DEATH is and remains the most repulsive and unnatural phenomenon in our human life.
There is a symbolic dying also in nature, when cold makes flower and leaf die away, but in the yellow of that leaf there is a beauty of its own, in the autumn tints of foliage there is a wealth of color, the feuille-morte attracts.
But death, as it breaks out in human life, is not like this. A human corpse can remain beautiful a single day and express an heightened purity, as the tension of nerves and muscles no longer weary the face, but even that beauty lasts, O, for so short a time, and scarcely does dissolution begin its destructive work, when the corpse no longer attracts, but rather repels.
And yet human sympathy has surrounded that dissolving corpse, in spite of its uncleanness, which forbade the high priest even to touch it, with tender care and mournful love.
With more than one nation the tendency was abroad, even as in our times again, to abandon the corpse to fire heat, and to save the ashes in an urn. But from the days of Israel, the people of the Lord ever held fast to the honor of interment.
That interment harmonizes with nature, and nature with interment, for science of the soil teaches, that nothing is so adapted to assimilate into itself, that which dissolves itself from the body, and to purify it, as the earth, which our foot treads. It is as though God has disposed that wondrous ground to the reception of our dead body.
Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return, is the judgment passed upon us, and to earth is committed the task, for which in every way she is so well equipped, to consummate the dissolution of our mortal remains.
THE people, among which the ceremonials of burial were developed most lavishly, even too much so, dwelt in Egypt. Alongside cities for the living, they built great Necropolises, which are cities for the dead. Also in those cities of the dead there were streets, and along those streets every family had an house of its own for their dead, and in that house their dead were put by, embalmed, swathed in linen, encased in carved woodwork, and put away in marble or freestone sarcophagi.
Even now such mummies can be found in our museums, not infrequently after more than three thousand years still so unmarred and perfect, that it seems as though it were but yesterday that they were put by.
In this faith in the resurrection of the dead expressed itself, but without the sense of sin. It was a vain effort to withdraw itself from the dreadful judgment of dissolution, and want of faith in that Almightiness of God, which can restore again what perished, and makes the dead alive, and calls the things which no more are, as though they still were.
But still that tender, be it exaggerated care for the body of the dead had its good side. A reverence for the human expressed itself in this, a reconciling of oneself with the seriousness of death.
Now God has so appointed it, that Abraham, the spiritual father of us all, who may believe, has dwelt among that people in Egypt; that the ancient people of God tarried for several centuries in the land of Egypt, and with so much more it is surely owing to this of God intended circumstance, that burial of our dead ever remained in honor among Christians.
The first time Holy Scripture makes mention of the care for our dead, we hear, how the old patriarch pleads for a grave for his dead.
God had blessed Abraham so richly. He had the wife of his love until her one-hundred-twenty-and seventh year. And then the aged patriarch came “to mourn and to weep for her.” And after that mourning he bought from Ephron in the cave of Machpelah a modest grave for Sarah (Gen. 23, 8).
Since then throughout all ages the grave was held in honor by Israel, until He came, Who to deliver us from our sin and guilt, went into bitter death; and He also was put by in a cave, and by so being buried Himself, has for His saints forever honored the grave.
BUT those graves in Egypt, that grave of Machpelah, that grave of Jesus, all bore the mark of quiet, sacred seriousness, and every attempt to camouflage the grave remained averted.
You read of no festoons and of no wreaths of flowers. The somber-gray must fully and forcibly allow the bitterness of death to express itself. At the grave death was not to be made unrecognizable, nor charmed away. He who visited the grave had to know and perceive and feel that he trod the acre of death, and have the seriousness which resounds from the grave penetrate deep into the soul.
The grave had to be a messenger from God, and thereby a voice in our midst that calls unto life.
There can be jubilation at the grave of sacred joy over the assurance of everlasting life. The palm-branch, engraven in stone, can be symbol of triumph, the ear of corn the emblem of resurrection. But bridal ornaments, which make death to be forgotten, does not belong at the grave.
The sin which in our age the world commits with respect to this, is inward cowardice, because it dares not look death in the face.
Our fathers have never offended in this.
Quiet simplicity and sober seriousness was the cloak that covered their graves. And he who does not wish to take part in the play of the world, still holds himself fast to that seriousness of the fathers.
FOR this reason the erection of images, the chiseling of laudatory inscriptions, and even man-extolling addresses, have ever from of old at our graves been avoided.
The grave declares so eloquently, how small and insignificant helpless man is, and how terribly great in His Almightiness the Lord our God is.
Powerless our dead died away in death, and almost still more painfully powerless we stood by their deathbed side.
Never are we so deeply humiliated in our powerlessness, as when death climbs in at our windows. Then no energy of the dying is of any more help, and no passion of helpful love, and no art of the most skillful physician. All human capacity succumbs and sinks in, and God alone in His terrifying Majesty is great.
And this comes to expression in the grave.
First there is still some tender care, which is devoted to the sacred remains of our dead. We would like to keep their dead body with us. Still do something for their good.
But this also disappoints, and soon the moment is come, that we carry out our dead, and as symbol of our uttermost humiliation, make their body sink away deep down in the grave, cover it over with earth, then to turn homeward, without the pledge of love which was as it were inwoven in our heart.
Would you in such a moment burn incense to man, on such a sacred spot raise a monument of human greatness?
This indeed would be repugnant to the faith.
If needs be let one kneel at the grave, and give vent to the sorrow of his heart. But at the open grave and on the acre of the dead be great alone, God the Almighty, Who is Lord of life and death, and He alone.
THE grave urges this the more, because back of the grave there is still so much higher seriousness, than the grave itself casts upon the heart.
The grave is not the end. Once all graves shall be opened. The grave is as a vestibule, which brings us to the judgment, that once by Christ shall be passed upon all the dead.
The grave indeed closes the life, but does not cut off the account, which we shall have to give regarding that life before the judgment seat of Christ.
With dying we pass out from this life, but the photograph of that life goes with us, of all our life, from earliest youth, to the day of our death.
And this character of the grave, that it is the vestibule of the judgment seat of Christ, portrays its inexorable seriousness in fullness of compass. So long as the grave merely speaks of dying, it rouses melancholy and makes tender by sorrow. But as vestibule of the judgment seat of Christ it disquiets the conscience so sacredly and wholesomely. A speech of God goes out from it, which makes one break with sin, which impels renewal of conversion, and so makes us number our days, which God still grants us, that we might at length expel all folly from our heart, to obtain a wise heart, a heart, wise before God.
AND yet the end of that “speech of the grave,” is not terror, provided you do not pass over in superficiality, even what was sinful in your beloved dead, whom you carry out. Even the most saintly, who died away from our midst, had but a small beginning of that obedience acceptable to God, and the best of our dead supplicated on their deathbed most touchingly for grace.
Hereby at the grave of your dead God the Lord is so wonderfully magnified in the holy work of His Atonement.
In us nothing, and also in our beloved dead nothing, but in their heart when they died and in our heart, who weep at their grave, a spark aglow of the love of Christ.
Of Him, Who was dead for us, Who is also quickened, Who also sits at the right hand of God, Who also prays for us.
And then that coming judgment no longer terrifies. For who is He who in the judgment alone shall condemn and can? It is Christ, that Christ of Whose love a small spark, be it ever so little, is aglow in our heart.
And then we glory, regarding our dead and ourselves: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?—and the heart triumphs at our graves, because it is assured, by faith so fixedly and fervently assured, that neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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