You are correct and very wise. I support you completely in your interpretation of the resurrection of our Lord as well as our future resurrection. Our graves will be empty when our spirits rejoin our bodies. As we surely know, Jesus’ tomb was empty and so will be ours. Isn’t that grand? I look forward to His Second Coming!
Your Brother in Jesus,
Edward
Thanks. Most of our mortal bodies (unlike the body of Jesus) will see corruption after burial. But we don’t need all of our original cells for us to rise bodily at the last day. Indeed, our cells already come and go as we grow. One could say that our DNA, our memories, our personalities are all “on file.” I will still be the person I am.
I agree with this. I must say, I actually struggle with something that others might find silly, which is, is a “proper burial” in some way a more faithful alternative than cremation? I wonder about this not regarding others’ choices (which are their own business before their God) but just for my own preparations for my eventual death.
Specifically, if I ask my family to bury me (despite the enormous expense thereof), is this a sort of statement that “I believe in Jesus’s imminent return, and by asking to be buried I am declaring my belief that there will be both continuity and discontinuity with my current bodily existence… I will be in some meaningful way ‘raised’ and ‘transformed’, rather than completely re-created”? Is planning for cremation and scattering in my favorite location in a sense “giving up” on Jesus’s imminent return?
It doesn’t help that I’m aware that the historic tradition of the Church has been anti-cremation, and I’m a traditionalist at heart.
I wonder what you and others think about this issue, from the perspective of those who harmonize science and orthodox Christian tradition?
I am right there with you. A my wife’s sister and husband are going to be cremated, and while I have no real theological problem with it, the tradition break makes for a little discomfort. As I recall , the objection in Christian tradition was more due to the Roman and pagan funeral cremation ritual and a reaction to that.
We were at a funeral a few weeks ago with the deceased going for cremation following the service, and at the conclusion, the casket was loaded into the hearse and everyone including family returned to the church hall for refreshments. A little disconcerting, as it seems to give more closure to be able to leave it all at the gravesite, even though we know the loved one is not there anymore.
This reminds me that we should keep Joshua in our prayers as he mentioned on another thread that his father died this past week. We usually just interact together online, but we are a community, and Joshua is dear to us.
Well, it gets complicated, and that’s not an easy question. It’s a mystery, in fact. Sometimes our substance gets incorporated into the bodies of others: sometimes because we get completely recycled if we’ve been dead long enough. Surely many people have died long ago and decomposed where crops are now being grown.
And what about people who were born with missing limbs or organs, or who died in childhood?
And what about the people who were immolated on Sept 11?
And there is the matter of donors: people bleed and receive donated blood (unless their religion forbids it). I have 2 dental implants and have received donor bone in my jaws. What Christian would refuse to donate organs or blood because he needs it for the next life? I ultimately believe that God knows what he is doing, and that there won’t be a bloody mess on the day of resurrection. I do believe that we will be given flesh from God’s original creation, that is transformed.
As it says in 1 Cor 15:
51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
At the end of the day, it’s your own decision about the kind of burial you want. What matters is that it’s a service of Christian burial.
(btw, today is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was buried in a mass grave. Very few people even attended his funeral.)
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