June 4, 2007

• CEMETERIES AND DORMITORIES

  Some of us love cemeteries. They're peaceful places, and full of hope -- for Christians, that is. The Moravians used to call them "God's Acre", because cemeteries are gardens where God sows the seed, the bodies of the righteous, in order to raise a harvest at the Resurrection.

  A "cemetery" is an area devoted to burial apart from a church, whereas "graveyard" refers to a burial ground attached to a church property. The distinction is not much maintained anymore, more's the pity. The word "cemetery" itself comes from a Greek word meaning "sleeping place" -- it is the exact equivalent of the word "dormitory", which comes from Latin and means precisely the same thing, a sleeping place. The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians contains the famous passage on the resurrection (chapter 15) in which he argues that "Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep", and the Greek behind the words "those who sleep" is the same from which we get "cemetery". In the Latin Vulgate, those words are translated with the same word from which we get "dormitory". So, but for an accident of linguistic history, we might have called college on-campus housing "cemeteries" and burial grounds "dormitories" instead of the other way round!

  Burial grounds are called "cemeteries" because of the influence of Christianity in western civilization whereby its attitude that the death of the body is sleep, not extinction, prevailed; the Church has always taught that the body will be raised someday just as Christ's was, and that to deny the resurrection of the body is heresy. The great hope of the Christian is not immortality of the soul (even the pagans believe that) or floating around ethereally in clouds (only readers of The Far Side believe that), but rather the great hope of Christian is the resurrection of the body (Apostle's Creed), the resurrection of the dead (Nicene Creed).

  In old cemeteries you often see verse on tombstones -- less frequently on modern ones, unfortunately -- and many are full of glorious hope. Recently I wandered through a cemetery in southern Ohio and found an obelisk of pink marble on which is written this quattrain:

  Life's labors done as sinks the clay,
  light from its load, the spirit flies,
  As heaven and earth combine to say
  How blest the righteous when he dies.

  Blest not because he is free from the body (the Platonic heresy) but because he's free from the corrupt one and will soon be raised, physically, in glory. Another low marker from the early twentieth century says simply, "Because I live, ye shall live also" -- a verse from John 14. Another says, "I am the resurrection and the life."

  Another marker in the same cemetery is a bit bleaker:

  Remember, friend, as you pass by,
  As you are now, so once was I.
  But as it is, we all must die.

  Bleak, perhaps, but this is a most salutary sentiment, the kind St. Jerome was known for, and you might remember the skull that often appears on his writing desk in paintings of him. We need to meditate on our mortality in order to appreciate the doctrine of the resurrection. As another prophet says (the movie What About Bob?): you're going to die. We're all going to die. There's no escape. What the movie left out, though, is that we will not stay dead, if we are in Christ when we die.

  A good way to do this reflecting on our mortality and consequent need of the gospel is to wander through a cemetery. Sit and think. Read the epitaphs. Read the dates, especially noting how short some lives are. And think of the cemetery as a garden full of seeds; God's Acre.

  The first great Church historian Eusebius tells us that during the persecutions in Gaul in the third century, the Roman persecutors would sweep the ashes of the martyrs into the river to prevent their resurrection. Of course this shows how little they know of the power of God but it also shows how well they were aware that the hope of God's people is the resurrection. The early church made a huge, noisy point of declaring that. Even some of their practices which later became subject to gross distortion, like keeping relics of dead saints, or venerating icons, were originally laudable and physical arguments for the goodness of the material world (Genesis 1), the Incarnation of the Word (John 1), the resurrection of the body (I Corinthians 15) and God's consequent love for and care for the dead bodies of His children. When we stand by Grandma's grave and the little child says, "why are we here? I thought you said Grandma is in heaven with Jesus?" we might very properly answer, "that's right, but God still loves her body, because it's part of who she is and how He made her, and this is its resting place until He raises it and gives it back to her."

  How unlike the modern church where we tend to talk only about dying and "going to heaven", as though that were the ultimate goal. If it were, and if God cares nothing for the dead bodies of His saints, then we have no good answer for the child. But as the Lord lives, it is NOT the ultimate goal.

  Being apart from the body is a temporary state and the ultimate goal is to be raised, as Christ was raised. Paul says, again in I Corinthians, that "if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, then your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins.... But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept."

  God has my Dorm Room ready. But college is not forever; there will be a Graduation Day.

  • 2:07 pm
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