Back in 1969, my father published The View from a Hearse: A Christian View of Death.
A few years later, the marketers prevailed and a second edition was issued they had retitled, The Last Thing We Talk About: Help and Hope for Those Who Grieve:
The book is still in print. The title has returned to View from a Hearse, and it’s a helpful gift for family and friends mourning the death of a loved one. Despite the absence of ads, marketing, or celebrity endorsements, it continues to be read, year in and year out.
When Cook Communications’s marketing department issued the book’s second edition, notice their changes. The word “death” was removed, black is no longer the primary color, and the hearse is gone from the title and art.
For a long time now here in America, death has been being humiliated. God warned Adam death would be the punishment for his sin, but we refuse to accept it as any punishment and feverishly work to hide and deny its horror.
God has decreed death to be man’s final enemy, but taking it under our own authority, we remake it to suit ourselves. It used to be weighty, but death has been remade. Infused with our own lightness of being, death is dead.
Dying
Death’s death begins with dying.
Few die at home with loved ones at our bedsides, now. Instead, we die in hospitals where, too often, medical professionals are helpful getting it over and done with.
We suppress our mother’s vital functions through high doses of morphine or opioids. We starve and dehydrate our father so that the cause of his death is the withdrawal of care—not his old age or any disease he may have.
The Westminster Larger Catechism reads:
Question 136: What are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment?
Answer: The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are… the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life…
Refusing to provide our loved ones food and water—even withdrawing them—is exactly what the Sixth Commandment forbids: the “neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life.” Yet this kind of murder is routinely committed by Christians often encouraged to do so by Christian physicians and nurses. It is constantly hammered into the healthcare professionals that thirty percent of Medicare expenditures are from the last year of life, with thirty percent of those expenditures from the final thirty days,1 so hurrying things along will help cut costs.
When mother dies from morphine’s suppression of vital body functions, starvation, or dehydration, we reassure ourselves that we did it from love and it’s what Mom wanted.
But death is what countless people yearn for. From love of God and man, we plead with them, warning them not to commit self-murder. It’s telling that we don’t encourage and help the young to die—but only the old and handicapped. What is never said is that they are a burden to us, and many of them won’t live much longer, anyhow.
These things are committed in the white and sterile hospitals where healthcare professionals preside and visiting hours are (thankfully) limited. It’s all a part of the humiliation of death and it begins with our dying.
The funeral
When the dying is over and “she’s passed,” the death of death continues. It’s most obvious in what used to be called “last rites.”
Until recently, death was followed by those closest to the deceased visiting the funeral home in the next day or so to discuss and arrange the details of our mother’s visitation, funeral, and burial.
But now, whatever gathering we might decide to have in order to mark and grieve the death, the time of death no longer determines when we gather. Visitations where friends and loved ones join us viewing our loved one and sharing our mourning, memories, and comfort one another with the hope of Christ’s resurrection, are increasingly rare.
Rather, we call our loved ones to figure out a date for what most everyone now refers to as a “memorial service” or “celebration of life.” The gathering is no longer a “funeral” service of Christian worship proclaiming the witness of Scripture to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and those Christian believers who die “in Him.”
Instead, it’s a gathering named “memorial service” or “celebration of life,” and its purpose is to show pictures and videos of our loved ones’ life while family members stand in front of us at the funeral home or church telling stories about their loved one. They may insert a song and maybe a prayer. There might be a Scripture text, but the substance of the gathering is family members recounting stories and positive traits of the loved one, followed by those in the group being asked if they too would like to “say something?”
Note particularly how these celebrations of life are planned. First, one of the more responsible among the family members calls other family members to make a list of dates detailing when this one is on vacation, that one has a paper due, another one will be playing in a volleyball meet, and others are travelling or camping. “When could you make it,” each is asked?
Maybe wait until summer vacation. How ’bout early October? You think we could do it during Fall Break?
Death is no longer the Great Interrupter. Instead, it’s shifted around so it fits into family members’ schedules. Last rites are scheduled for the sake of convenience.
The burial
Having put off last rites for a month or two, death is humiliated even more by what we do with our loved one’s body.
The body?
Nevermind. That’s taken care of. Mother already made her arrangements. She wanted to be cremated—she was firm on that.
No muss, no fuss. Cheaper. Mom never wanted to waste money.
Cremation has the added benefit of making it easier to delay the family gathering for a couple months. Cremation removes any need for refrigeration and embalming.
Cremation also means we don’t plant our mother who gave us birth. Instead, we leave burying behind and burn her. She didn’t want to inconvenience her family, but to save money. We have the professional pick up her body and take it to the funeral home, which has a crematorium. Again, it’s convenient. Instead of all the rigamarole of the body being viewed and buried, disposing of the body is over and done with quickly, and we’re left with just an urn of ashes. So much easier and cheaper. Very convenient.
Over the twenty centuries of Christendom, this was never the Christian way of death. Rather, in the face of death we confessed our Christian faith in every big and little thing we did with our loved one.
Sadly though, cremation has now become the prevailing method American Christians dispose of (just) the bodies of their loved ones.
In our haste to be done with our loved ones, we forget:
So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the mouth of the LORD. And He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows his burial place to this day. (Deuteronomy 34:5-6)
God loved Moses. God buried Moses. God did not merely bury a body.
Our Heavenly Father presided over Moses’ last rites and buried him. Oh the tenderness of God planting his humble servant in the ground to await his resurrection!
Christians have always buried their loved ones.
We haven’t ever burned them.
Burning was what atheists did to their loved ones after they died. With them, it was a principle. Their treatment of their loved ones who died embodied their denial of the immortality of the soul and the Dread Final Judgment.
But those who believed in the risen Lord Jesus treated the bodies of their loved ones tenderly. They didn’t burn them. Their loved ones were precious to them. They belonged to Heaven, and this was confessed by planting them as seeds. Family members planted their loved ones in the soil where they awaited the resurrection of the body at Christ’s glorious second coming.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (1Corinthians 15:42-44)
The graveside
For two millenia, funerals were followed by the entire congregation carrying their beloved to their grave where he was placed in the grave facing eastward. The congregation stood surrounding him as the committal service was said by their shepherd.
This is what has been said for centuries over the body of the believer with loved ones all around:
Man that is born of a woman has but a short time to live and is full of trouble. He comes up and is cut down, like a flower; he flees like a shadow and never continues in one place.
In the midst of life, we are in death: and of whom may we seek for relief, but of Thee O Lord, who for our sins are justly displeased.
Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayers; but spare us, Thou most worthy judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death to fall from thee.
For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God in His infinite wisdom and mercy to take out of this world the soul of our (Brother/Sister) departed, we now commit (his/her) body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.
For this we say unto you by the Word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. 1 Thess. 4:14-18
Then the prayer:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who in thy perfect wisdom and mercy has ended for your servants departed, the voyage of this troubled life, grant we beseech you, that we who are still to continue our course amidst earthly dangers, temptations, and troubles may evermore be protected by thy mercy, and finally come to the haven of eternal salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Then, following the singing of a simple Gospel hymn, the shepherd gave us our benediction:
The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make His face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. Amen.
Finally, the men and women, boys and girls, came up to the coffin, picked up a handful of dirt, and dropped it on their loved one.
Just as the Lord Almighty buried His servant Moses; just as we testify concerning our Lord Jesus, that “He was crucified, dead, and buried”; so all Christians always have buried their loved ones. It has always been a central act of Christian faith to bury, to plant, each believer in the soil, there to await His Redeemer.
But no longer. The bodies of believers serve a higher purpose now, which is to help us humble and hide death’s horror.
Submission
In former years, our poets had no reticence at acknowledging death’s horror:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right2
The good father doesn’t limit his discipline to the word or act itself, but he watches for his son to demonstrate submission to his discipline. “Wise men at their end know dark is right.”
God is weighing our response to death. He Himself decreed this discipline of man and He watches us to see if we acknowledge His punishment to be unbearably awful, and proper. He is pleased by our submission to his punishment, but also our testimony to the resurrection of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that though we sow our perishable bodies in dishonor, at the last trumpet we will be raised with an imperishable body in power and glory. From our grave, we will be raised a spiritual body that shall never die.
Only at Christ’s triumphal return will death be defeated.
Only then, through the power of God, will there be victory over the grave, but it will not belong to us.
That victory will belong to our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1Thessalonians 4:16-18)
NOTE: For years these things have been a great concern, but again and again I hesitated to publish them, knowing friends and loved ones would take offence. This is the constant reality of pastors, and thus the absence of preaching God’s “no” as well as His “yes.” But although we take offence at any “no,” including the “no” of death, without God’s “no,” His “yes” has no definition, weight, or glory.
So no, this isn’t written to hurt anyone’s feelings, but to correct our understanding and practice of death and dying. By faith, receive it and grow in holiness.
