AFTER dying comes burial.
You cannot truly say, that Holy Scripture counts burial lightly. You rather see all through Scripture, how strong the attachment was to an honorable, careful, stately burial. And when finally the grave opens itself for the body of your Savior, it affects the heart sweetly, that no rough soldier put Him away in the earth, but that men and women of influence tenderly care for the body of Jesus, swathe it, and carry it away, and place it in a new grave, and hold fragrant spices in readiness, and have bought balsam, in order, as soon as the Sabbath is over, to finish the burial of your Savior.
If ever it is at the funeral, at the carrying out of our dead to the grave that the human heart, the instinct of our human nature must be heard. The tie, that was cut off by death, must do its after-drawing. And in that very consecration and love, of which we give evidence for our dead, faith must forcibly express itself, that he who died is not gone, but lives; especially when we stand in the hope, that it is a life with God.
Therefore from of old there was something attractive in it, to do everything ourselves, and not have it done for money.
For money one can rid himself of everything. As soon then as your dead breathed his last, you summon the undertaker; you put him in charge of the corpse; then you are rid of everything; till the funeral procession is at the door, and you step into your carriage, to accompany the last rites.
But love does not do so, and in Christian Europe it used to be the rule in almost every way, that the care for the body remained altogether in the hands of the family, of friends or of neighbors.
Oneself to lay out the body, might have been too affecting sometimes for the wife, or for the husband; in which case the love of friend or neighbor supplied the needed help. Every one in the house did what he could, to care for the body, every time to go and look at it, and not to leave the mortal remains, till the hour of final separation.
WITH the sickly sentimentality, which is now abroad, to make everything of the corpse by way of adornment, this Scriptural, this Christian tenderness in the care for our dead has nothing in common.
Sentimentality is bent upon stimulating feeling; to bring the nerves into a state of tension; and in that pitiful excitement, that expresses itself in tears, to seek a sort of delight, or also to show openly, the warmth and devotion of our love.
This by itself has not the least merit. The issues of our life do not lie in our lachrymal glands, and equally little in our nerves, but in our heart. And he alone who can say, also when there is one dead in the home, that faith and love are active, that he might ask himself before God, how the Lord wills that we shall behave ourselves with respect to our dead, lives through those days of sorrow and of mourning according to God’s Word.
And upon this holding of oneself to the ordinances of God emphasis must here be put.
The danger is not small, that in such days of sadness, when the blinds in the street are closed, one makes of his dead some sort of a half-idol, and forgets God the Lord.
You notice this in the conversations; then you see the homage that in many ways is paid to the corpse, especially with persons of high distinction; and then sometimes in so offensive a way you hear addresses at the grave, when he, whose breath was in his nostrils, and now died, is exalted as in a halo of glory, and every remembrance of the name of the Lord remains wanting.
FOR the most part one comes unexpectedly upon those days when “a corpse awaits burial.” For even when dying has long been anticipated, one has but rarely placed himself in the condition that ensues, when the end has come.
In the first moments one is then overwhelmed with grief. Things must be done, and one does not know, how to do them. In the home, in the conversations, in the actions there is a general confusion. One is inclined to leave things to take care of themselves, and if then there is some one of the family, who offers to do things, he is given free hand to do as he thinks best.
So there is no operation of faith, no principle dominates. and in these latter times it is not infrequently the undertaker, who in every way decides for you, how your dead is to be buried.
And this is connected again with the pitiful sign of our times, i.e., that almost no one any more thinks of his death beforehand; that all familiarity with the idea of death is gone; and that one lets death overtake him, as a sandstorm a traveling caravan.
Of course, we do not mean, that every one personally should make it a point of honor, when there is one dead in his house, to make a show to the last particular, how well he understands the art of burying. That would be the pride of prudery; a soulless affectation which offends.
This evil was watched against even in former times, by ordering everything that pertained to burial, according to custom and as by mutual agreement.
At the grave no eccentricity was tolerated.
And so every region, and every city, and sometimes even every village had its own manners.
But in those manners there was seriousness, good taste was in evidence, a Christian view of Death and Grave; and it was from meditating and pondering upon Death and Grave among confessors of the Lord, that these funeral usages were born.
Now, on the other hand, all that meditating and pondering has ceased. Everything is left to itself. As a result of this, ancient usages are more and more transposed, now to become more and more dominated by the spirit of unbelief and deification of man, which holds sway in leading circles.
There is indeed something lovely about it, with one’s fellow-citizens after death to be buried in the same cemetery; but Abraham thought differently about it. Ephron offered him the communal grave for the body of Sarah; but Abraham wanted a grave of his own for his dead (Gen. 23).
And in this there is an indication for all who confess Christ, and in Christ the Victor over Death and the Grave.
A grave of one’s own for the redeemed of the Lord will more and more seem an imperative need of our Christian life.
Otherwise Christendom itself will end with heathen burial.
THUS the main thing is, that from our thoughtlessness we come back again to thoughtfulness.
Therefore we wrote at the head of this meditation: “The Choice of Our Graves.” He who has a choice, chooses, and he who chooses, has taken careful thought, and acts with self-consciousness, knowing what he is about.
And this is what is lacking in our days.
Now, when it comes to burying, no one takes thought. Everything is left to itself, or the usages of the world are imitated.
So altogether different from what it was with early Christians.
They at once abandoned mourning, they buried their dead in festal robes, and when the day was done, with torchlight, jubilantly singing psalms, they went to the cemetery, to testify before God and man, that this their brother or sister had passed over from the militant to the Church triumphant.
Their look upon Death and Grave was one altogether different from that of the heathen-world, and therefore also their usages at burial had to bear an altogether different character.
Death was to them a dying unto sin and an entrance into an eternal life.
Therefore with their dead they mourned little and jubilated much.
Something that is not said, that now also you should carry out your dead like this.
You must not imitate anything.
But what you should do, is, as they did, ponder yourself on Death and Grave, speak about Death and Grave, live as it were by anticipation through the experience of Death and Grave, and when the whole church of Jesus begins to do this, the good Christian manner of burial comes of itself.
THE mere expression of “the choice of our graves” stimulates thought, and strikes you in the conscience, as often as you have just left the burial of your dead to others, and have followed the usages of the world.
No glitter and vain shows have any place with your burials, to make others jealous. For exhibition of one’s own greatness there is no worse occasion than when one of your own blood-relatives impotently is laid away in the grave.
Not selfishness, but love must urge and lead.
Love for him who went from you; always after this rule: As ye would, that others would do with you, when you have died, even so you yourself do unto your dead.
And, of course, with God’s child that love must be directed not by sentiment, but by faith.
Wherever you could forget your God, you may never forget Him at the deathbed or at the grave of your dead.
Stronger than ever at every deathbed and at every opened grave the rule must hold good: “In that day the Lord alone shall be exalted” (Is. 2, 17).
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