Introduction
Major League
Baseball fans – are you depressed with how your baseball team
did last season? Are you perhaps thinking that you might die
before they ever make it into the playoffs? Are you wondering
whether you will be buried before your team ever appears in the
World Series? I have good news for you. The league just recently
finalized a licensing agreement with a casket-making firm so
that if you or your loved one were to die, you can now order a
casket with your baseball team’s official logo printed right on
the top of the pinewood box. You can go to your grave as a
die-hard San Diego Padres fan, with the insignia to prove it. We
clearly have become a nation that doesn’t have a clue when it
comes to death and dying, when it comes to caskets and burials
and graveside services. We don’t know what it’s all about. We
think it’s a time to once again declare our loyalty to the
Seattle Mariners or something like that. What is burial all
about? Why is it not the custom in the so-called Christian West
to do like they do in India and burn the corpse on a pyre? Why
do we bury a body in the ground? Is it merely about sanitation?
Or is there a theology of burial?
One of the most extraordinary scenes from Church History is what
took place in England in the early 1400s. John Wycliffe had been
dead for over 40 years. He had lived and died well – he was
preaching the gospel in church when he collapsed and was carried
out a side door. Wycliffe had spent his life preaching the
gospel to the peasants of England, and then translating the
Bible into their language. He was a Martin Luther character a
hundred years before Luther was even born. As a professor at
Oxford, John Wycliffe taught that the Scripture, not the church
or the Pope, was the final authority for our lives. He taught
that forgiveness of sins had to do with Jesus, not with buying a
piece of paper granting you an indulgence. And so in the early
1400s, more than 40 years after his death, Wycliffe’s teachings
were still sticking in the craw of the church hierarchy, and
they decided to do something about it. At the Council of
Constance, they condemned Wycliffe as a heretic, gave orders to
suppress all the Lollard priests who were going about the
countryside preaching Christ as Wycliffe had taught them, and
then they did one more thing: they ordered that Wycliffe’s bones
be dug up from his grave in the churchyard.
Determined that their generation and every generation thereafter
would know that Wycliffe was a dangerous heretic, determined
that he not be allowed to Rest in Peace, they dug up his bones,
burned them in a fire outside, and then unceremoniously dumped
his ashes into the River called Swift. One church historian puts
it this way, “They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into
Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus this brook hath
conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the
narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of
Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed
the world over.” Where is Wycliffe buried? Everywhere. Where are
today’s Wycliffe Bible Translators translating the Scripture
into the language of the common people? Everywhere. The enemies
of Wycliffe thought that they were removing his bones from holy
ground when they dug up his remains in the churchyard. But is
there any place on this earth that does not belong to Christ?
Genesis 49 and 50 force us to wrestle with a question: where
should we be buried? To Jacob, that was not merely a practical
question; it was a theological question. It mattered to Jacob.
It mattered a great deal. Why does the location of your grave
matter?
I. The Location of Your Grave Matters
Because We Belong to Another Country.
He belonged in Israel. And he wanted his sons and their sons and
daughters to realize this – Egypt is not our home; bury me in
the grave of my fathers, in the land the Lord our God has
promised us. We belong there, not here. Where do we belong? The
question still remains. Am I saying that you need to seek out
your ancestral land and make sure you are buried next to your
great-grandmother?
Jacob was not being sentimental. He wasn’t merely pining away
for the land of Canaan, thinking that it would be so
heart-warming to be buried up north. How can a burial be
heart-warming anyway? This wasn’t about being sweet and romantic
– I think it would be sweet to be buried right next to my wife
Leah. No, Jacob was never all that crazy about Leah. Joseph
would not have troubled the court of Pharaoh, all the sons of
Jacob would not have made the long journey north (escorted by an
entourage of Egyptian soldiers) merely for sentimental reasons.
This wasn’t a stroll down memory lane for them. This was
something else. It mattered to Jacob that he be buried with his
fathers in the land God had promised them. Why?
Jacob believed in the future resurrection. He believed that his
story was not over yet. Bury me with my fathers, because in my
flesh will I see God. A day of resurrection is coming. Jacob
knew that he belonged in Israel, not in Egypt. He’s telling his
sons, “Don’t get to thinking that just because there’s food for
you right now in Egypt, that Egypt is somehow your Savior. No,
you have an inheritance outside of Egypt. You belong somewhere
else. You are not to find your identity here. Find your
identity, locate yourself, in the promises of God!”
So where do we belong? Do we belong in Egypt or in Israel? Saint
Augustine popularized two names that are useful when thinking
about the difference between Egypt and Israel. Augustine wrote a
book contrasting the City of God and the City of Man. These two
cities – corrupt Babylon on the one hand, and holy Jerusalem on
the other hand – are always competing for our allegiance. The
City of God and the City of Man – you can’t find them on a map:
Now entering the City of Man, population 5 billion. The two
cities are, in this age, always present with us. In the city of
Salem, both the City of God and the City of Man are growing side
by side, sometimes in apparent peace, but ultimately on opposite
paths – one leading to eternal life and the other to eternal
destruction. The City of God and the City of Man can be found at
your workplace. They are in your own home. We are in a struggle:
am I living for the glory of God, are His purposes my purposes,
is His Word my agenda, are His priorities my priorities, or am I
living for the glory of Man, are my dreams and objectives
limited to this material world, am I consumed with seeking my
own interests, am I under the delusion that I can make this
world a better place for humanity without worshiping the God of
the Scriptures?
The City of God versus the City of Man – in Jacob’s day, you
could point to the map and locate the two cities. He knew where
he had to be buried: bury me with my fathers. Don’t bury me in
Egypt. But today, where are we to be buried? The Apostle Paul in
2 Corinthians chapter 5 tells us that to be absent from the body
is to be present with the Lord. Jesus – he is our location. When
you are away from the body, you are home with the Lord,
immediately. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Promised Land. We
need not be buried in Israel; we need not be buried in Abraham’s
tomb to be included in Abraham’s bosom when we die. For
believers who die in the Lord are present with the Lord
immediately after death – I tell you the truth, Jesus tells the
thief on the cross, this day you will be with me in Paradise.
Location matters: you are to be buried in this location: in
Christ. There wasn’t a square inch of the earth where they could
have scattered Wycliffe’s ashes and not have had him in the same
location: in Christ. Are you buried in Christ, are you buried in
the City of God, or are you merely buried in the City of Man?
More than once, Jacob repeats that he wants to be buried “with
my fathers.” The location of your burial is about community. You
lived your life in a community, with other people, and so now in
death, you are also in a community – bury me with my fathers.
Yes, you are immediately in heaven with the Lord – that is the
true location of your spirit after death. But even your body has
a future, and so Jacob gives instructions to his children.
II. Since We Do Not Belong in Egypt,
Since We Do Not Belong to the City of Man, Why Do We Bury Dead
Bodies at All?
Why not take
a much more casual view of the human corpse? Why not have your
body cremated and then have some company turn your ashes into a
piece of art? You can do that, you know! You can end up on your
grandchildren’s mantle, not in an urn, but as a very nice
crystal sculpture. I don’t know; it might even be cheaper than
buying a cemetery plot. Why do we bury the dead? Is it merely
tradition? In verse 5 we learn that Jacob actually was involved
in digging his part of the grave in the burial cave of his
fathers. What do you think he was thinking as he stood there,
shovel in hand, near the buried bodies of his ancestors? A
friend of mine was telling me this week of how he drove two full
days, non-stop, to make it to the bedside of his grandfather,
arriving there just hours before his grandfather died. He was
buried in a remote country town, where things aren’t quite as
commercialized as they are here, so that he actually was invited
to participate in the digging of his grandfather’s grave! Can
you imagine that? Our modern society has removed us from
anything that is unpleasant – we rarely witness the slaughtering
of the animals which we eat, and we rarely participate in the
details of a burial; our fragile hearts keep a safe distance
from anything having to do with death.
Why go to the trouble of digging a grave, six feet down? If this
world is not our home, if we are going to be given new,
glorified bodies, why put any care into this body when it dies?
If the City of Man is physical and the City of God is spiritual,
why not dispose of the body in the nearest landfill? Joseph
could have saved the Egyptians a lot of trouble – don’t bother
embalming him for the next 40 days; I’m sure you can all find
better things to do; pay attention to the living, not to the
dead. If the dead human body is truly worthless, then Joseph
could have preached that message to all of Egypt: don’t you see?
The body is unimportant! But he didn’t preach that. There is
something about humans, and I mean every human – we are created
in the image of God; even our physical bodies are stamped with
His image, and so we bury.
Burial is a good symbol. It sends a message to those who are
still living: this corpse, which appears to have no future,
actually does have a future, because God is the God of the
living, not the dead. When you bury a loved one, you are making
a statement about the Resurrection, about the life that is to
come. You are saying that there is continuity between this life
and the next, between this dead and decaying body of the present
and the living and glorified body of the future. It was outside
of Lazarus’ tomb that Jesus declared to Martha, “I am the
Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in me will live, even
though he dies.”
This world is not our home. This body is a temporary tent that
we occupy for a brief season of time. But it is not as if our
future home is somehow non-physical. This world is not our home,
but the new heavens and the new earth, the world that is to come
-- it is our eternal home, forever with the Lord in the heavenly
Jerusalem, the City of God. And so if the future is the new
heavens and the new earth, your body will be raised and
glorified so that it might live in that new environment. By the
simple act of burial, you are saying that you actually believe
in all this supernatural, miraculous stuff. When we bury a
believer, we are saying that Creation is good. When God created
the earth and all living things in six days, he looked at it and
said that it was good. So we treat it as good. Fallen now, but
still God’s good creation. Physical matter is not evil; it was
God’s good invention. And when we care for a dead body, we are
agreeing that physical stuff is good. The spirit of your loved
one has left the body, but the Spirit of God is still here, and
there is coming a day when these dry bones will rise up and
live!
Thankfully, the Scripture gives us great leeway when it comes to
burial customs. Joseph was comfortable letting the Egyptians
embalm his father’s body, even though that was not the Jewish
custom. Nowhere in the Scripture will you receive an airtight
argument against cremation. What is clear is that your body has
a future, and when possible, the believer is to be buried with
the community of faith, that is, with Christ, with the Lord.
Rachel was buried by the side of the road. This was the cause of
great grief to Jacob. Of course the location of her grave spells
no problems for Rachel in the afterlife. That’s not the point.
The fact that Wycliffe’s bones were cremated presents no problem
for God who knows how to resurrect a body even when its
molecules have been radically changed and scattered. But burial
with the community of faith is still a good symbol – it sends a
message: we live and worship and play together in this life; at
death our souls are immediately together with all the saints,
with the Lord; and at death our bodies are also placed together
as we await that great and glorious day of Resurrection.
III. Since We Do Not Belong in Egypt,
Why Do We Grieve and Mourn When a Loved One Dies?
Some cultures have wakes which last for
days, so that when your buddy dies, you end up having a party in
his honor that stretches out the rest of the week – a lot of
laughing, a lot of joy, sharing stories. I like the sound of
that. There is a time to laugh. There’s also a time to cry.
Romanticists try to airbrush death; they are in denial. Death,
they tell us, is just another stage on the journey; we fear it
because we fear the unknown. But according to the Scriptures,
death is the result of sin; death is what happened because of
our rebellion against God; death is an enemy that would conquer
each one of us, were it not for the God of the Resurrection. In
the day that you eat of that fruit, Adam and Eve, you will
surely die. And so they did enter into death and eventually the
earth from which Adam was created, consumed his mortal body –
for dust you are and to dust you shall return. Death is an enemy
that eats us up.
And so we mourn and weep and cry. Sometimes we cry a lot. We are
mourning the loss of our friend. We are mourning the pain of
separation. We are mourning the entire Fall of humanity into sin
and death, disease and violence, all the things which assault
human dignity and attack the image of God, and disrupt our
fellowship with one another. We mourn the fact that though we
were created for glory, we have sunk into this vulnerable
condition, where we get sick, lose our mental capacities, and
die. We weep at this humiliating display of human weakness. How
long, O Lord? How long until you deliver us from these bodies of
death and clothe us in eternal glory? Good grief can give us a
greater hunger for heaven than we’ve ever had before. Grief can
fix our gaze on Christ and whet our appetite for the world that
is to come.
We were created to rule over the earth, but the earth ends up
ruling over us, as we are placed six feet under. Who will rule
over the earth and not let the earth rule over him? Who will
conquer death and usher us into eternal life? A descendant of
this same Jacob – Jesus himself, who was taken to Egypt as a boy
and then was called out of Egypt back north to his people. In
verse 3 we read that the Egyptians not only embalmed Jacob’s
body, but they also mourned him for 70 days! This was not the
ordinary custom for an ordinary peasant citizen of Egypt. This
was what the Egyptians did if one of their pharaohs were to die.
In his death, Jacob is given the royal treatment! Do you see why
Joseph of Arimathea went to the trouble and expense of giving
Jesus a real burial? In death, you are treated like a king, even
if you are buried in a pine box, for you belong to King Jesus.
You are part of his family. Your destiny is tied to his. Jacob’s
nation of Israel was to be the new humanity, given the promised
land, called to rule over the land and not let the land rule
over them. Jesus is the true Israel, the truly New Man who now
rules over death, having risen from the dead on the third day.
The earth could not rule over its Creator, and the grave gave
him up. “Jesus lives, and so shall I, death thy sting is gone
forever.”
IV. Finally, Since We Do Not Belong to
Egypt, Since We Do Not Belong to the City of Man, How Do We Make
Sure We Get Out of Here? How Do We Get Out of the City of
Man and into the City of God? How Do We Get Out of Egypt
and into the Promised Land?
You
need an Exodus. That’s what Genesis 50 is. Right before the book
of beginnings ends, and the book called Exodus begins, a
small-scale Exodus is recorded for us. The Genesis 50 Exodus was
an Exodus led by Joseph. He is the champion, securing permission
from Pharaoh and safe travel into the land of promise. Four
hundred years later, Pharaoh’s army will not be escorting the
Israelites to protect them; this time the Egyptian armies will
be pursuing the people of God to destroy them. In that Exodus,
Moses is the champion, not Joseph. Here in verse 5, Joseph asks
Pharaoh, “Now let me go up and bury my father; then I will
return.” 400 years later, Moses will stand before Pharaoh and
say, “Let my people go.”
So who will lead you on your Exodus? You somehow need to make it
to the City of God, out of the City of Destruction. You know
that you do not belong to this world’s system. You sense that
its educational system is flawed, that its governments are
corrupt, that there is so much that you would wish to leave
behind for a better land. But where is your Joseph to lead you
out of Egypt? Where is Moses when you need him? Who will stand
up to Pharaoh as he invents yet another excuse to keep you
entangled in the things of this world which is passing away?
You are brought across the Jordan River, not by Joseph, not by
Joshua and the Israelites who have escaped the death of the
firstborn in Egypt. You are brought over Jordan by Christ, the
Firstborn, the eternally begotten Son of God, who died for us.
His death, not Jacob’s, is the death that ushers us into the
land of promise, bringing us home at last. Father Jacob’s burial
was what brought his children back to the promised land, but in
Christ’s death and resurrection you have been set free from the
City of Destruction and have been given safe passage to the
heavenly Jerusalem.
Joseph said, “Let me go up and bury my father.” Moses said to
Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” But Jesus, having risen from the
dead, stood on the mountain and addressed his disciples. This
risen Jesus did not have to ask Pharaoh or any earthly power for
permission. He doesn’t ask Caesar, “Let my people go.” Instead,
Jesus stands there on the mountain and says, “All authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit …” Go into all the
earth, for whether you are in Israel or Egypt or England or
Oregon, your Exodus is in and through Christ. Place your faith
in him.
Amen.
Rev. Stephen Lewis
Pastor, Evergreen Presbyterian
Church
Salem, OR
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