16 December 2006
Old Lutheran Quote of the Day
Great indeed is the honor put upon our bodies, insasmuch as they are the dwelling-places of our souls redeemed and fed by the body of Christ, and are the temples of the Holy Ghost and the abodes of the adorable Trinity. It cannot be that they should ever remain in the grave, since they are thus nourished with the body and blood of our Lord. - Johann Gerhard, *Sacred Meditations* XVIII.
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6 comments:
Kind of makes cremation seem a bit on the inappropriate side, no?
Not any more inappropriate than the pagan burial rites so many indulge in-wearing their best, having objects buried with them, etc. God will provide a new body for all His martyrs burned at the stake and He will provide a new body for those who are not troubled by conscious about cremation.
The Christian does not refrain from cremation out of fear that God will not provide a new body, he refrains because it is inappropriate; it more befits those who do not like God's creation. God, on the other hand, loves His creation so much that 1. He became a man Himself, and 2. He joins Himself to our bodies each time we receive Him in the eucharist. LHG
It just seems very odd that any Christian would willingly choose to have his body burned to ashes upon his death. Why do I say that? Because the Bible knows of no cremation for the saints of God, only of the body being buried as a seed in the ground. The Biblical model of how to deal with a saint's body is to bury it, reverently and respectfully. This very body was the temple of the Holy Spirit, yes, the very dwelling of the Most High God through the mystical union. It was this body that the Lord came to redeem with His own body and blood. It was this very body that was buried [there's that word again!] with Christ by baptism into His death. It was this very body that received into itself the body and blood of the Lord Christ Himself. To discard of this body in such a pagan and gruesome fashion by burning it up to me bespeaks a deep impoverishment of the spirit and of Christian piety.
It's a shame "Anonymous" doesn't have the courage of his/her conviction to sign his name, but then again, I too would be more than a little embarassed about defending the callous burning of our bodies. So, I understand "Anonymous" -- it is hard to sign your name to something to appallingly bad.
Do check out the "green" burial movement,,,,,,
cheaper than cremation, and that is the one major reason for it's popularity, and "green" avoids embalming and the array of tacky glitz that helps fund the largess of the funeral industry.
The symbolism of burial is better, but we have no grounds on which to condemn cremation, or to make blanket statements about what "the Christian" does with a dead body.
And if I were just trying to avoid "gruesome" practices, I might prefer cremation to decay.
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