From the back of the church, striding, almost alarming, booms the celebrant: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” The service rolls on: full of awe, placing mankind’s fragility at its heart, laying it before the altar: “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow ...” Yet beyond the ashes and dust, the “sure and certain hope” pulses through it. Verily, there is nothing in rhetoric and ceremony to beat the Book of Common Prayer. Especially at a funeral.