100 Sermon Illustrations on Funeral

When Life Is Cut Short

Read: John 17:1-5

I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. –John 17:4

My husband Bill died of cancer in 1982. He was only 48 and was still energetic in ministry. Many have asked, "Why was Bill taken at such a young age when he was accomplishing so much for the Lord?"

For years I've been unable to find a clear-cut answer to that question. But I have found some helpful perspectives as I've considered the life and death of Christ. Before He died in His thirties, Jesus prayed to His Father, "I have finished the work which You have given Me to do" (Jn. 17:4).

Philosopher William James said that the value of life is computed not by its duration but by its donation. Except for the obvious necessity of the cross, Jesus could have continued performing amazing deeds if He had lived longer. But such deeds wouldn't have enlarged His supreme donation–His life and death, which provided our great salvation. The work that He completed is still bearing fruit by His Spirit.

Paul Powell wrote, "It is important to remember that one's harvest is not always reaped in this life." God's work through our lives will continue bearing fruit long after we're gone.

That is a comforting and challenging thought. No matter what our life's duration, we have an opportunity to make a lasting donation. –JEY

Our life of service to the Lord

Bears fruit long after we are gone;

So even if our life's cut short,

Our work for Christ will carry on. –Sper

You don't need a long life to live a good life.

Carol Berman of Boston, will be granted her final wish. Before she died she had when a rocket launched into space releases some of her remains. The Star Trek fan's ashes will be carried along with those of thirty-five other people. Her husband will pay $4,800 to have a few ounces of her remains included with a NASA probe and a South Korean satellite on a commercial rocket.

After the capsule is released, the contents will orbit the earth for about forty-five years before burning upon re-entry.

Some time ago I read about an American named Arthur Reed , who was 123 years old. The facts about Arthur are astounding. He married for the third time when he was 92, took 10 km (5 mile) walks when he was 100, and rode bicycle until he was 110. He worked until he was 116. When he was asked the secret of long life, he replied: They made me of good dirt.

The writer of Psalm 90 suggests that anything beyond 70 is an exception to the rule. No matter how good the dirt we are made of, our bodies will eventually go the way of the fast fading flowers, the fleeting morning mists, and the dissipating clouds. Even the longest life be eventually becomes like a quickly passing yesterday before the everlasting God Ps 90,4. The psalmist wanted his readers to see how short our time on the earth is in contrast to eternity. This reminder should cause us to ponder the secret of life that is truly long - eternal life in heaven. It's to number our days. It's to make sure of our salvation through faith in Christ and to live each day for Him.

Don't miss everlasting life by assuming that even the longest life gives you plenty of time to prepare for eternity. Today is the day of salvation

What we weave in time we will wear in eternity.

Beyond The Grave

Read: Hebrews 11:1-4

He being dead still speaks. --Hebrews 11:4

One of the Bible's prime examples of enduring influence seems an unlikely choice. Abel was murdered by his brother before accomplishing anything we would call significant (Gen. 4:2-8). Yet his "picture" hangs in the Bible's hall of faith with this caption: "By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks" (Heb. 11:4).

Phillips Brooks, a 19th-century minister, said: "This is the difference between men whose power stops with their death, and those whose power really opens into its true richness when they die. The first sort of men have mechanical power; and the second have spiritual power. And the final test and witness of spiritual force is the ability to cast the bodily life away and yet continue to give help and courage to those who see us no longer; to be like Christ, the helper of men's souls, even from beyond the grave."

How can we speak from beyond the grave? Through faith and obedience to God in the simple matters of daily life. What seems insignificant and mundane today may be the megaphone through which God amplifies your voice long after your journey on earth is done. --DCM

Lord, take my life and make it wholly Thine;

Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine.

Take all my will, my passion, self, and pride;

I now surrender, Lord--in me abide. --Orr

Obedience to God is the key to lasting influence.

"You want to do what?" I asked him incredulously, my voice rising to the high-pitched level it reaches when I become exasperated. "Say that again, please; I don't think I heard you!"

"Oh, you heard me, all right," Frank snapped, waving his arms in his expressive manner. "I want to have my wake now - before I'm dead! Why should everyone else enjoy it and not me?"

He stalked into the kitchen, and I could hear him muttering to himself as he rummaged in the refrigerator. He returned shortly to the deck where I had remained to watch September's twilight blanket the Blue Ridge Mountains.

He finished munching a ripe peach, and then the voice that could never remain harsh for long broke the silence. "Honey, I want to do this."

I tightened my throat and tried not to cry. I was forty-four, and the thought of being widowed - again - was a devastating one. So devastating, in fact, that denial easily became the cloak I donned each day.

"But, but, you're stronger now. You said so! And the shots, they help..."

"Melva," he touched my shoulder as if pleading. "Let's have a party, and let's do it right. We could disguise it as an anniversary party. Of course, everyone who knows me so well will know."

I looked into those liquid brown eyes, their sparkle dulled now from pain, from medication, from worry. I knew what the last couple of years had taken from him. We had ceased to be the golden couple on the dance floor every weekend. Oh, we still went, he insisted; but we now spent most of the evenings sitting and chatting with friends.

His golf game, once marked by those powerful, straight drives and precision iron shots - he had four holes-in-one - had taken a downward turn.

The many enjoyable hours he once spent gardening and cutting firewood had dwindled to a precious few minutes that left him wan and spent.

The spirit never left him, though. While I seemed to constantly bemoan the changes in our life - in my life - he never complained. Suddenly, I realized that my fears and uncertainties paled in comparison to what he must be going through. The changes we had undergone appeared minuscule beside the cancer that raged within his body, vying with diabetes for the chance to determine his fate.

Swallowing my shame, I reached for his hand. "Okay. If it's a party you want, it's a party we'll have!"

The next morning, I ordered the 150 formal invitations for our "Anniversary Party." October 19, 1991, fell on a Saturday night, and we rented Frank's Shrine Club for the event.

Almost everyone we had invited came to share the evening with us. Mid-party, Frank took center stage with microphone in hand to give a glorious rendition of singer-songwriter Mac Davis's ballad, "It's Hard to Be Humble."

My husband delighted in being in the spotlight and finished to the cheers and, yes, tears, from all who loved him. He made a short speech then, thanking everyone for coming and proclaimed himself the luckiest man in the world! In so many words, he said good-bye.

And then we waltzed. Frank had begun to lose his balance and was no longer comfortable dancing with other women. But that night he danced with all.

Later, a slow number found me with one of his doctors. "How long does he have?" I asked quietly.

"That's impossible to predict, Melva, he seems stronger." "How long?" I asked again and was met by silence. We finished our dance, and he walked me back to my table. "Six months ... maybe longer," he finally answered me.

"Thank you," I whispered.

The rest of the night flew by like a vision, with Frank passing from one group to another, talking with everyone and regaling in the many stories told at his expense. Politicking, he'd once called it. As the evening drew to a close he remained at the door to bid each and every guest good night, standing at first, then needing to take a seat - but always smiling.

Three months and three days later, I sat shivering in the cold as his lodge brothers performed Masonic rites. I clutched the neatly folded flag while the strong arms of a friend led me to the waiting limousine.

About a year later, I had lunch with a new friend. She spoke of a wake she'd attended the night before. "What an absolutely beautiful way to say good-bye!" she remarked, obviously unaccustomed to such merriment.

I listened to her recount the frivolity, and I thought how sad that the dearly departed had missed such a fine evening. The "I should have done more" and "Why wasn't I stronger for him" guilt that had been my shroud began to slip away. My mind turned instead to Frank's joy at his last party.

"So, did you hold a wake for Frank?" my friend asked.

"Oh, yes," I replied. "It was a grand party, and he had the time of his life!"

_________________

by Melva Haggar Dye (c) 1999, from Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Heather McNamara.

*

When Carolyn Leverett's husband died unexpectedly three years ago, she reluctantly complied with his request to be cremated.

Now the Baptist laywoman is making advance plans for when she dies, and she knows one thing for sure: She wants to be cremated and have her remains co-mingled with those of her late husband.

What's happened over the last three years to sway her opinion so strongly? She became the owner of a funeral home and crematory that performs about 200 cremations a year.

Both her personal attitude and her business stand at the head of a growing trend in American society. Cremation is a red-hot business.

In many regions, cultural and religious concerns about cremation are disintegrating.

More than one-fourth of all Americans who died last year were cremated, according to estimates from the Cremation Association of North America. That's up from less than 10 percent in 1980.

By the Cremation Association's estimates, the trend toward embracing cremation will continue to grow in the years ahead, with one third of all the deceased being cremated by 2010. In some regions, such as the Mountain West and New England, the percentage of bodies being cremated could surpass 65 percent by 2010.

A 1999 study by Wirthlin Worldwide confirmed this trend by polling a random sample of American adults. The Wirthlin poll, conducted for the Funeral and Memorial Information Council, found those reporting they intend to choose cremation for themselves or their loved ones increasing to 46 percent, up from 32 percent in 1990.

Experts in the funeral business sometimes offer this comparison to illustrate the growing acceptance of cremation: When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the cremation rate in the United States was about 3 percent. The Roman Catholic Church, of which Kennedy was a member, had only two years earlier dropped its ban on cremation, and Catholic priests in the U.S. generally did not allow cremated remains to be brought into church buildings for a funeral mass.

Fast-forward to 1999, when John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash. He was cremated and had full Catholic services.

Because of differences in church polity, Baptists never had an official ban on cremation, although the practice has been rare. Traditional casket burials remain by far the most common practice among Baptists, but cremation is a growing trend in urban areas of the state, according to a number of pastors who conduct funerals.

Bob Beck is a longtime Texas pastor, now serving as interim pastor of First Baptist Church of Bedford. He has seen the trend toward embracing cremation not only among the churches he has served but among his own family as well.

In addition to those actually choosing cremation, "there has been a very marked increase in the number of people who are considering that as a possibility," he said.

He told the story of a series of tragedies that killed all three members of a family in one church he served -- the mother, father and a son. All three family members were cremated over that period of time. Ultimately, all three urns were placed together in a mausoleum.

Such a story simply could not have been told 10 or 15 years ago, Beck said. It wouldn't have happened.

At Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, cremations also are on the rise, said Leroy Summers, minister to older adults. Because he's served the church 18 years and knows many of the older members, he spends a great deal of time helping people make funeral arrangements.

"In those 18 years, I've seen a lot more people opting for cremation," Summers said.

The question often arises when he's working with church members in funeral pre-planning, and it's not because he raises the topic, he said.

"Many people are opting for cremation. It's less expensive, and burial costs have gotten so high. My own counsel with them is it's something they have to feel right about."

Hawaii, Washington, Nevada, Oregon and Montana lead the nation in percentage of cremations, each with more than 55 percent of all deaths handled by cremation last year.

In other parts of the country, including parts of the Bible Belt, the practice remains less common. Cremations account for less than 10 percent of all deaths in Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Guy Thompson, owner of Thompson's Harveson & Cole Funeral Home in Fort Worth, Texas, has been in the business 63 years. During that time, he's seen cremations grow from less than 1 percent of his business to about 20 percent.

He does not advocate cremation and said he would not choose it for one of his own family members unless the body had been subjected to severe trauma before death or at the time of death.

Traditional burial offers more dignity and respect for the body, Thompson said. "The body to me is very sacred because it was the vessel that housed the soul of a person."

People today choose cremation over burial for a number of reasons, and Thompson doesn't discount or discredit those choices. However, he sees the trend toward cremation fitting in with other societal trends, including lack of interest in family burial plots.

The reasons for embracing cremation are varied, experts report. And there doesn't seem to be a common profile of who favors cremation and who doesn't.

"It isn't just people who cannot afford a regular burial, though that is a part of the picture," Beck said. "It's people who choose not to have a burial plot. For them, it's a matter of taking up space. It's people who don't want to have a grave to remind the family of their loss. It's environmental sometimes. ... There's also some simplicity in it."

"It's just a style," he concluded. "It's a rapidly increasing style of dealing with the body of a deceased person."

All these factors were considerations for Leverett's husband in his request to be cremated.

He liked the simplicity of it, the economy of it, the logic of it, said Leverett, owner of Heritage Funeral Home and Crematory near Baylor Hospital in Dallas.

For his funeral, Leverett used what's known in the trade as a "rental casket," a beautiful hardwood casket that would cost thousands of dollars to purchase outright. Though not obvious to family and friends viewing the casket, the box has something like a tailgate on one end. The body actually rests in a cardboard insert that slides into and out of the wooden casket.

Though not all bodies to be cremated are embalmed, Leverett chose to have her husband embalmed because she wanted a more traditional visitation time and memorial service. After that, the casket liner holding the body was easily removed and taken to the crematorium.

She keeps a portion of his ashes at home. That's the part she wants to have co-mingled with her own ashes after her death.

But she took part of her husband's remains to Branson, Mo., one of their favorite vacation spots.

"We always hated to see the time coming when we had to go home," she explained. "So I spread his ashes there, and I said, 'Now you can stay here; you don't have to go home.'"

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RELIGIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT CREMATION FADING

As cremation becomes more popular in the United States, fewer people are asking serious theological questions about the practice. But such indifference has not always been the norm.

"I don't think there's any doubt but that Christian tradition started off in favor of burial and against cremation on the grounds that resurrection would be easier for God to pull off," said Steven Davis, professor of philosophy and religious studies at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.

Davis, a graduate of Princeton University's Divinity School, is one of few American theologians to have addressed this issue. He is author of a book titled "Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection."

Although the Greeks and Romans practiced cremation prior to the time of Christ, early Christians generally viewed it as a pagan practice, according to Davis and other historians.

One of the major arguments against cremation by Christians is anticipation of a bodily resurrection at the Second Coming of Jesus. The Apostle Paul, for example, talks about a "resurrection body" in 1 Corinthians 15.

"The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable," Paul wrote. "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

Most Baptists and most evangelical scholars agree that the Bible teaches a bodily resurrection from the dead. "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised," Paul wrote.

From the first century until now, no one this side of heaven has had knowledge of how that bodily resurrection will take place. But early Christians seemed to think the physical body ought to be preserved as much as possible through burial, Davis noted.

"That argument gets a little dicey when you imagine that some bodies of Christians who are going to be resurrected will have been in the ground 2,000 years or more," he noted. "It doesn't seem like it's any more difficult for God to resurrect someone whose body has been in the ground 2,000 years than someone who was cremated," especially if you believe God is all-powerful.

The old assumption was "that resurrection can only happen if God can look about and find the atoms or molecules of which my body consisted and put them back together," Davis said.

Scripture doesn't necessarily teach that, but the Bible is fairly vague on the details of burial and resurrection, he noted.

Many Christians today have a strong belief in bodily resurrection without believing the physical body must be preserved to make that happen.

"A lot of contemporary people think God can resurrect Steve Davis even if God doesn't find a single atom of what once was me," Davis said. "God can take whatever is available and configure those atoms in a Steve Davis way, and it will be me.

"The bottom line is, I don't think it makes any theological difference at all whether a person is buried or cremated," said Davis, who added that he is not an advocate for cremation.

When his wife of 38 years died last year, he had her buried in a traditional way.

His choice of a traditional burial "had nothing to do with belief in the resurrection," he said, even though he believes in resurrection.

The choice of cremation over burial is simply a personal preference, according to Guy Thompson, president of Thompson's Harveson & Cole Funeral Home in Fort Worth.

Although he's not an advocate of cremation either, about 20 percent of his business is in cremations. A devout Catholic, Thompson has worked closely with Baptist ministers for 63 years.

"Christian people would not participate in cremation for a long time because it was thought to be unkind to the body," he explained. The practice was associated more often worldwide with non-Christian or pagan peoples, he added.

Those concerns are seldom expressed today, said Bob Beck, a longtime Baptist pastor who has worked with Thompson on many funerals.

"I honestly have not run into a rabid opinion about theological concerns on anyone's part in recent years," Beck said. "If there is anything, it's just a quiet question: I don't know whether I would want to do that or not. I haven't heard anybody clearly enunciate a theological objection."

Likewise, Leroy Summers, minister to older adults at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, confirms he hears no theological objections to cremation.

Arguments that cremation might somehow diminish God's ability to resurrect a body are inconsistent, Summers and Beck agreed.

"Most of us cannot really imagine the greatness of God," Summers said. "What about people who have been burned in a plane crash, or during the war or have been sunk in ships? Somehow God's going to care for those. The Scripture says 'ashes to ashes ....'"

"It is utterly inconsistent that people would think that any decayed body -- however that might have decayed, naturally, in the ground or in the ocean or in a fire -- could not be resurrected by our omnipotent God," Beck added.

Carolyn Leverett was apprehensive about having her husband cremated after his death. But the Cedar Hill Baptist laywoman, who owns a funeral home in Dallas, heeded the wishes of her late husband anyway.

"He explained it to me in terms of general science, that matter can be neither made nor destroyed but you can change its form."

A dead body will deteriorate regardless of what is done to it, Leverett continued. To her husband, "dust to dust and ashes to ashes in a short time made more sense."

Cremation may be faster and appear more expedient, but family members should carefully consider their choices, advised Thompson. He believes there's psychological value in knowing exactly where a loved one is buried and being able to visit that place.

In cases where his clients choose cremation, he works to provide the most meaningful memorial service possible. He encourages families choosing cremation to have a traditional memorial service before the cremation if possible.

"I still feel like people are better off if they can say goodbye to the body," he said. "This provides confirmation that they indeed are dead."

If the body has been cremated before the service, he always places an empty chair and a small table in the place where the casket normally would be, symbolizing the person who is no longer present.

Thompson also encourages family members to have something at the service that symbolizes who the deceased was and what they will be remembered for. One family brought a wheelbarrow filled with garden tools. Another brought a bugle. Others bring photographs.

"Symbols can be very meaningful," he said.

*

SUMMARY: The practice of cremation has become increasingly acceptable since the 1970s. This acceptability, combined with its economic ease and apparent absence of theological conflicts, has enabled cremation to become established in Christian churches as an alternative to burial. The question must still be asked, however, Is it right for Christians to practice cremation? The answer is that no compelling biblical or nonbiblical arguments have been advanced for forsaking burial. Indeed, good biblical, theological, and symbolic importance may be found for burial, and thus there is no significant reason for Christians to forsake burial as a regular practice.

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Should Christians be concerned about the disposal of the dead? Almost everyone eventually will have to make decisions about how to dispose of deceased loved ones. There are a number of indicators that many families are opting for cremation.1 The average U.S. funeral home performs 27 cremations each year. In 1975, 7 percent of the people who died were cremated. In 1985, it was 15 percent. In 1992, it was 18.5 percent. Today the rate in the U.S. is 21 percent and it is projected to be 34 percent by 2010. What was once unpopular, even distasteful, is now a quick, inexpensive way to dispose of the dead.

In this article we seek to answer the question of whether it is right for Christians to regularly practice cremation. To answer this we first present and then critique the case for cremation, which includes biblical as well as nonbiblical arguments. Following this, the case for Christian burial is presented.

ALLEGED BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS FOR CREMATION

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There are four main arguments put forth to justify cremation as an acceptable practice for Christians:

FIRE SYMBOLIZES GOOD TO JEWS AND CHRISTIANS. William Phipps, one of the significant supporters of cremation as a Christian practice, argues for Jewish and Christian acceptance by pointing to the symbolic use of fire. He writes, "In biblical times fire was often regarded as symbolic of the divine presence, so it was appropriate to feature fire in sacred ceremonies. God was represented by a flaming torch in an encounter with Abraham, and at Mt. Sinai ‘the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire’ (Exod. 24:17)."2

Since fire represents God, cremation can be a symbol of the believer entering into the presence of God.

JESUS GAVE LITTLE ATTENTION TO DISPOSING OF THE DEAD. Phipps also argues that further allowance for cremation should be given because Jesus gave little attention to the disposal of the dead. In fact, His only words on the subject were, "Let the dead bury their own dead" (Luke 9:60). Jesus, Phipps argues, made a negative reference to earth burial when He compared hypocrites to "whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean" (Matt. 23:27).

PAUL’S THEOLOGY DEEMPHASIZED THE BODY. The apostle Paul, argues Phipps, found sacred value only in the living body. It was the living body that was the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:9), not the dead one. Phipps suggests that just as a temple is constructed for worship and is destroyed after it is no longer used for worship, the body may be dispensed with in a like manner. Paul viewed the body as an earthly tent that would soon be demolished after use. He concluded his view of death by stating, "We are confident...and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8).

Paul has his fullest discussion on life after death in 1 Corinthians 15. There he stated "that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (v. 50). According to Phipps,

[Paul] did not believe that the residual dust in a tomb would be

the substance of a new heavenly organism. When the apostle

writes about "the resurrection of the dead," he does not mean the

reassembling and the reanimation of the corpse. The expression

"spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15:5) which he uses does not refer to

the physical skeleton and the flesh that hangs on it. Rather, in

modern terminology, it means the self or the personality. What

removed death’s sting for Paul was not gazing at a prettified

corpse but the good news that mortal nature can "put on

immortality" (1 Cor. 15:44).3

Phipps concludes his view of Paul’s theology by stating that it "is fully compatible with body disposal by cremation. Contrariwise, those who adamantly advocate earth burial because it enhances bodily resurrection have a weak New Testament foundation on which to stand."4

CHRISTIAN ACCEPTANCE OF CREMATION IS GROWING. Phipps suggests a few reasons for the growing acceptance of cremation among Christians. First, "the broader tolerance most Christians now have on the subject [of cremation] is anchored in a reinterpretation of their basic sources of authority. They have realized that the method of corpse disposal in the biblical culture was not a major concern."5

Second, people, as well as ministers, have observed that "cremation marks a shift away from the irreligious materialism that is pervasive in Western civilization."6 Some have suggested that cremation encourages a wholesome attitude toward funerals. It eliminates the need for expensive caskets and embalming. It helps the grief process because there is no need to dwell on the dead, empty corpse.

CREMATION ONLY SPEEDS THE NATURAL PROCESS. Another reason given in defense of cremation is that the Bible condemns humankind to return to dust (Gen. 3:19), and cremation only brings that condemnation to pass in a more speedy way. If the body will eventually become dust, then why not hasten it? Cremation seems to be an immediate fulfillment of what the Bible forecasts for all mortals. In short, if God ordained the natural process of returning to dust, then how can cremation be against the will of God?

These arguments combined together would seem to make a strong case that it is biblically and theologically allowable for Christians to forsake the common practice of burial and adopt cremation.

RESPONSE TO BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS FOR CREMATION

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FIRE AND ACTIONS OF GOD. While fire in some cases may be seen as good or serve as a symbol for the divine presence, it is wrong to apply this to cremation. Fire was most often associated with warning and judgment (Lev. 10:1-2) - including eternal judgement (Matt. 25:4, etc.). To connect the burning of a human body with fire would more than likely bring images of human sacrifices (Lev. 18:21), criminals (Lev. 20:14; 21:9), and hell fire itself. Therefore, the symbol at best has a dual application and cannot be used to support cremation alone.

JESUS’ VIEW. The fact that Jesus gave little direct attention to something does not mean it is without importance. Jesus gave little attention to spousal abuse and less to abortion, yet surely this does not indicate His approval of these practices. Jesus, however, did give great attention to the authority and inspiration of Scriptures that clearly express the common practice and importance of burial (cf. Matt. 5:17-18; 22:29; John 10:35). Furthermore, Jesus attacked many Jewish traditions, but burial of the dead was not one of them.

When Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their own dead" (Luke 9:60), it was in response to an excuse a man gave Him when he desired to bury his father before following Jesus. The saying is a play on words in which Jesus identified the spiritually dead as those who do not follow Him. In effect, Jesus was saying, "Let the [spiritually] dead bury their own [physical] dead."7 The passage has nothing to do with approval of cremation or condemnation of burial. Rather, the passage, if it suggests anything about corpse disposal, gives acknowledgment to burial as the common practice that was so ingrained in Jewish society that reference to it was very common. What is noteworthy is that Jesus never said, "Let the dead CREMATE their own dead," but rather, "let the dead BURY their own dead."

Matthew 23:27 is likewise not a negative reference to burial. Rather, it is a negative reference to the scribes and Pharisees. It was they who appeared beautiful on the outside but who, like dead men in tombs, were unclean on the inside. The fact that the tombs of burial were so common to the people makes possible Jesus’ point concerning the religious leaders.

PAUL’S THEOLOGY. Phipps’s belief that Paul devalued dead bodies is totally without warrant. First, Paul never taught a dead body should be despised or destroyed. Therefore, Paul’s emphasis on the living body (1 Cor. 6:9) cannot be used to teach there is no value in a dead body. Second, Paul’s analogy of the body being a temple of the Holy Spirit is applied only to the living body. Paul nowhere affirmed that the body, like a temple, should be destroyed (i.e., some imposed means of destruction) after it is used. Therefore, Phipps’s analogy, that it can be destroyed after it is used, does not follow. Third, Paul’s Jewish background would strongly suggest that he practiced and approved of burial as the means of disposing of dead bodies. In fact, Paul seemed to imply this by means of an analogy he used for the resurrection body. In 1 Corinthians 15:42 Paul said, "The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable." In describing what happens to a body after death, Paul used an analogy of planting a seed, which is similar to burying a dead body (1 Cor. 15:36-44). This is because Paul’s view of the physical resurrection teaches that there is a continuity from the body of this life, which will be transformed and glorified, to the new resurrection body.

Phipps’s use of other Pauline references to the body are also taken out of context. Just because Paul preferred to be absent from the body and home with the Lord (1 Cor. 5:8), does not mean Paul did not care how the body was treated after death.

In 1 Corinthians 15:50, when Paul stated that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, he was referring to our corruptible bodies, as the very next phrase reveals: "For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality" (v. 53). Paul in no way was saying that this body is unimportant. He was simply drawing a contrast between the mortal body and the immortal body (vv. 45-50). The earthly body, because of its condition, cannot inherit the kingdom of God. God must change and raise it imperishable (vv. 51-54). Paul did not say that the resurrection body is without flesh and blood. Scripture clearly teaches that it will have "flesh and bones" because it will be like Jesus’ body (Luke 24:39; 1 John 3:2).

Phipps’s denial of a physical resurrection, where the earthly body is unimportant to the resurrection body, is also false. His rejection of the physical nature of the resurrection body is based, in part, on Paul’s reference to a "spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15:44). "Spiritual," however, was used here by Paul to mean immortal, not immaterial (i.e., nonmaterial). Paul used it to refer to a body dominated or directed by the spirit. It is a reference to the spiritual SOURCE of the body’s power, not a denial of its physical SUBSTANCE. It is a reference to the supernatural aspect of the body (1 Cor 15:40-44; cf. 10:4). Paul’s use of the parallelism that contrasts the natural and supernatural clearly indicates this usage. Furthermore, the reference to material things having a spiritual aspect to them was used elsewhere by Paul. In the same book he used that same word "spiritual" of a physical rock, physical food, and physical water (1 Cor. 10:3-4). It was their source that was "spiritual" or supernatural.

What about Phipps’s suggestion that for Paul the sting of death is not well represented by a prettified corpse and that it is the mortal nature that puts on immortality? First, Phipps does not know what Paul’s opinion was concerning the beautification of a corpse. Paul never wrote on the topic. Second, burying a corpse is the best representation of the Christian’s victory over death. While it is true that God is able to resurrect our bodies no matter what their condition might be (i.e., via burial or cremation), it is important to preserve the body for theological reasons. Human nature is a soul-body unity, and it is soul and body together that put on immortality. Further, the corpse is a good representation of this hope because it is that very body that will have numerical identity with the glorified body. What better symbol to have then the very body that will someday be glorified?8 As Paul said, it is the same mortal body that will "put on immortality" (1 Cor. 15:53). Another body or form will not replace it.

Finally, in light of Paul’s theological use and respect for the body, burial is a more compatible practice. There is, therefore, a precedence for earth burial not because it enhances bodily resurrection, but because it maintains a consistent expression of its theology that is well grounded in the New Testament.

CHRISTIAN ACCEPTANCE. While the reasons Phipps gives for the wider acceptance of cremation among some Christians may be influential, they are nonetheless flawed. First, Christians should not reinterpret biblical theology so that cremation can be more acceptable. If the Bible is God’s Word - as it claims and evidence supports it to be - then Christians today, even as in biblical times, do not have a right to reinterpret it to fit the current culture.9 For theological and not merely cultural reasons, burial as a method of corpse disposal was very important in biblical times.

Second, while extravagant materialistic funerals are certainly questionable, it is hard to imagine how the body of the deceased loved one contributes to this. Were all the early Christians and Jews materialistic because they preserved the body for burial? How does the body in a funeral make modern Westerners more materialistic than their Christian and Jewish ancestors who practiced viewing and burial? Whether corpse viewing is beneficial or not is an individual preference and cannot be used as an argument against burial per se.

FROM ASHES TO ASHES. Simply because a human practice speeds up what God ordained does not mean it is right. God ordained that all fallen beings would die (Gen. 2:16-17; cf. Rom. 5:12), but this does not justify our killing them to speed up the process. God ordained pain (Gen. 3:16), but this does not mean we should inflict it on others. There is an important difference between what God can do and what we should do. Many babies naturally abort and most adults die naturally, but this does not justify our killing them (Exod. 20:13). Of course, there is a difference. The body is already dead before it is cremated; but this no more justifies cremating it than it does burning a flag because it is going to rot anyway. Again, there is significance in symbolism, and the symbolism of destroying a body that God created and that God will resurrect is the wrong message to send. Likewise, the simple fact that given time the body will turn to dust does not mean that we should turn it to dust immediately after death. God created the body, and He desires that we respect it even in death.

NONBIBLICAL ARGUMENTS FOR CREMATION

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The following represent some of the more common nonbiblical reasons given to support the practice of cremation.

CREMATION IS MORE ECONOMICAL. The average cost for cremation in 1997 was around $600 to $900 dollars. The average cost of a funeral including embalming, casket, funeral service, and interment (not including the plot) is from $3,000 to $4,000. The comparison, it is argued, is easy to see. Cremation saves the family money.

CREMATION IS ECOLOGICALLY MORE DESIRABLE. For one thing, cremation saves valuable land in many instances. Cremation in these situations is greatly needed. Phipps’s point is that, as land becomes more scarce, cremation is more widely endorsed. Those choosing cremation realize that millions of acres of choice land are already given over to cemetaries, and they are convinced that better use should be made of our limited soil.

CREMATION IS THERAPEUTIC FOR THE MOURNERS. Phipps explains, "Finding no value in slow decomposition, some see no point in having morticians temporarily arrest this inevitable process by replacing the blood with embalming fluid. Nor do they find comfort in being deceived by cosmetics into thinking that the body is ‘just sleeping.' On the contrary, a clean incineration that quickly reduces the body of the deceased to its component elements can be therapeutic for mourners by expressing the final severance of the physical bond."10

RESPONSE TO NONBIBLICAL ARGUMENTS

=================================

ETHICS AND ECONOMY. The economical argument is appealing on a certain level since one can hardly argue to the contrary - cremation is less expensive than burial. Yet, what is least expensive is not always right. Doing evil is often cheaper than doing good. Sometimes a price has to be paid for doing what is right. If one has the means for burial, then one ought to do it.

ETHICS AND ECOLOGY. The argument concerning land does have some legitimacy in certain circumstances. Land in some areas is scarce; but in general this is not the case. There is plenty of land in many countries and cities that can be accessed for the purpose of burial. Over 1,000 people can be buried in just one acre of land. Bodies can also be layered in the same grave or reburied similar to what is done in other countries.11 Another option includes using or reusing above-ground crypts. This is often done in areas that have a high water table, which makes burial impossible.

THERAPY AND MORALITY. The therapeutic value argument cuts both ways. Some have argued that immediate cremation could lead to guilt and emotional problems. Alan Wolfelt observes that "seeing the body challenges the natural wish to avoid the reality of death. While [SIC], at the same time, encouraging healthy acceptance of the death."12 Deciding what is best for the grieving process is quite difficult. As burial advocate John Davis says, "Much of the therapeutic value of any funerary ritual depends on cultural conditioning, prior understanding of the death experience, the circumstance of death itself, the relationship to the deceased, and the emotional make-up of the survivors."13

THE CASE FOR BURIAL

===================

Admittedly there is no direct command regarding burial or prohibition of cremation.14 While the act of cremation, as such, is not a sin or an intrinsic evil like murder, burial is the general pattern set down in Scripture.15 Its continued practice is a reasonable inference drawn from biblical truths. Thus we believe the evidence supports the conclusion that Christians, if at all possible, should practice burial. It is more symbolically appropriate to do so. There may be circumstances, however, that make burial unwise, against the law, or even impossible; but rare exceptions should not be used to eliminate the general practice of burial.

There are at least six reasons for holding that Christians should practice burial. Each will be briefly stated. Taken together they offer good evidence for preserving the Christian practice of burial.

BURIAL FOLLOWS THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST. Jesus’ interment is described in great detail and was clearly a burial (Matt. 27:57-61; John 19:38-42). The fact that Jesus was resurrected three days later (according to Jewish reckoning), in the same body in which He died, gives assurance to the believer (John 20:1-30; Phil. 3:20-21). Burial not only shows respect for the body but it also symbolically anticipates its future - in the resurrection. Cremation, on the contrary, is more of a picture that death is the end of everything. Just as Christian baptism is symbolized by death and resurrection (Rom. 6:1ff.), so proper Christian burial can be part of the same picture.

JESUS’ BURIAL WAS ACCORDING TO THE GOSPEL. Paul used Jesus’ burial as part of the Gospel message in 1 Corinthians 15. Burial is an essential part of the "gospel" since Paul defined the "gospel" as involving death, burial, and resurrection appearances. Burial is the seal of death and resurrection is proof that death is not final (cf. Rom. 4:25; 2 Tim. 1:10). Hence, burial is a significant symbol since it portrays a crucial part of the gospel.

BURIAL PRESERVES THE CHRISTIAN BELIEF IN THE SANCTITY OF THE BODY. Christians believe God created man in His image (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:7).16 Even though God has no body (John 4:24), nevertheless in man this image of God is related to the body for at least three reasons. In Genesis 1:27 God included male and female bodies as associated with the image of God in man. According to Genesis 9:6, it is wrong to kill the body because it is linked to the image of God: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." It would make no sense to have such a curse if the image of God applied only to the soul, which man cannot kill (Matt. 10:28). Jesus Christ in a body is the exact representation of God’s nature. The Son "is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being" (Heb 1:3). If the image of God could be perfectly represented in man apart from the body, then the body would not be essential to resurrection. Finally, the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19-20). The body is important in Christian teaching, dead or alive, because it was uniquely designed to give expression to the image of God in man.

BURIAL SYMBOLIZES THE HOPE OF RESURRECTION. As Paul taught, the very body that is sown perishable is raised an imperishable body (1 Cor. 15:42). This is best symbolized by burial, for it anticipates the final preservation of the body in the resurrection. The image presented of the dead being asleep (1 Thes. 4:13-18) is also preserved through burial. The Christian has escaped the judgment by fire presented in the Bible (Rev. 20:14). Cremation is the wrong picture to remind believers of SALVATION IN THE BODY by resurrection (cf. Rom. 8:11). On the other hand, cremation better symbolizes pantheism, which in its Eastern forms is usually associated with a SALVATION FROM THE BODY by escaping the cycle of reincarnation.17

EARLY CHRISTIAN PRACTICE SUPPORTS BURIAL. Believers in the New Testament such as Ananias, Sapphira, and Stephen, were not cremated (Acts 5:6, 10; 8:1-2). To be sure, burial was a Jewish practice, and they were Jews, but they did not hesitate to reject Jewish practices that were contrary to their beliefs, such as circumcision (e.g., Gal. 2-3) and keeping the Jewish law (2 Cor. 3; Heb. 7-8). No such rejection of burial, however, is stated in the New Testament. When possible, early Christians were buried and cremation was looked on with great disdain because fire was often used to kill their martyrs.

BURIAL ALLOWS PROPER MEMORY OF THE DEAD. Burial or entombment, as Christians practice it, allows for an important part of the Christian belief - respect for and memory of the dead in the body in which we knew them. Regardless of whether the body is present or absent in a service, the knowledge of their burial puts their life in proper perspective as God made it and will one day restore it. In this way, Christian truth can be properly proclaimed. It is particularly important to promote such doctrines as creation and redemption at such a crucial time as ours in which these defining doctrines of Christianity are being compromised.

HOW IMPORTANT IS BURIAL VERSUS CREMATION? The answer to the question of the importance of this debate depends on what importance one places on a proper practice of what one believes, especially appropriate symbols. In fact, only if one rejects important Christian truths does cremation make sense. This is precisely the position of liberal Christians, and it is a reason why cremation finds wider acceptance in their congregations. Yet Christianity is not left intact after such doctrines as the bodily resurrection are discarded or ignored (Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 15:16, 17). To reject symbolism is to say the thing it symbolizes is not important. An attack on the symbol of burial and the anticipated resurrection of the body is an attack on important Christian doctrines. It is analogous to burning a U.S. flag, which is a symbol of our country. To burn the flag is to attack the country it symbolizes. Likewise, to burn the body is to attack the person - and the God who created man in His image (Gen. 1:27; 2:7). Furthermore, it denies the resurrection in a symbolic way by pronouncing death final.

Of course, there are circumstances where burial is not possible. In those cases, we must do the next best thing we can do to preserve the original intent. In the Old Testament when a Jew could not keep the Feast of Passover on the first month because he was contaminated, he was commanded to keep it on the second month (Num. 9:6-13). He was not to neglect doing it altogether. Likewise, even when cremation is called for because of bacterial or viral contamination, it should be done with regret and respect. For example, the ashes should be preserved, not cast to the wind or sea.

A FINAL THOUGHT

===============

From the Christian perspective, burial is the pattern used in Scripture and has been historically followed by the church. Of course, it should be pointed out that cremation is no hindrance to the act, or event, of the resurrection. God, in His omnipotence, is certainly able, if He so chooses, to collect every atom and molecule, no matter where it is found in the universe, and reconstruct our same bodies in a glorified state. It does not follow from this, however, that cremation is an acceptable general practice. Whereas burial is an important practice and symbol in Scripture, cremation is a poor symbol of scriptural truth. While cremation is not an intrinsic evil, it nonetheless symbolically vitiates some important biblical truths. In this sense, cremation is a hindrance to the promotion of resurrection truth and should not be a regular practice of Christians. We thus conclude that all Christians should practice Christian burial unless extraordinary circumstances do not permit it.

==========================

NOTES:

1. Joanne Leonard, "Ashes to Ashes," THE SATURDAY EVENING POST March-April 1994, 63-64.

2. William E. Phipps, "The Consuming Fire for Corpses," THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, March 1981, 221.

3. William E. Phipps, CREMATION CONCERNS (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1989), 55.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 53.

6. Ibid., 59.

7. Robert H. Stein, THE NEW AMERICAN COMMENTARY: LUKE, vol. 24 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), 301.

8. See Norman L. Geisler, THE BATTLE FOR THE RESURRECTION (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1989).

9. See Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, rev. & exp. ed. (Chicago: Moody Press. 1986).

10. Phipps, "The Consuming Fire for Corpses," 221.

11. John Davis, WHAT ABOUT CREMATION? A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE (Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1989), 77.

12. Alan Wolfelt, DEATH AND GRIEF: A GUIDE FOR CLERGY (Muncie, IN: Accelerated Development, 1988), 123, as cited in Davis, 79.

13. Davis., 79-80.

14. Despite efforts to show the contrary by James W. Fraser (CREMATION: IS IT CHRISTIAN? [Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1985]), a more proper investigation of texts related to cremation shows this to be the case. See John J. Davis, WHAT ABOUT CREMATION? (Ch. 4.)

15. This is the position articulated by Davis, WHAT ABOUT CREMATION? 89-90.

16. See Norman L. Geisler, KNOWING THE TRUTH ABOUT CREATION (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1989), ch. 1.

17. See Norman L. Geisler and J. Yutaka Amano, THE REINCARNATION SENSATION (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1987).

This article first appeared in the Summer 1998 issue of the Christian Research Journal.

CRI, P.O. Box 7000, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688

Phone (949) 858-6100 and Fax (949) 858-6111

STATEMENT DC765

In his book, “Just as Long as I'm Riding Up Front,” retired undertaker Ray McIver tells of belonging to a Kiwanis club in the 1950's in the small town of San Marcos, Texas. Now the Kiwanians in that little town were a lively bunch, all except one old guy by the name of Roger Shelton. Roger came to the meetings late, sat by himself and rarely said a word. At the meetings, the club usually had some entertainment before taking care of business, and McIver recalls the time when they had a local barbershop quartet sing for them. McIver says he doesn't remember the name of the group except that they were nicknamed “The Funeral Four” because they had been asked to sing so many times at the local funeral home that they began to sound that way. “I'm sure they were pretty good when they started,” McIver says, “but they had been singing together for so long and had been asked to sing so many of those terrible “funeral home songs” that they sounded pretty bad.

On this particular night at the Kiwanis club meeting, the quartet had decided to sing “Fairest Lord Jesus,” sure to be a crowd-pleaser. But somehow, one of the singers started off on the wrong note and everything went downhill from there. What came out was one of the most discordant, out of key renditions of “Fairest Lord Jesus” that's ever been sung. In fact it was so bad that it was all the men in the room could do to keep from busting out laughing. Well, when it was over and the quartet sat down, nobody could think of anything to say except old Roger Shelton. Just loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, Roger said, “You know, that's what I dread about dying.”

Have you ever noticed that most people dread dying? Most people fear facing that day. Nobody wants to meet the Grim Reaper. Unless, of course, you believe the Easter story.

When you're little, your parents seem immortal. They're not. Sooner or later, most of us get the kind of call I got not long ago - a parent is gone. In my case, the hospital called to say my Mom had been admitted due to a medical emergency, but her body gave out and she was gone. No matter what the circumstances, the death of someone you love is always a shock. When you're the only living child and your other parent is already gone, there can be a numbing list of arrangements that you suddenly have to make. Thankfully, that wasn't the case with my Mom. Mercifully, funeral arrangements had been made and paid for years ago.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Most Important Arrangements You'll Ever Make.”

It was a real blessing to have funeral arrangements made in advance. But my mother had made much more important pre-arrangements for the day she died, and those arrangements were the greatest blessing of all. Years ago, my Mom made a choice that guaranteed she would be in heaven for all eternity. These are the most important arrangements you will ever make - or fail to make.

God knows we're so busy living that we don't give much thought to dying. In fact, we generally try to avoid thinking about death as much as possible. Until we're looking in the casket at someone we've just lost. It's hard to look face-to-face at death like that and not think about, “Where will I be when it's me there?” This isn't about being morbid. It's about being ready. If I know I'm prepared for something that's coming up, I don't have to keep thinking about it. It's settled. There's nothing more critical for you to settle than your eternal destination. Avoiding those arrangements carries a price too high to pay.

That's why the Bible says in Amos 4, verses 12 and 13, our word for today from the Word of God, “Prepare to meet your God ... He who forms the mountains, creates the wind ... and treads the high places of the earth - the Lord God Almighty is His name.” It is this awesome God who will decide when you and I will take our last breath; when eternity will begin for each and every one of us. The Bible says that you and I have an appointment with our Creator - the time when the old-timers used to say you “meet your Maker.” God's Book says, “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). A divine appointment, the nearness of which we cannot know, and judgment for every wrong thing we've ever done.

When you face God, it's too late to make your arrangements. That needs to be done here and now. So many people think they'll get to heaven by being good. Well, they're wrong - eternally wrong. The Bible clearly explains: “It is by grace (that's undeserved love) that you have been saved, through faith - and this ... is the gift of God - not by works” (Ephesians 2:8-9). All our good can't possibly cancel our sin because sin has an eternal death penalty, and a death penalty can't be paid by doing good. Someone has to die, and Someone did. Jesus did - so you don't have to. Your only hope is grabbing Him like a drowning person would grab a rescuer.

If you've never done that, you're not “prepared to meet your God.” But you can be, beginning this very day. You can actually know from this moment on that you're going to heaven when you die, because the sin that would keep you out of heaven has been forever forgiven by the One who died for that sin. Your spiritual rescue begins the moment you say, “Jesus, I'm putting my total trust in You and what You did on the cross for me. I'm Yours.”

There is no greater peace, no greater security, than to know your arrangements for eternity have all been made. This very day you can prepare to meet your God.

__________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

Live burial is not unheard of; it has always been a real (albeit distant) possibility. Indeed, it’s conceivable the first burials of humans were accidental, live ones: Ill and wounded hunters were left in caves with the entrances sealed off to keep out wild animals while the rest of the hunting parties continued after their prey. It was hoped that once the victims had regained their strength, they would push the barriers out of the way and rejoin the group. Some died in those caves, however.

The still-living have been consigned to an eternal dirt nap often enough that fears of premature burial are based on fact as much as on lore. Numerous cases of interments and almost interments dot history.

In the first century, the magician Simon Magus, according to one report, buried himself alive, expecting a miracle — a miracle that didn’t happen. On Iona, in the sixth century, one of St. Columba’s monks, Oran, was dug up the day after his burial and found to be alive. Legend has it when he told his fellows he had seen heaven and hell, he was promptly dispatched and re-interred on grounds of heresy. And the 13th-century Thomas a Kempis, the reputed author of the great devotional work The Imitation of Christ, was never made a saint because, it was said, when they dug up his body for the ossuary they found scratch marks on the lid of his coffin and concluded that he was not reconciled to his fate.

In the late 16th century, the body of Matthew Wall was being borne to his grave in Braughing, England. One of the pallbearers tripped, causing the others to drop the coffin, thus reviving the dear departed. Wall lived on for several more years, dying in 1595. He celebrated his ‘resurrection’ every year.

In the early 17th century, Marjorie Elphinstone died and was buried in Ardtannies, Scotland. When grave robbers attempted to steal the jewelry interred with her, the deceased surprised the heck out of them by groaning. The robbers fled for their lives, and Elphinstone revived, walked home, and outlived her husband by six years.

Marjorie Halcrow Erskine of Chirnside, Scotland, died in 1674 and was buried in a shallow grave by a sexton intent upon returning later to steal her jewelry. While the light-fingered sexton was trying to cut off her finger to retrieve a ring, she awoke. In her additional years of life after her first burial, she went on to give birth to and raise two sons. No one knows what happened to the sexton.

The 17th century saw a number of premature burials. Collapse and apparent death were not uncommon during epidemics of plague, cholera, and smallpox. From contemporary medical sources, William Tebb compiled 219 instances of narrow escape from premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial, 10 cases in which bodies were accidentally dissected before death, and 2 cases in which embalming was started on the not-yet-dead.

Some instances were especially heartbreaking. In the 1850s, a young girl visiting Edisto Island, South Carolina, died of diptheria. She was quickly interred in a local family’s mausoleum because it was feared the disease might otherwise spread. When one of the family’s sons died in the Civil War, the tomb was opened to admit him. A tiny skeleton was found on the floor just behind the door.

A correspondent at Naples states that the Appeals Court has had before it a case not likely to inspire confidence in the minds of those who look forward with horror to the possibility of being buried alive. It appeared from the evidence that some time ago, a woman was interred with all the usual formalities, it being believed that she was dead, while she was only in a trance. Some days afterwards, when the grave in which she had been placed was opened for the reception of another body, it was found that the clothes which covered the unfortunate woman were torn to pieces, and that she had even broken her limbs in attempting to extricate herself from the living tomb. The Court, after hearing the case, sentenced the doctor who had signed the certificate of decease, and the Major who had authorized the interment each to three month’s imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter. [British Medical Journal, 1877]

A recent “not quite all the way over the line yet” news story comes from 1993:

Sipho William Mdletshe might as well be dead, as far as his fiancee is concerned.

Declared deceased after a traffic accident in Johannesburg, South Africa, Mdletshe, 24, spent two days in a metal box in a mortuary before his cries alerted workers, who rescued him.

But Mdletshe is heartbroken, because his fiancee, who also was hurt in the crash, doesn’t believe his story and refuses to see him. She thinks he’s a zombie who returned from the dead to haunt her.

In 1994, 86-year-old Mildred C. Clarke spent ninety minutes in a body bag in the morgue at the Albany Medical Center Hospital before an attendant noticed the bag was breathing. She’d been found sprawled on her living room floor, cold and motionless, with no detectable heartbeat, breath, or other signs of life. She was also as stiff as a board. The coroner didn’t have to think twice about declaring her dead. She apparently did not agree with his verdict, and, with care, lived a week longer.

Okay, so it happens. But how common an occurrence is it?

In 1896, T.M. Montgomery, who supervised the disinterment and moving of the remains at the Fort Randall Cemetery, reported that “nearly 2% of those exhumed were no doubt victims of suspended animation.”

These days, getting accidentally buried alive in the United States or Canada borders on the impossible. Embalming procedures will finish off anyone not quite all the way through the Pearly Gates, and the families of deceased citizens of both those countries overwhelmingly opt to have their loved ones embalmed.

(Contrary to popular belief, embalming is not mandatory in the United States. Corpses carry little disease risk — we pose a much greater threat to the public health while we’re still breathing, bleeding, and shedding skin. Proof of this lack of danger is found in the Centers for Disease Control’s study into the risk factors inherent to workers in the funeral business — they found those who deal with cadavers have no greater mortality rate than the general population, nor does their occupation appear to hold special danger of infection.

Moreover, despite the claims of the funeral industry, normal embalming does not kill all disease-causing organisms in a cadaver. One study found common pathogens (including the tuberculosis bacillus) still present in 22 of 23 cadavers within 24 to 48 hours of embalming. Other infectious organisms are vitually unaffected by normal embalming, including those that cause anthrax, tetanus and gas gangrene.)

There have been deaths by embalming. In 1837, Cardinal Somaglia was taken ill, passed out, and was thought to have died. Preparations were begun immediately to embalm this very important church official. When the surgeon/embalmer cut into the chest to instill embalming materials, he could see the cardinal’s heart still beating. Worse, at this point, the cardinal awoke from his stupor and wisely pushed the knife away from his chest. His effort was to no avail, though — the chest incision killed him.

Sometimes the presumed corpse’s ‘still living’ status is only discovered when someone sets about to perform a post-mortem. A 1996 newspaper article reports:

In 1984, a post-mortem examination was being conducted in a mortuary in New York. When the pathologist made the first cut the “corpse” leaped up and grabbed him by the throat. The pathologist died of shock.

The case of Daphne Banks, who was pronounced dead on New Year’s Eve [1995] but showed signs of life when she got to the mortuary, is by no means unique. From the time of Plato to the present there are many well-documented accounts of the dead coming back to life.

The Reverend Schwartz, a missionary, was brought back to life by hearing his favourite hymn played at his funeral. The mourners were surprised to hear his voice from the coffin joining in the singing. Nicephorus Glycas, the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Lesbos, laid in state in his church for two days while mourners filed past his coffin. Suddenly he sat up and demanded to know what everybody was looking at.

The discovery that a corpse still has some life left in him isn’t a new phenomenon:

The 20 of Februarie [1587], a strange thing happened to a man hanged for felonie at Saint Thomas Waterines, being begged by the Chirugeons of London, to have made of him an anatomie, after he was dead to all men’s thinking, cut downe, throwne into a carre, and so brought from the place of execution through the Borough of Southwarke over the bridge, and through the Citie of London to the Chirugeons Hall nere unto Cripelgate: The chest being opened there, and the weather extreme cold hee was found to be alive, and lived till three and twentie of Februarie, and then died. [Stowe’s Annals, 1587]

One of the most famous of such cases is that of Anne Greene who, after being hanged for a felony on 14 December 1650, was sent to the anatomy hall to be used for dissection. She awoke and lived on for many years afterwards.

Rapist-murderer William Duell was hanged at Tyburn in November 1740 and taken for dissection. The assistant noted the deceased was breathing and had a faint pulse. Although he was in great pain, two hours later the dead man was sitting in a chair drinking wine. He was sent back to prison and later exiled for life.

Around the same time, Professor Junkur of Halle University received a sack with the body of a hanged criminal to be used for dissection. The body was dumped in his house after dark when the professor had already gone to bed. During the night, the professor was awakened by the figure of a naked and shivering man holding an empty sack. The professor decided to help the man escape further punishment and some years later encountered him on the street, a wealthy merchant with a wife and two children.

Not every anatomist was so kind-hearted. The Newgate Calendar quoted the surgeon who worked on an eighteenth century German criminal as saying:

I am pretty certain, gentlemen, from the warmth of the subject and the flexibility of the limbs, that by a proper degree of attention and care the vital heat would return, and life in consequence take place. But when it is considered what a rascal we should again have among us, that he was hanged for so cruel a murder, and that, should we restore him to life, he would probably kill somebody else. I say, gentlemen, all these things considered, it is my opinion that we had better proceed in the dissection.

Okay, so it was (and still is) possible to be buried alive or to meet your maker on a post-mortem table. The prospect is chilling, and numerous people have gone to great lengths to make sure it doesn’t happen to them. The practice of ‘waking’ the dead (having someone sit with the deceased from the time of death until burial in case he ‘wakes up’) began out of this concern. Especially in bygone days when a number of illnesses could cause the sufferer to slip into a coma and thus make it appear all life functions had been snuffed out, the danger of overly hasty interment was real. (Edgar Allen Poe’s macabre short stories, most notably “Premature Burial,” certainly helped increase such fears among the general populace.)

Some went so far as to specify in their wills they wanted special tests performed on their bodies to make sure they were actually dead. Surgical incisions, the application of boiling hot liquids, touching red-hot irons to their flesh, stabbing them through the heart, or even decapitating them were all specified at different times as a way of making sure they didn’t wake up six feet under. Some opted for being buried with the means to do themselves in, and guns, knives, and poison were packed into coffins along with the deceased.

The screams of a young Belgian girl who came out of a trance-like state as the earth fell on her coffin so upset Count Karnice-Karnicki, Chamberlain to the Czar and Doctor of the Law Faculty of the University of Louvain, that he invented a coffin which allowed a person accidentally buried alive to summon help through a system of flags and bells. Patented in 1897, this hermetically-sealed coffin had a tube, about 3.5 inches in diameter, extending to a box on the surface. The tube was attached to a spring-loaded ball sitting on the corpse’s chest. Any movement of the chest would release the spring, opening the box lid and admitting light and air into the coffin. To signal for help, a flag would spring up, a bell would ring for half an hour, and a lamp would burn after sunset. Similar “life-signalling” coffins were patented in the United States.

Those old-fashioned devices might sound quaint and out of place in modern society, but concern over live burial has prompted the redirection of newer technologies to take the place of red flags and whistles.

Evangelist Mary Baker Eddy has long been rumored to have been interred along with a functioning telephone. That bit of popular lore likely grew out of a misremembering of the circumstances of her burial. After she died at her home in Boston, in December 1910, her body was kept at the general receiving vault at Mount Auburn Cemetery in nearby Cambridge for several months while her monument was being constructed. Because she was a world renowned figure and there was some fear of thievery, a guard was hired to stay with the body until it was interred and the tomb sealed, and a telephone was installed at the receiving vault for his use during that period. There was never a phone at the monument, inside or outside.

The same rumor is associated with Aimee Semple McPherson, another famous evangelist. She was buried in 1944 in Los Angeles’ Forest Lawn Memorial Park. McPherson used a telephone on the stage of her Angeles Temple to keep in contact with her radio crew during sermons, and this may have contributed to the rumor. More likely, people confused her with Mary Baker Eddy.

In 1995 a $5,000 Italian casket equipped with call-for-help ability and survival kit went on sale. Akin to beeping devices which alert relatives to an elderly family member’s being in trouble, this casket is equipped with a beeper which will sound a similar emergency signal. The coffins are also fitted with a two-way microphone/speaker to enable communication between the occupant and someone outside, and a kit which includes a torch, a small oxygen tank, a sensor to detect a person’s heartbeat, and even a heart stimulator.

Those worried about premature burial would do well to consider Point #10 of “Short Reasons for Cremation,” a 12-point pamphlet circulated in Australia at the turn of the century: Cremation eliminates all danger of being buried alive.

History does record some instances of deliberate live burial. It was a method of execution employed in Roman times for vestal virgins who broke their vows of chastity, and some medieval monks and nuns were also thus punished for the same crime. Plutarch described the process for vestal virgins:

... a narrow room is constructed, to which a descent is made by stairs; here they prepare a bed, and light a lamp, and leave a small quantity of victuals, such as bread and water, a pail of milk, and some oil; so that body which had been consecrated and devoted to the most sacred service of religion might not be said to perish by such a death as famine. The culprit herself is put in a litter, which they cover over, and tie her down with cords on it, so that nothing she utters may be heard. They then take her to the Forum... When they come to the place of execution, the officers loose the cords, and then the high priest, lifting his hands to heaven, pronounces certains prayers to himself before the act; then he brings out the prisoner, being still covered, and placing her upon the steps that lead down to the cell, turns away his face ... the stairs are drawn up after she has gone down, and a quantity of earth is heaped up over the entrance to the cell ... This is the punishment of those who break their vows of virginity.

Medieval monks and nuns who broke their vows of chastity were often walled into small niches, just barely large enough for their bodies. They also were given a pittance of food and water, and the grim benediction Vade in Pacem (Depart in Peace).

Some have been buried alive to serve the dead in the next life. In Africa, for example, two live slaves (a man and a woman) were interred with each dead Wadoe headman. The man was given a bill-hook to use to cut wood for fuel in the next life, and the woman cradled the dead chief’s head in her lap. In 1849, an observer at the funeral of King Thien Tri of Cochin, China, reported that along with rich and plentiful grave goods, all of the king’s childless wives were entombed with his body, thus guaranteeing he’d be henpecked throughout eternity but would at least get his meals on time.

[see also HolwickID #7116]

It will be standing room only for those being buried at a new Australian cemetery that aims to provide cheap, environmentally friendly burials.

Australia's Victoria state government has approved plans for the cemetery at Darlington, 200 km (125 miles) southwest of the Victorian capital Melbourne, where corpses will be buried vertically in body bags -- instead of caskets -- on grazing land. “When you die, you are returned to the earth with a minimum of fuss and with no paraphernalia that would affect the environment,” a spokesman for Palacom, which will establish the cemetery, told Australian Associated Press on Thursday.

“You're not burning 90 kg of gas in a crematorium and there's no ongoing maintenance costs.”

He said burials would cost about A$1,000 ($781), with bodies held in a morgue in Melbourne and transported to the cemetery in batches of up to 15 in a bid to reduce costs. Animals would be allowed to graze on the land again once it was stable.

________

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

What truly inspires you? Baseball fans can now show their ultimate devotion by resting in peace inside a coffin or urn inscribed with their team colors and insignia. Baseball has set up a marketing deal with a company called Eternal Image. The effort begins next season with the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Phillies, Cubs and Dodgers. It could eventually include all 30 teams.

Each urn will be stamped with a message saying Major League Baseball officially recognizes the deceased as a lifelong fan of that team.

After starting with baseball, Eternal Image hopes to branch out by making similar deals with the NFL, the NHL and NASCAR. “We have been receiving these requests either directly or through our clubs for several years,” said Susan Goodenow, an MLB spokeswoman. “Passionate fans express their love of their team in a number of different ways.”

Kurt Soffe, a spokesman for the funeral association, said the MLB caskets are part of a trend of trying to capture “the life and the passions of the person that has passed away.” At this year’s convention, for instance, there was a Harley Davidson-themed casket and one featuring Betty Boop. “More and more families are wanting to have something that respects the personalities,” Soffe said.

Farmington Hills, Michigan-based Eternal Image, which also makes a line of Vatican-themed products, “wanted to break into a sports venue of some kind,” said Clint Mytych, the company’s CEO. “It is the all-American sport.” He said he has gotten at least 1,000 inquiries since June.

________

Adapted from "Marketing Deal Allows Departed to be Fans for Eternity," by Patrick Walters, Copyright 2006 The Associated Press, 10/18/06.

Just a few days ago, I was sitting in a restaurant with Bill, a dear friend of mine whom I led to the Lord a few years ago. We were talking about his spiritual growth when the conversation transitioned to the mess our world is in.

Bill particularly was concerned with the terrorist threat and the crisis we face on so many international fronts such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. I shared with my friend about the power of God to change a nation. He was pretty skeptical about the ability or the willingness of our government to do anything about all of this, and about the general future of our world.

In the middle of our conversation, a server I knew came to our table and said, “There is a man eating here today who knows you. I think you may want to talk to him.” The man, Pastor Joe, was a godly leader from a local church in the area. I had worked with him in unity events when I was a pastor. As we began to talk, it was obvious that he was excited. I was stunned when I found out why -- he was preaching his wife’s funeral that afternoon.

He shared with us the opportunity that this would present. Many people would be there who did not know Christ. He had been married to his dear wife for 52 years. For the last eight she had battled Alzheimer’s disease. Joe told me about five people who had come to Christ through his wife’s illness. He shared of her courage and grace through terrible suffering. He told me about one young man who had no interest in his witness until he met Joe’s wife.

“When I realized that you lived with this joy while your wife has this horrible disease, I knew that what you had was real,” the man told Joe. And he became a follower of Christ! And then Joe spoke with passion about the specific people who would be at the funeral that day who needed Jesus.

What an incredible honor it was to turn that restaurant into a sanctuary and go to the Father on behalf of Joe, as I prayed for God’s Spirit to fill Him as he preached, and to draw people to Jesus. As soon as I finished, a woman approached Joe and said, “I knew your wife. I can’t tell you how she impacted my life. I thank God for both of you.” Then I watched Joe make his way out the door and on to his mission.

My friend Bill watched this whole scene. Then something occurred to me.

“Bill,” I said, “Do you know why America has been so blessed by God? Why we are glad we live here instead of in a place like Iran or North Korea?”

“Why?” he asked.

“I believe it is because of frail elderly women with Alzheimer’s and humble, passionate pastors who may never have their name in lights and millions more just like them. For more than 200 years, an army of Christ-followers just like Joe and his wife have spread out across this land, loving, serving, sharing the Good News of Jesus, often at incredible sacrifice. One by one they don’t make the news. But together, they have changed history. This country was born in spiritual power and blessing because of them. This country has been sustained by them. And if we want to change America and this world, I think all we have to do is join them.”

We sat in silence for a few moments and then had the opportunity to pray and share with our server, as we enjoyed the privilege of joining Joe’s mission.

If the Lord delays his coming, those living 200 years from now are depending on us to keep this country great and to continue to be a light of goodness and hope to the whole world. And that requires the sacrifice of those who are defending us in far-away places right now. And it requires that we do our best to choose godly people to govern us. But I think most of all, it requires something of you. Something that will take you out of your comfort zones and your comfortable pews. Something that will take you away from self-centered, club-like Christianity and into the lives of people you have not even noticed. And something that will become the greatest joy of your life. To make America great again, to bring hope to the world again, we must make evangelism good news again.

Mrs. Frances Hiller, of Wilmington, Massachusetts, passed away in the spring of 1900. Mrs. Hiller was not known for the substance of her life, but for the dreams of her death.

She bought a $30,000 carved coffin, placed it in her parlor, and frequently climbed into it to show visitors just how glorious she would appear. After tiring of that in-and-out process, she placed a wax dummy in the ornate box and dressed it in her $20,000 funeral robe. Thirty-five years after her death, the gaudy Hiller mausoleum, which included an identical coffin containing her husband, was seen as an eyesore and destroyed.

The reason folks are so preoccupied with their burial status is usually due to their lack of belief in God's Word. For Christians, there are these comforting words: "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands" (2 Corinthians 5:1 NIV. Sorry, but your earthsuit is as impermanent and disposable as a funeral cloth tent. Your heavensuit, however, will be eternally glorious!

- Jim Bassett Reflections

========================

Another version by Kip Davis, published 8/17/09

FROM LIFE TO DEATH

During the 1890’s Mrs. Frances Hiller was making great preparations. She had just bought a new dress and had paid more than $50,000 for necessities. However, she was not preparing for a party, she was getting things together for the greatest funeral ever.

Mrs. Hiller had married a very successful doctor who made a fortune when he patented a medicine. They had 23 children together, all died, including seven sets of twins. Mrs. Hiller longed to be with her children in Heaven. All she ever thought about was passing on to her reward.

Mrs. Hiller purchased a funeral robe for $20,000 and had two coffins hand crafted at $30,000 a piece. She would often climb into the coffins to show visitors what she would look like at her funeral. The coffins had carvings of ivy vines, angels, cupids, dragons, bats, and lizards crawling out of a skull’s mouth.

Dr. Hiller was the first to pass away and the first coffin was not complete. Mrs. Hiller had his body placed in a vault until it was ready. When it was finished, she had it placed in a mausoleum preceding a funeral of a military band and 2,000 people carrying lighted torches.

Five years after Dr. Hiller’s death, Mrs. Hiller married her chauffer, on the condition he change his name to Henry Hiller, her first husband’s name. They were married for seven years, and finally, Mrs. Hiller got her wish. She died in the year 1900. Her body was placed in a coffin that was a replica of her first husband’s. It was so heavy it took ten men to carry it. The funeral wagon was drawn by four coal-black horses covered with black netting. It sagged and almost capsized from the weight as it was pulled down the street. It also had to be cut down because it was too high and would not pass under the town’s trolley wires.

There was much excitement about the town. A local journalist described the event as matching the excitement of the local cattle fair. Mrs. Hiller was placed along side her first husband in the mausoleum in Wilmington, Massachusetts. There the coffins lay until 1935 when the mausoleum was declared an eyesore and destroyed. The magnificent coffins were then buried. A pair of urns and bronze plaques now mark their location.

________

http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/Columnists/Kip_Davis/FROM_LIFE_TO_DEATH/23937

Harvard University’s humanist chaplain considers himself something of a ministerial vanguard -- a help and inspiration to fellow unbelievers. Furthermore, he is evangelistic in his promotion of unbelief as a foundation for meaning. Preparing to preside over a funeral service, he carries a book of readings appropriately titled FUNERALS WITHOUT GOD.

David Abel of THE BOSTON GLOBE describes the chaplain, Greg Epstein, age 30, as “a kind of ministerial paradox, a member of the local clergy who disavows God, preaches to atheists and agnostics, and seeks to build the equivalent of a church for nonbelievers and others skeptical of or alienated by religion.”

The fascinating aspect of this story is the fact that humanists would need chaplains. Why do atheists and agnostics need clergy? The reason is quite simple -- they can’t get around the big questions. A funeral requires us to face those questions as much as some might like to avoid them. Even if an atheist has no ground for hope in a life to come, he can at least be comforted by the knowledge that someone with ministerial credentials is there to commemorate his death.

As the paper explains:

In a world where zealots crash planes into buildings in the name

of God and politicians use the Bible to craft public policy,

Epstein sees himself as in the vanguard of an emerging movement

fueled by the rise of skepticism, advances in science and

technology, and a spreading aversion toward radical religious

ideologies and traditions. He and other humanists, who also call

themselves atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, secularists, or

brights, point to a survey published in January by the Pew

Research Center for the People & the Press, which found that 20

percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 say they have

no religious affiliation or consider themselves atheists or

agnostics – nearly double those who said that in a similar survey

20 years ago. Another Pew survey in March concluded the nation

is witnessing a “reversal of increased religiosity observed in

the mid-1990s.” Today, 12 percent of Americans surveyed age 20

and older describe themselves as not religious, up from 8 percent

in 1987. “This change,” the survey’s authors wrote, “appears to

be generational in nature, with each new generation displaying

lower levels of religious commitment than the preceding one.”

There is reason to believe that Epstein may indeed be the vanguard of an emerging movement. Unbelief is all the rage these days, with best-selling books promoting atheism and secularists newly emboldened to trumpet their numbers and influence. An academic community like Harvard University, while far from completely secular, does offer a far more secularized environment than would be found in the heartland. Given the tenor and worldview of the academic elites, a humanist chaplain at Harvard makes sense.

Epstein prefers to call himself a humanist rather than an atheist because humanism is a more positive term, he explains. “Atheism is what I don’t believe in; humanism is what I do believe in,” he says. He defines humanism as a “philosophy of life without supernaturalism that affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment aspiring to the greater good of humanity.”

Of course, non-supernaturalism is the very heart of atheism. So it is hard to see why affirming non-supernaturalism is more positive than affirming atheism. Either way, the point is to create or find some meaning for life without God.

The report in The Boston Globe does make the point about the generational dimension here. As Abel reports:

Students on college campuses and others have begun to organize

nonbelievers. The number of campus groups affiliated with the

Secular Student Alliance, for example, has increased by more than

50 percent in the past two years, to more than 80 groups, says

August E. Brunsman IV, executive director of the Albany, New

York-based alliance. Since January, the Center for Inquiry in

Amherst, New York, a science-promoting umbrella group, has

sponsored or helped organize more than 50 atheist outfits on

campuses from the University of Georgia Law School to the

University of Texas at Austin to Kent State University in Ohio,

says D.J. Grothe, the center’s vice president of outreach. The

MySpace atheist and agnostic group has grown by about 10,000

members a year since it began in 2004 and now is about one third

the size of MySpace’s largest Christian group, says Bryan J.

Pesta, an assistant professor of management at Cleveland State

University, who moderates the group.

Also:

Here in the United States, where atheism remains a relatively

weak current against the tides of religion, the rising interest

in Godlessness is most visible on college campuses and among

recent graduates. Many of them regard religion as the

perpetuation of superstitions and mythology and see the world’s

largest faiths as sowing division and enmity more than the peace

they profess.

The university context is also important. Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard who was named “Humanist of the Year” by the American Humanist Association last year, argues that science is progressively taking over all of religion’s domain. Secularism and unbelief are the coming reality, he advises. In his words, “More and more of what used to be the domain of religion has been ceded to science. It’s the trend of modernity. I think this is a tide. We’ve seen it happen everywhere else in the developed world. This is the direction of history.”

There can be no doubt that unbelief is seeing a resurgence of sorts on many college and university campuses. Of course, many thriving evangelical ministries exist within those same precincts. Measuring the actual growth of atheist numbers and influence remains difficult.

Meanwhile, Epstein has become something of a controversial figure himself. It seems that not all nonbelievers are pleased with his approach. Epstein has challenged some of the more strident voices within the secularist movement, angering the more ideological among them. R. Joseph Hoffman of the humanist Center for Inquiry called Epstein’s approach “Gen-X humanism for the Passionately Confused.”

This is how Abel describes part of the funeral service performed by Epstein:

Then he addresses death by quoting Sherwin Wine, a humanist

Epstein considered a mentor. “It is so overwhelmingly final that

it fills our lives with dread and anxious fear,” Epstein says.

“We cry out at the injustice of destiny and wait for answers that

never seem to come.”

To cope with it, he says, humanists need a certain courage.

“Courage is loving life, even in the face of death. It is

sharing our strength with others, even when we feel weak. It is

embracing our family and friends, even when we fear to lose them.

It is opening ourselves to love.”

Before closing with a meditation on the precariousness of life,

Epstein offers lines adapted from a familiar Christian burial

rite.

“His body we commit to be burned and returned to the cycles of

nature,” he says. “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.”

Even in attempting a humanist and non-supernatural funeral service, Epstein draws upon the language of the Christian tradition.

Joseph Hoffman may call this “Gen-X humanism for the Passionately Confused,” but it sounds more like a humanism that knows it needs help -- an anti-supernaturalism that craves the supernatural.

Atheism is the church of defiant unbelief, but many like Greg Epstein seem less defiant than confused. As a matter of fact, very little separates these unbelievers from the unbelievers in so many liberal churches who still claim a Christian identity but reject the truths central to Christianity. Like Rev. Epstein, they want the candles and liturgy -- just leave out the truth stuff, please.

It is telling that the article in THE BOSTON GLOBE begins and ends with a funeral service. As Sherwin Wine rightly observed, at a funeral all an atheist can do is “wait for answers that never seem to come.”

Bono thinks a lot about death. The U2 singer’s preoccupation with his own mortality was triggered by the deaths of two musician friends and some near misses of hi sown. “The loss of David Bowie affected me profoundly,” says Bono, 57. “And Leonard Cohen.” Both singers were showered with glowing tributes after their deaths; Bono, who is mocked by non-fans as a sanctimonious, save-the-world celebrity, is worried he won’t be given such a warm send-off.

“At your funeral, nobody talks about what you achieved,” he sys. “They talk about whether you were funny or not. Were you kind to your kids? So I’m moving away from worrying too much about legacy, as regards U2 or my own work, to be more concerned about what my kids and friends think of me.”

Recently, he says, he’s taken a few “attempted knockout punches,” including a serious bicycle crash in 2014 that left him with a broken arm, eye socket, hand, and should; that and other brushes with death he won’t discuss have left Bono questioning his Christian faith. “Belief is preposterous, but I have it, and I thought, ‘I’m experiencing fear!’ It was near, and I realized I don’t want to die. I want to spend more time with my kids. There are songs I want to write, stuff I can be useful for. Then, when I admitted I was afraid, my faith returned.”

In Kazan, Russia, a housewife named Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, collapsed at home after suffering from chest pains. Doctors at the hospital told her husband Fagili that she had died of a heart attack.

At her funeral, mourning relatives filed past her open coffin and said prayers for her soul to be taken up to heaven. This got a reaction out of the woman - her eyes fluttered and she woke up, then screamed when she realized what was happening to her.

They rushed her to the hospital, again, but she died for real after 12 minutes in intensive care. Her husband is suing the hospital, according to The Daily Mail.

This isn’t the first time a funeral has taken an unexpected twist. In recent years, a man showed up alive for his own funeral in Brazil and a premature baby declared dead woke up before his own funeral before dying shortly afterwards in Paraguay.

________

Adapted by David Holwick from http://www.thehotglove.com/2011/06/woman-dead/ and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/woman-dies-at-her-own-funeral_n_883907.html

It was one of the largest funerals in the small Michigan town’s history. It began when two swollen tins of mushrooms were discovered at the Ohio United Canning Company. Government tests confirmed the presence of deadly botulism. The frozen pizza maker Mario Fabbrini used the Ohio mushrooms in his production so they had test mice eat a pizza. Two of them died. The pizza company felt it had no choice but to recall their product and swallow the estimated $60,000 in losses.

To get a positive spin out of a sad situation, the pizza company had a grand “funeral” and on March 5, 1973, they dumped 30,000 unwanted pizzas into an 18-foot hole. After placing a flower garland on the grave — red gladioli to symbolize sauce, white carnations for cheese — Fabbrini served fresh (mushroom-free) pizza to anyone brave enough to partake. Hundreds attended and even Michigan’s governor dropped by to pay his respects.

Further tests later showed that the mice had died not from botulism, but from peritonitis, and it was unclear whether their deaths were pizza-related casualties.

Interesting Facts:

U.S. sales of frozen pizzas in 2022 -- $6.77 billion

Percent of U.S. respondents who liked mushroom pizza toppings in a 2021 survey -- 54%

Size of the world’s largest pizza -- 14,000 square feet

Approximate number of poisonous mushroom species native to North America -- 250

“Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.” — William Gladstone, four-time prime minister of Great Britain between 1868 and 1894

Gladstone’s words were rebooted in my mind after reading a Washington Post article about the startling number of “unclaimed” corpses and cremains in the nation’s coroner/medical examiner offices and funeral homes. Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, after researching the topic for six months, identified a “conservative estimate” that 1% of all deaths in the United States result in “unclaimed human remains.”

Thus, in 2020, when 3.4 million Americans died, that resulted in 34,000 new remains stored in coolers, refrigerated storage units or on shelves waiting for someone to accept responsibility to bury “their” dead. Others in the field estimate 3% or 100,000 added unclaimed souls. Thus, cities — large and small — and counties — urban and rural — have become “the funeral director of last resort.”

The United States, Michael Waters wrote in The Atlantic, is “enduring a cadaver pileup.” I would add to that an urn stack up.

The Cremation Association of North America estimates that the nation’s 23,000 funeral homes may be storing more than 2 million urns or boxed bags of “cremated human remains.” Some of the remains date back decades. Increasingly, states have responded to the inventory by ordering cremations after X days or X years unclaimed.

In Los Angeles County, between 2% and 3% of the bodies of the 67,000 residents who die each year will go unclaimed.

Across the country, Maryland recorded 2,510 unclaimed bodies in 2020. In Duval County (Jacksonville) Florida, hundreds of corpses are unclaimed at any given moment. Johnnetta Moore, chief of the city’s social services, has diligently worked to locate next of kin. She explains, “To us, they are a person. They lived. They had a purpose on Earth. And they died.”

Several elements stimulate the crisis.

First, the growing number of individuals who have no family members — meaning zero — to assume the responsibility. Or no family members willing to assume the responsibility. Some individuals have outlived their families, never had a family of their own or are estranged from family. Others have lost touch with family members due to abuse, mental illness, homelessness, imprisonment, substance abuse or choice.

Additionally, too many Americans do not have a will, a valid will, or a will updated to represent current relationships and priorities. Too many do not have a durable power of attorney or an executor. How many times have individuals thought, “I need to get around to making a will”?

One pastor friend buried five fathers who were will-less although having young children. He now closes every funeral with, “Do you have a will?” If only more ministers would proclaim, “Then get thee to a lawyer!” So, dear reader: Do you have a will?

Second, the number of individuals who belong to what I call “Jerry Springer families” or “families from hell.” When I do presentations on dysfunctional families for funeral director associations, invariably someone in the audience calls out, “Had one of those last week” followed by, “So did I.” Stories get exchanged during the coffee break: “You won’t believe what this family did.”

Many funeral directors or coroners have heard the callous snarl from a family member, “You can dump ‘em in a ditch, for all I care.”

The legal and emotional realities of contemporary families churn up stress for funeral directors, especially when there is some money or years of unresolved familial turf battles. “Momma loved you more than me” or “Dad promised that I would get...” or “Why should we spend all this money and put it into a hole in the ground?”

As a celebrant for funerals, with difficult families I have learned to walk diplomatic tightropes to keep everyone “on good behavior,” at least until after the committal. Then they are on their own! Sometimes I look to Henry Kissinger for guidance.

Third, the opioid epidemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that U.S. deaths from drug overdoses leapt nearly 30% to more than 93,000 in 2020 — the highest number ever recorded. Opioids were involved in 74.7% of overdose deaths; in some ZIP Codes, the increase was significantly higher.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that U.S. deaths from drug overdoses leapt nearly 30% to more than 93,000 in 2020 — the highest number ever recorded.

COVID policies prevented many individuals from seeing their therapists or participating in recovery groups. In their social isolation, mandated by COVID, addicts relapsed and died. Moreover, street drugs have become more deadly. According to Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, drug suppliers frequently mix fentanyl with cocaine and methamphetamine to boost the effects. Thus, Volknow explains, “the type of drugs that are now available are much more dangerous” to users. That was confirmed by one grieving mother before I conducted the services for her 20-year-old son. She said: “He had turned his life around .... ”

The bodies of too many individuals dead by overdose go unclaimed. Fourteen states budget money for burial of the unclaimed. Those allocations, however, cannot keep up with demand. For example, West Virginia, which has the highest death rate for opioid overdose, depleted their funds for providing burial the past two years.

Fourth: “How do you intend to pay for the funeral?” When I first started working in the funeral field, funeral directors were hesitant to ask for payment. Some directors said, “This is no time to talk about money. We can settle up later.” Sometimes, directors asked for a down payment for their services.

Today, a large number of funeral homes are owned by private corporations that are not reluctant to borrow words from the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money.” In these mortuaries, a griever will hear, “We expect full payment before services are rendered. How would you like to pay for the services you have selected?”

It costs money to die, to be remembered and to be buried “decently.” This is especially a barrier for the poor, the homeless, the mentally impaired. So, when a family does not accept the responsibility, it defaults to local municipalities, county governments, even state governments. The taxpayers foot the bill. However, government entities set limits on their compassion to specific amounts of money per funeral. Often, they must search for funeral directors who will assume responsibility for the amount of money the government provides, which is a token.

In the absence of life insurance, Social Security or military benefits, families may have to scramble to come up with the money and thus delay ritual and burial. Some families, however, are not willing to spend the life insurance — or spend all of it — to pay for a funeral and burial.

The Washington Post noted that a funeral and burial “can easily run over $7,500.” Cremation may cost between $4,000 and 5,000. There is a wide range of costs in large cities as compared to small towns. Of course, some individuals blame the funeral directors for increased costs. Frankly, everything — including your Big Mac and fries — costs more than it used to. And certainly there are discounters in the funeral field who eliminate the frills and offer “just the basics.” There are few nonprofit funeral homes in the U.S.

Some families decline to accept responsibility to bury their own dead because they cannot afford any level of services. For some, even paying for minimal services is a luxury they cannot afford, especially given the number who have lost jobs during the pandemic. Families may be embarrassed that they cannot accept the responsibility.

Fifth, the COVID pandemic. Remember, death is “no respecter of persons.”

You’ve watched news coverage of large refrigerated trailer storage units parked in hospital and funeral home parking lots to accommodate the spiraling death rate and storage demands. COVID has claimed more than 705,000 Americans. That number will continue to grow in coming months.

COVID has had a disproportionate impact on minorities. Annie McDonough reported that COVID “upended many of the established practices” and traditions “for handling the bodies of the deceased.” Many individuals’ grief has been heightened because of mortuary restrictions on the number of individuals who may attend a visitation or funeral. The entire death care system has been severely strained. Until recently, when I accepted a request to conduct a funeral or memorial service, I expected that service to be held in three or four days. Now it can be one month or more.

Some individuals or families have made “pre-arrangements” so that X Funeral Home is notified at the time of death and removes the corpse to their facilities. If a funeral home has not been selected, the corpse is stored in the hospital morgue until a funeral director is retained by the next of kin. The funeral director then organizes a timetable for embalming, family viewing, visitation or wake, funeral or committal. However, given the numbers of COVID deaths, a funeral director may be unable to “accept” another corpse; indeed, some funeral homes have casketed corpses resting on top of pews in their chapels as well as stored in every available space in their facilities.

The director has to navigate — or negotiate — getting an internment date or a date for cremation. Some cemeteries now limit the number of committals or inurnments in a given day. Some have imposed strict COVID rules for committal services, 15 minutes or less. I conducted a graveside service with no tent and no chair for the one — one — mourner permitted to be present. I had 15 minutes, and the clock was running from the time the casket was lifted by cemetery employees out of the hearse. Oh, and it was raining. And it was Good Friday!

The delay is also reality for crematoriums. There are physical limitations on how many cremations a crematorium can handle in a 24-hour period. Given the significant number of obese corpses, new protocols have been instituted to “cool down” retorts in order to meet local air quality standards.

COVID restrictions have led some families to be in “limbo” until “all systems” are in synch. Others have chosen no services or expect to have some type of memorialization at a later date.

New York City, for example, given the incidence of COVID through its boroughs, had to establish four “mass response” disaster morgues to store corpses that hospitals cannot keep and funeral homes cannot accept.

Some funeral homes have had to transport bodies to out-of-town crematoriums, since local cremation facilities were overbooked, that increased costs and added delay in scheduling memorial services and inurnments.

Normally, in New York City bodies only have been allowed to go “unclaimed” for 14 days; then the bodies were taken to NYC’s “potter’s field,” Hart Island, where some 1 million are buried in unmarked graves. In May 2020, the Bureau of Corrections — which, ironically, is in charge of Hart Island burials — reported burying at five times the pre-COVID rate.

Finally, New York — and other municipalities — had to acknowledge that many city residents needed longer than 14 days to claim the deceased and make arrangements. The ethnic diversity of New York City required contacting (even locating) next-of-kin in distant states and foreign countries. And individuals willing to assume the financial responsibility.

Very little attention has been given to how employees all along this death care “chain of responsibility” have dealt with stress and outrageous demands on their work schedules and their need for days off and vacations. As well as their fears of being exposed to COVID or taking it home to their families. No, they cannot “get” COVID from corpses, but they can from family members of the deceased. Many churches have prayed in worship for overworked nurses and doctors. Unfortunately, few have prayed for those who transport bodies, morticians and cemetery workers.

About ‘next of kin’

Ordinarily, at some point after death, someone who meets the legal criteria for “next of kin” steps forward, claims the corpse and makes arrangements for ritual and burial. However, as many funeral directors will tell you, determining “next of kin” is not always clear-cut.

Consider a man and woman living together, unmarried; the deceased has children by a previous marriage. The right to bury will not automatically go to the live-in de facto spouse but legally passes, in most states, to the oldest adult child. That child must be found, be capable of making decisions and be willing to accept responsibility.

Then the corpse, with accompanying paperwork to prevent mix-up, is transferred to a funeral home or, increasingly, transported to a crematorium or cemetery for what is, unfortunately, called, “direct disposal.” However, many states require that all “next of kin,” as defined by statute, sign off on the paperwork to authorize cremation. One funeral director was surprised when he asked two sisters making arrangements, “Are there any other siblings?” “Yes, we have a brother but we don’t count him as ‘family.’”

“Well,” the funeral director interrupted, “the State of New York does consider him kin.” Paperwork had to be sent to a prison for his signature before the cremation and memorial service could proceed.

Whose responsibility are the unclaimed’?

I suspect that many reading this article have no idea what happens to the unclaimed dead in their communities; some readers may not want to know. Many are unaware that historically Christians assumed responsibility for caring for the dead as an act of mercy. Or that many churches had burial grounds adjacent to the church house.

Today, one would be hard pressed to find a megachurch that has a cemetery; admittedly, some with a more liturgical bent have mausoleum spaces.

When the Archdiocese of Los Angeles built the impressive Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles, they included space to bury their bishops and archbishops and 2,000 niches for sale to the faithful. The cathedral’s website reports: “Catholic Cemeteries and Mortuaries is a ministry of the church, a beneficiary of the faithful’s daily prayers for the souls of the departed and the provider of a resting place on holy ground.”

If you have played Bible trivia, you probably have correctly answered the question, “Where was Judas buried?” Ah, that would be “Potter’s Field,” a plot of land outside Jerusalem’s city gates. Whether in a sermon, a Sunday school lesson or by reading Scripture, you learned the shameful details in Matthew’s Gospel: “After Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, he threw the money back at them and went out and hung himself.”

What to do with the corpse of the betrayer who was technically “unclaimed?” Jewish leaders took the cash and arranged for Judas’ burial. How much “burial” Judas received is unknown. But it was clear that Judas’ corpse could not remain “unclaimed.” This may have been an early example of the sad decision to “just get him in the ground.”

Another question you might have been asked in Bible trivia is, “Who buried Jesus?” (Ah, “Peter, James and John” is not the correct answer. In fact, the disciples seemed to have been suddenly “unavailable.”) So, Mark’s Gospel tells us that Joseph of Arimathea “gathered up” his courage, “boldly” claimed Jesus body and arranged burial.

Joseph stepped up. Joseph acted! In writing this article, I learned about Joseph of Arimathea Societies in two Catholic high schools in Louisville, Ky. — St. Xavier and Trinity — whose students work with Catholic Charities to bury the unclaimed and indigent dead. Not only do these students “Joseph” on school days but also on holidays and during summer vacations. Indeed, by performing this care, young students learn a practical dimension of the Catholic teaching of “the seven corporal works of mercy” — the last of which is “burying the dead.”

How to make a difference

I have a hero named Peter Stefan, a Catholic mortician in Massachusetts. That state pays an $1,110 reimbursement to funeral directors who bury the indigent and unclaimed. The funeral home’s time, a casket, transportation to the funeral home, embalming, and acquiring a burial site costs at least double the stipend. Why not cremate? In some states, even the unclaimed cannot be cremated without the signatures of next of kin.

Stefan, over the years, has assumed the costs of burying many indigent persons because, as a man of faith, he believes it is his responsibility. Stefan gained notoriety when no one would claim the corpse of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brother terrorists responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing. Stefan stepped forward. Soon his funeral home had to have 24-a-day police protection; Stefan received great telephone abuse and death threats. Apparently, some in the Boston area did not want the “decent” thing to be done.

Other times, city officials step up in acts of faith.

Early in December 2020, individuals gathered in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights Cemetery to witness clergy and county officials preside over a mass burial of the unclaimed. This service demonstrates a “single bond of recognizing the value and dignity of every single human life,” the leaders explained.

In 2020, Los Angeles County buried 1,547 individuals who had been cremated and had gone unclaimed in the Los Angeles County morgue for three years. They were buried in a large pauper’s grave. Before COVID restrictions, the event drew hundreds of people who came to publicly mourn people they did not know. Even during COVID, more than 200 attended the service digitally. Clergy from various traditions prayed in various languages that the dead “be granted the things that may have eluded them in life — deliverance from darkness, perfect rest and sheltering refuge.”

In Maricopa County, Arizona, services for the unclaimed dead take place weekly in the county-owned cemetery. A record 551 unclaimed or unknown individuals were laid to rest there last year. Maricopa County employs five individuals to attempt to identify family members of the unclaimed dead and budgets $1 million a year to care for these remains.

Who offers a witness when your county or city buries the “uncollected” dead? Who prays over those dead? Might you gather individuals from your church to attend and, perhaps, participate by offering prayers, singing or bringing flowers? Make inquiries with the coroner or medical examiner about how you might contribute to burial of the unclaimed dead.

You, too, might form a Joseph of Arimathea Society or a similar group to take a more active interest in burying the dead. Your congregation could offer to help with burial expenses for the unclaimed. Churches also might find ways to bless or show appreciation to the county coroner or medical examiner.

When Jesus taught us to care for “the least of these,” he could have meant also the unclaimed dead.

Winston Churchill had planned his funeral, which took place in Saint Paul's Cathedral. He included many of the great hymns of the church and used the eloquent Anglican liturgy. At his direction, a bugler, positioned, high in the dome of Saint Paul's, intoned, after the benediction, the sound of

"Taps," the universal signal that says the day is over.

But then came the most dramatic turn: as Churchill instructed, as soon as "Taps" was finished, another bugler, placed on the other side of the great dome, played the notes of "Reveille" -- "It's time to get up. It's time to get up. It's time to get up in the morning."

That was Churchill's testimony that at the end of history, the last note will not be "Taps," it will be "Reveille". The worst things are never the last things.

[also found in Boice, JOHN, 3:208]

Annie Dillard, in her book “The Living,” describes one graveside religious service:

“Hugh stood with stiff Lulu and supple Bert at the graveside. The Nooksacks stood together with their preacher. Before the funeral, in mourning for his father, they had shrieked and pounded on boards...

“At last big-faced Norval Tawes read Scripture and prayed. ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’ Norval Tawes called out, and his little black eyes glittered on Hugh.

“Hugh thought, Just about everywhere, since you ask.” Indeed, death is sure. We must prepare for it.

Years ago I read a sermon by Dr. Arthur John Gossip, called “When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” He preached it the day after his beloved wife had suddenly died. He closed with these words:

I don’t think you need to be afraid of life. Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely, but we have a wonderful God. And, as Paul puts it, “What can separate us from his love? Not death,” he writes immediately. No, not death, for standing in the roaring of the Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of it terror, of its rushing, I, too, like Hopeful in Pilgrim’s Progress, can call back to you who one day in your turn will have to cross it, “Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom and it is sound.”

Drive by your local booming suburban church, or the up and coming congregation everyone’s talking about in your community. You might find a state-of-the-art children’s complex -- complete with antibiotic soap dispensers on every corner. You might find a Family Life Center -- previously known as a gym -- with a basketball court, foosball tables, maybe even an Olympic size pool. You’ll almost certainly find a feeding hall, perhaps with a franchised gourmet coffee kiosk nearby. What you will not find is a graveyard.

Not many churches have cemeteries anymore. In some ways, that’s a good thing. Churches that are growing and evangelistic rightly conclude that sharing the Gospel with the living is more important than remembering the dead.

We all know churches who carefully manicure their graveyards, and many of them are ingrown and, well, dead. Of course they remember who is buried where. They also remember who paid for what pillar -- so don’t you try to remove it to create additional space for your children’s Bible fellowship area. There are some churches for which the graveyard is a symbol of what’s wrong, a concern more for maintaining their family genealogies and the memories of the past than in forging forward for the Kingdom.

But, still. I wonder if we are losing something by outsourcing the care of our dead to the funeral industry. Did we lose something important, maybe even something biblical, when we paved over our graveyards?

The church graveyard might serve to remind us of something that we as contemporary evangelical Christians, with all our flash and verve, seem to forget too often these days. We are going to die.

Too often we seek reminders of God’s power in the buzz and energy of a campus Bible study or a youth rally or a celebrated church service. We believe that God is present among us if there are beautiful, vital young people around us. We believe there is dynamism present if our services are seamless, and if our celebrities smile or cry on cue. And, often, the Spirit is there with power. But sometimes the excitement is just that: excitement -- not the longing of a people for a crucified Messiah.

Perhaps, though, a graveyard in our peripheral vision as we get out of the car for worship might remind us of the gravity of the task before us. Maybe a cemetery in at least some of our churches would serve as an icon that all our Babels will collapse, all our wood, hay, and stubble will be incinerated before the Judgment Seat.

After all, our church buildings -- even the most state-of-the-art of them -- will someday collapse beneath the weight of decay. Your church sign may someday hang silently above some rubble, battered and torn, like the Statue of Liberty in the final scene of the “Planet of the Apes.” Maybe the tattered wording on it will still announce to the silences around it, “The Church Alive Is Worth the Drive,” but no one will care about how good its sound system used to be. Our hymnals and our bulletins and our PowerPoint presentations and our systematic theology texts will one day wither away into mold and dust. The Library of Congress itself, with the record of all our best-selling evangelical Bible-studies and praise song recordings, will be swept away like refuse. The vocal cords we once celebrated from celebrity preachers and singers will one day vibrate no more, and the skin photographed for book covers and publicity shots will one day melt away into dirt.

Only the Gospel, only the power of Christ, will remain.

The church graveyard also reminds us that we are a peculiar people. When we are gathered together to our fathers, we don’t simply lie under the funeral home tent in Shady Grove #5 with all the others in the region of the last place to which we moved. We are laid to rest by our brothers and sisters, those who wait with us for Something to happen.

I still ponder how much more effective we would be in preaching the Gospel to our neighbors if we showed them -- even with our landscape around us that we are more than a community group. We’re a Kingdom -- a Kingdom that spans the ages and includes the dead and the unborn, mighty as an army with banners.

Now I’m realistic enough to know that the church graveyard is a thing of the past. We probably won’t see seminars on how to plan for a really good cemetery at any pastor’s conferences in our lifetime. But maybe we would see something of what we’re missing if we took some time to actually walk among the tombstones every once in a while.

Sometime, when you get a moment, find an old church graveyard and walk through it. Not for the goose bumps or ghost stories, of course, but to remind yourself of some matters of eternal weight.

Walk about and see the headstones weathered and ground down by the elements. Contemplate the fact that beneath your feet are the bodies of men and women who once had youthful skin and quick steps and hectic calendars, but who are now piles of forgotten bones. Think about the fact that the scattered teeth in the earth below you once sang hymns of hope -- maybe “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder I’ll Be There” or “When We All Get to Heaven.” They are silent now. But they will sing again. They will preach again. They will testify again. They will laugh again.

And, while you are there, think about what every generation of Christians has held against the threat of sword and guillotine and chemical weaponry. This stillness will one day be interrupted by a shout from the eastern sky, a joyful call with a distinctly northern Galilean accent.

Maybe if we did this more often we might reconsider the need for those church graveyards.

I wonder if we might be able to speak more honestly to a people scared to death of death with a visible sign that we know what death is too. We hate it too.

But we haven’t forgotten our dead. We’re just waiting for them -- and for us -- to hear one last invitation hymn. And when those quiet little mounds begin bursting, with headstones flying about, and clap of thunder resounds across the sky.

Then we’ll know what we’re talking about when we say, “Man, this church is alive.”

________

Russell D. Moore is dean of the school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. This column was adapted from Moore’s blog, HenryInstitute.org.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #22760]

When you remove your hand from a glove, the form of the hand remains, but the substance that gave it life is gone. Our body is just a glove!

DEATH

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death

doesn't matter.' There is death. And it does matter. And whatever happens has

consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as

well say that birth doesn't matter.---C. S. Lewis

(The Timothy Report, Swan Lake Communications, SwanLC@aol.com,

June 28, 1999