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.