The other day I received the unwelcome news that the body of a faithful Christian had been cremated.  I suppose I would have found it easier to accept if it had been done without her consent.  But that’s not what happened.  She had asked to be cremated.

No.  Money wasn’t the issue.  There was plenty of that.

The reason she did it was because she thought she had no more use for her body.  To her it would become an empty bottle after death, drained of its contents and worthless, or worse than worthless, just a stinking carcass.  If you agree with her; if you don’t see a problem how she thought; well, we need to talk.     

Remember the “What Would Jesus Do?” phenomenon of a few years ago?  It was a fine thing, I suppose.  It was a sort of update to Charles Sheldon’s, In His Steps.  I find it curious that so many Christians fail to follow the logic of the question all the way to the end.  “What Would Jesus Do?” is fine for daily life – the Lord certainly gave us a model for living, but it’s the model that he gave us for dying that makes living like him worth it.  Remember, the Apostle Paul told us, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”  (1 Cor. 15:19)  It’s what happened to Jesus after he died that makes Christianity truly interesting. 

You know what happened: Jesus’ body was raised from the dead.  Listen closely – his body was raised from the dead, not his spirit without his body.  It was a package deal.  In fact, Jesus went to great lengths to demonstrate to his disciples that he wasn’t a disembodied spirit.  He walked, he talked, he touched and was touched, he ate.

My father is a Scientologist.  You know, that cult that all those Hollywood types like Tom Cruise and John Travolta belong to.  Well, my father believes in reincarnation and other things that L. Ron Hubbard taught.  Most folks think that Scientology is a new thing, but it really isn’t.  It’s just a kind of science fiction version of a heresy that’s as old as the hills – Gnosticism.  Gnostics believe that the spirit it all that matters and that matter just doesn’t matter.  They think the body is some kind of worthless suit that you gladly slough off when you die.  They think of the body as a kind of prison, full of evil and bile; and they think the spirit is all light and goodness.  They go so far as to say spirit and body just don’t belong together, that the body wasn’t really made by the same source as made the spirit.  I think you can agree with me that anyone who thinks like this doesn’t think like a Christian.

And yet, the stuff I hear Christians say about the body makes me wonder sometimes. 

I don’t believe in reincarnation but I do believe in the divine incarnation.  The incarnation shows us, among other things, that life in the body can be made to serve spiritual ends in this world.  The resurrection shows us that the body has a future beyond this world, it will continue to serve spiritual ends in the next.  Just as the incarnation tells me that Christ can live in my body today, the resurrection tells me that my body will live in him for all eternity.  Naturally, it must be transformed supernaturally to do so.  It is a seed that must be planted for it to be raised for the life to come.  But, you see, it must be planted.  And this is why Christians bury their dead.  Hindus burn their dead because they believe in reincarnation, not resurrection.  Christians bury their dead because they beleive in resurrection, not reincarnation.

Throughout the centuries, Christians have gone to great lengths and to considerable expense to bury their dead.  Many of them were poor – poor beyond our ability to imagine.  So poverty is no excuse.  That’s what the catacombs of Rome were used for.  They were a network of tombs.  It was only after the persecutions of Rome that they were used as hideaways.      

If all this strikes you as a little odd you might want to read 1 Corinthians 15.  I’m sorry that your pastor hasn’t talked to you about something the Apostle Paul hung the entire case for the Christian faith upon.  Of course, there is the Apostle’s Creed.  But you probably haven’t heard that either.  Oh, well.  Now you know.

I can almost hear you screaming at your radio.  “Are you saying Wiley, that those who have been cremated won’t be raised?!”  No, I’m not saying that at all.  God can do anything but fail.  What I am saying is this: with regard to the cremated woman I mentioned earlier – there is no physical evidence to say that she believed in bodily resurrection.  She left behind no body of evidence.

In the modern world there is one thing that everyone seems to agree on. Whether they’re Liberal or Conservative, young or old, rich or poor, even Christian or pagan, everyone thinks the Church stinks.

I often hear my secular, New Age acquaintances say things like, “Oh, I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.”  Generally these people view beliefs like a diner views entrées in a cafeteria.  They like choosing things.   They’ll say, “I’ll take a little reincarnation, and give me some yoga – that’s good for stress, you know.  Oh, and throw in the unconditional love, because you can’t have too much of that, besides, I deserve it.”  For these folks religion means “organized religion” or “institutional religion.”  In other words, it means Church.  And the Church tells you what to believe.  It doesn’t let you have it your own way. 

Many of my Christian friends, unfortunately, sound much like those folks.  I’ve often heard them say, “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.”  Generally what that means is, “Just give me Jesus, please.  You can keep all that other stuff.”  They don’t want creeds, or rules, or traditions.  They want Jesus one on one, all to themselves.  All that other stuff, the stuff that makes it possible to enjoy Jesus along with other people, well that’s extra baggage.   

Although these two groups don’t seem to like each other very much they really have more in common than either would care to admit.  They want choices, not obligations.  They want things on their own terms.  They want a personal, private, convenient spirituality.  They want the benefits of a spiritual life without all the complications that come with sharing it with other people.       

Bad arguments really bug me, especially when terms are used that people don’t understand or haven’t thought deeply about.  Let me speak up for a very unpopular word.  Let me say something kind about religion. 

The word “religion” means “to bind.”  “Aha!”  I can almost hear you say, “I knew it!  Binding – slavery – didn’t Jesus come to deliver us from that?”  Well, yes and no.  He did come to deliver us from the bondage of sin.  But, he put a new yoke upon us.  He binds us to himself.  But there’s more to it than that.  He also binds us to the other people who are bound to him.  Remember the old hymn, “Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love –?”  That’s the sort of binding that Christianity promotes.  No, we don’t want to be bound to sin and death, but to have righteousness and life we must be bound to the source of our righteousness and life – the Lord Jesus Christ.  And you know what you find when you’re bound to him?  There’s a whole lot of other folks bound to him too.  Getting back to that silly quote – the choice isn’t between relationship and religion; religion is what relationships are made of.  What we should be concerned with is true religion.      

But people are so, well, inconvenient.  Disappointing too.  There is a saying I heard once, attributed to Einstein (I don’t know if he really said it, but it sure sounds like him), “I love humanity; it’s people I can’t stand.”

Abstractions are easy to love, they can’t hurt or disappoint you.  But particular people, well, they’re real and they can do both those things.

A few years ago I read a book entitled, What’s Right with the Church, by William Willimon.  It’s not a terribly big book (I know what you’re thinking!) – but it is a good book.  He made a lot of good points, but the best point is this – the church is God’s creation.

And just as humanity is meaningless abstraction without particular people to know and be frustrated with, so the Church is a meaningless abstraction without particular bodies of local believers.  Why, the Church isn’t an abstraction to God.  Every book in the New Testament was written to local churches, to be read aloud in local churches.  The only books written to individuals were not written to you or me.  In fact, the persons they were addressed to: Timothy, Titus and Philemon, thought the letters were too important to keep to themselves.  Since they were bound to the Church, they handed them over because it would be wrong to keep things so precious to themselves.

Before I sign off, I just have one more thing to say.  No, your family is no substitute for the Church.  It’s just not big enough.  The Church is made up of people from every tribe and nation and every local expression of the Church should strive to embody that as much as is possible.  If your family was the only Christian family in traveling distance, well, sure, it would have to do.  But is that what you really believe?  Are you really the only expression of the Church where you are?  I hope not.  If on the outside chance your family is – well, get busy and start evangelizing people!

There’s an old song you never hear these days that’s entitled, “Give me that old time religion.”  Yeah, that’s what I want.  And if creeds and old hymns help to bind me to the Church – well, throw those in too!  Make the cords so strong that I could never even imagine a relationship with God without all God’s people thrown in!  Sure, there’s a lot more to say about this.  I didn’t even get into the Christian’s connection to the Church around the world or through time — but it’s a start!