For a Graveside Burial

We are gathered to hear the good news of Jesus and to remember [Name]. We give thanks for their life on earth, pray for their homecoming in heaven, and offer each other love and comfort in the midst of our grief.

Living God, we are made in your image and hardwired to seek meaning, relationships, and connection. In Jesus, you expereinced the fullness of our humanity and feel the weight of every love and loss in this world. Be close to us now as we mourn [Name] and our own mortality. Give us faith to trust that death has a word, but not the last word. Help us hang onto the hope we have in Jesus, whose life endures forever. Amen

Reading: Psalm 23 or Psalm 46

Poem: A Blessing for this Earth

This is the place.

It is both goodbye and homecoming

for mortals born of stardust

and breath from heaven.

The stillness is both foreign and familiar.

This is the place

we will come to remember,

we will mean to visit more often.

It will cause us to wonder

about the sounds and smells

beneath our feet.

This is the place

that writes the death of our person

into the history of this world with specific coordinates,

even more accurate as time melts boundaries

between creature and creation.

This is the place

reserved to honor a life that still lives in us,

blowing like windy memories

from our mouths just often enough

to help our unbelief glimpse death rising.

If there is a floral arrangement, family members can each take a flower or add a flower. Small handfuls of sand may also be used to cover the casket or urn if it is being placed into the ground.

We, the living, are still novices to death and remain perplexed by the mystery of these things. We do not pretend to understand what it means to commit their body to the earth and to commend their spirit to heaven, but we lean into these promises of peace and good care anyway.

Merciful God, we trust that you have always loved [Name] and are with them even now. We commit [Name] to the earth. Like the first human beings in the garden, you formed [Name] with dust from the earth and gave them the breath of life. You delighted in them and called them “very good”. We return [Name] and pray you will keep your vows of life, love, and light that cannot be overcome. Amen.

The family might recite the Lord’s Prayer or sing a song together at this time.

May God’s blessings and comfort

continue to find us, even and especially

in the logistics of death, the enormity of our loss,

and these first seasons that feel so different

without [Name] living among us.

Go in peace. God is with you. Amen.