BURY THE DEAD

To bury the dead is one of those Christian responsibilities that we must fulfil and yet it is one we hardly ever think about on a daily basis. It almost pales in comparison to Jesus’ admonition that we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, do our best to alleviate poverty the world over. People in real physical need, needs that must be met in order for them to simply stay alive, doing what we can to address those needs overwhelms us.

When we think about this and then think about the further need to bury the dead, we almost want to repeat what Jesus said to the man who wanted to follow him but first needed to bury a relative: “Let the dead bury the dead.” In other words, taking care of the living is more important than taking care of the dead. They are dead and they do not need any more help in this life. Yet they still need to be buried. We know that.

There is a point here that we sometimes miss when we think about our responsibilities to bury the dead. When we help alleviate the needs of those who are alive, we are well aware of those needs. We may not know personally the people we are helping, but we know they are in need and that we cannot be satisfied until all those in need are no longer in that state. Granted, such a time will not come in our lifetime. Even so, we must do what we can. In doing so we focus both on those in need and on the need itself.

We do the same when we bury the dead. Yes, the merciful act of burying the dead is to insure dead bodies are not simply lying around to rot. Rather the admonition asks us to reflect on the deceased person’s life and on life itself, the dead person’s life and our own life. We do that in a way when we deal with the death of a loved one.

As believers we know that death, physical death, is only a transition stage from this life to the life to come. We have no way of knowing what that new life will be like, but we do know what the life that ended was like, to a degree, of course. We never fully know what another’s life was life. But as we reflect on that person’s life, we are given the opportunity to reflect on our own life: past, present and especially the life that is still ours.

My suspicion is that we do not do this often enough. In fact, we probably only do it when the person who has died is very close to us. I know this to be true in my own life. It has only been because of the recent death of two close friends that I have been reflecting upon my own life, that both were a little younger than I am, and that there is still much that I want to see and do but do not know how much time I have left.

Thus, it is important for me, and truly for everyone young and old, to take time to reflect on how we are living this life God has given us, if we are living it as best we can, taking care of ourselves and those in need as best we can. If not, we need to try better. Death awaits all of us as does the life to come. That life is out of our hands. This life is not.