can be vehicles for expressing love or convic tions of social responsibility. The lack of participation in organizations may indicate a more contemplative nature.

Hobbies renew people's souls. They help them cope. People use hobbies to feel alive and exercise their creativity.

Knowing what hobbies a person was interested in enables us to know a great deal more about him. Along with hobbies, favorite colors, flowers, reading mate rial, music, or poetry often express the depths of a person's soul.

Another category we can use is personality. A caution here: family members will tend to speak in general terms about the personality of the deceased--his generosity, humor, kindness, etc. Try to get them to furnish specific examples of the general traits. If someone was self-giving, what does his family remember that illustrates that quality?

Don't attempt to make a saint of the deceased. Most of the persons at a funeral service are friends and relatives who know the deceased pretty well. They know his or her strengths and weakness es. Celebrate the person's strong points thankfully and relate them to the providence of God in all of life.

Close the sermon with biblical pas sages referring to death and resurrection. The same grace of God that enables peo ple to live the earthly life has provided for eternal life.

Funeral sermons that follow this approach are very effective in helping people both to grieve and to give thanks to God. The process of gathering the information reminds family members of the life they shared with the deceased. It also helps them realize that this person has indeed died --hat they will not continue to share with him this way again in this life. The release the family experiences during this time moves beyond the intellectual recognition of death to a deeper realization of what has happened.

On the night He was betrayed, Jesus provided a means for the disciples to re member Him. The funeral service using this combination sermon-eulogy does a similar thing for family and friends. It says "remember me." Further, it calls the community--especially in the presence of death--to remember God as the one responsible for earthly life and for eternal life as well. The deceased's life is returned to the God who gave it in a spirit of thanksgiving for the gift of that particular life.