Are there verses that are considered staples for funerals?
In the English-speaking world, the Order for the Burial of the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England is probably the best-known example of things said at funerals (it includes the famous line “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”). It in turn quotes from or refers to a number of Bible verses.
Psalm 23:1-6:
While one purpose of a funeral is to honor the deceased, the major purpose is to comfort the grieving. Accordingly, the texts, prayers, etc., are selected with an eye to expressing sympathy and support, and with the suggestion that much as we may miss him (or her) he (she) has gone on to Better Things / is no longer suffering / is safe in God’s care, and that the Christian hope is that we will someday be reunited with the person we loved and have lost to death.
(Usual disclaimer: I’m not promulgating Christianity as fact in GQ, but setting forth for informational purposes what the Christian belief/practice is, as the appropriate response to the OP.)
At most of the memorial services I attended while in my “Born-again” phase, the quotes tended to be from 1 Thess. chap 4:
"13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,* about those who have died,* so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.* 15For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.* 16For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words. "
At my father’s funeral, we used I Corinthians 13:1-13 ("…and the greatest of these is love").
John 11:25-26 - “I am the resurrection and the life…”
This is the gospel passage that I hear most commonly at Catholic funerals.
It’s also the opening words of the Anglican Order for the Burial of the Dead cited by MEBuckner. Traditionally, the priest would meet the pall-bearers carrying the body in the chuchyard and would precede them into the church, saying that verse.
At Catholic funerals the responsory *Subvenite Sancti Dei *is traditionally chanted as the body is borne into the church.