Christians are afraid of giving too much care to the flesh. There’s a newfound confusion between our sinful nature and our bodies. We’ve lost sight of the fact that our bodies will be raised and perfected at the resurrection.
I visited a cemetery on my lunch break this week. I went to the graves of two departed friends and left some tulips (because I’m a Calvinist). During this, I remembered a comment that someone made to me years ago. We were driving past a cemetery (it may have been Memorial Day, but my memory has gone rogue); visible from the road we could see there was a small group of people visiting a grave and doing the sorts of things I was doing on my lunch break. My friend saw them and said, “I don’t understand why people visit grave sites. Your family members aren’t there.” I didn’t have a very developed theology at the time, so I didn’t bat an eye at this statement — but today it would be a very different conversation.
I remember thinking this was a reasonable criticism. I would later come across two things (a podcast and a book) that addressed the issue of burial vs. cremation, and those would lead me to study, research, and change my views on the grave. On an episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast, John Piper dealt with the issue of Christians being cremated, and said that burial is a sign that you believe in the resurrection. Russell Moore also addressed this very same issue in his book, Onward. I especially want to recommend that (although the topic at hand is not the premise of it). Piper rightly observes that one hundred years of decomposition is essentially the same result as cremation, and God will still be able to put it back together and raise it — but that’s not the point.
The reason we bury our dead is because we have faith that God will resurrect the just and the unjust on the Day of the Lord. John 5:28-29 says this:
Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (ESV)
That’s why we dress them well and place them in a comfortable box. It has nothing to do with whether or not they’re comfortable, or whether they’re present in the ground — it’s about the future resurrection. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 says:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (ESV)
This is the hope we look forward to when we place our loved ones in the ground: Christ’s return.
Cremation, on the other hand, is rooted in pagan practices, and I can’t help but feel that Christians have adopted this practice because of an over-emphasis on the evils of the flesh. Statistically speaking, the majority of Christians today will be cremated. I credit this to the teaching that our bodies are essentially trashed rental cars that we’ll one day get to leave at the side of the road with the hazard lights on. The reality is: God will be raising these bodies and then we’ll have them for eternity. Your body matters. It goes without saying that there are some who have no choice in the matter. I am not saying that people who are cremated aren’t saved, or the people who authorize the cremation aren’t saved; I’m just pointing out that this is a pagan practice that for philosophical and symbolic reasons should not be practiced by Christians.
I’ve been to quite a few memorials in the last two years, but only two funerals with burials. Memorials are all about the people and memories left behind by the deceased, accentuating the absence of that person by not having their body present. I could actually make the argument that memorials are bleaker. It’s taking the tradition of gathering friends and family and stripping it of its eschatological hope — leaving it a drab affair. Are burials joyous moments in the lives of the departed’s family and friends? absolutely not, but whether or not it is acknowledged, the symbolism of future hope is still there.
The Second London Baptist Confession says this in chapter 31, paragraph 2:
At the last day, such of the saints as are found alive, shall not sleep, but be changed, and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies, and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.
That’s a big promise, but it’s a promise from God laid out in Scripture.
Today, I feel differently about the grave. I don’t visit the graves of my friends to talk to them. I don’t leave flowers as an offering to the dead. I go there to pay respect to those that were loved in life and will one day be raised by God to meet Christ in the air. The very presence of that plot in the ground is an acknowledgment of past joy, present sorrow, and future hope. Their body mattered in life, it matters now, and it will matter at the resurrection. Our family and friends, both living and dead, matter. The grave matters. Besides the Johnny Cash song which is linked below, I can’t think of anything better to leave you with than this verse, Job 19:26-27:
And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! (ESV)