The Work of Mercy: Bury the Dead, Part 2

The ambiguity of our position as fallen creatures is on full display in how we treat the dead. In the Old Testament, burying the dead is as much a pious work of mercy as it is in the Christian tradition. But as in the Christian tradition, it is also something nobody is especially eager to do. Under the old covenant, touching the dead rendered a person ritually unclean, for instance, just as today it can traumatize you, make you sick, or give you the creeps. There’s a reason every civilization and culture in the world has ghost stories and feels the dead to be uncanny. We sense in our bones that the division of body and soul is wrong. We feel the absence of the one who should be there. And we are none too eager to look on the face of the dead.

And yet, burying the dead remains a work of mercy. For Christians the archetype of this work was seen in the deposition from the cross and in the women’s later coming to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. Indeed, so significant is the work of caring for and burying the dead that one woman in particular will be remembered for this act down to the end of time:

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. But there were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment thus wasted? For this ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and given to the poor.” And they reproached her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body before- hand for burying. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” (Mark 14:3–9)

The utilitarian approach to the dead and those doomed to die that is exemplified by Mary’s critics is still very much with us—and is growing as the euthanasia movement grows, urging the weak and inconvenient to die and get out of the way, while simultaneously promising us a secular utopia through war and the raw exercise of earthly power. Sometimes it can reveal itself with a white-hot hatred of the weak and those who care for them.

Exhibit A: Mother Teresa founds a home in Calcutta specifically ordered toward honoring those who cannot be saved from death. In doing so, she blasphemes against a central tenet of post-Christian faith in progress: the doctrine that we shall sooner or later conquer death itself. She reminds us, by her Home for the Dying, that we are all going to end up there sooner or later and that sometimes what is necessary is to reverence the dying by giving them their true human dignity. This is, in fact, a million miles away from what our culture of death calls “death with dignity,” for Mother Teresa does not murder the dying with poison or blather about weeding out the unfit to make room for the productive. Instead she simply honors the dying, cares for their bodily needs, and prays for them as they leave this world.

The response of atheist Trotskyite Christopher Hitchens to her? “I wish there was a hell for the bitch to go to.” To embrace our holy sister, the death of the body, enrages the children of this world now no less than it enraged Judas then.

For death is the last impregnable fortress against our pride; the last reminder that sin cannot win, that our power is not eternal, that God is not mocked. It is also, by the grace of that same God, no longer a hole but a door. Our salvation has been won precisely through the death of the one whose body Mary of Bethany anointed. It was that dead body, and no other, that was raised from death in glory and that is now the means by which God mediates his eternal life to us in the sacrament of Jesus’ Body and Blood.

The body of our beloved dead is, therefore, like Jesus’ body, both a memorial and a pledge of future salvation. It is the last relic we have of our beloved—and the seed of the person’s resurrection. So we honor it even in death. As Paul says:

What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind; but God gives it a body as he chooses, and to each of the seeds its own body. Not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for human beings, another kind of flesh for animals, another kind of flesh for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the brightness of the heavenly is one kind and that of the earthly another. The brightness of the sun is one kind, the brightness of the moon another, and the brightness of the stars another. For star differs from star in brightness.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.

So, too, it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being,” the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But the spiritual was not first; rather the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven. As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly, and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.

This I declare, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality. And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”  (1 Corinthians 15:36–55)

(For more information, see my book THE WORK OF MERCY: BEING THE HANDS AND HEART OF CHRIST (available here, signed by me, or in Kindle format here, or as an audiobook here).