Human Gardens
by Jonathan Daugherty

Many Christians have a problem with cremation. Some claim that to cremate the human body is to desecrate the image of God. Honestly, I have often had a hard time buying that one. I suppose others just don't like it because they find the thought of the process disturbing. And I suppose it is, but so can the process of interment. I have long imagined that the reason Christians began to bury their dead was because this had always been the custom of the God's covenant people. The reason that Christians continue to bury ought to be the same.

It is an interesting fact that the way anthropologists track and date the spread of Christianity across Europe is through the cemeteries. As the pagans were converted and their cultures were transformed, they generally abandoned their practice of burning their dead on pyres and adopted the practice of burying the dead beneath the ground together in one common, local place. As the culture was influenced by Christianity, they also generally forsook the custom of burying possessions and weapons with the remains. This is how the Christian burial custom and tradition began. Later, as the Church grew and matured, and so did the culture, and cemeteries were often located on the grounds of the parish church building.

In some of the medieval churches in Europe , deceased members of the church (and sometimes blasphemous kings) were, and still are, entombed within the walls of the church building. Somehow and somewhere the rumor started, or the heresy was taught, that a burial in the church building was a sure ticket to heaven. We can easily see the grave error here. But at least they understood the significance of the saints being gathered together even after the soul has gone on. At least they wanted to honor their dead in a holy and visibly corporate way. And at least they weren't gnostic baby boomers.

I remember first learning about anthropologists and their studies of cemeteries and my immediate desire to identify and be identified with that Christian history and tradition. This was the impetus for my conviction against cremation. I did not want to be associated with the pagans and their dark and godless culture.

I also remember, a few years ago, seeing a plaque in a funeral parlor with a quote that said something to the effect that you can understand a culture by the dignity with which a people care for their dead. If we understand the pagans' fiery funeral pyres to symbolize the fiery future for the unrepentant, we must also understand the cemetery as a garden which will spring forth life for Christ's own at His sounding of the last trumpet.

In I Corinthians 15:21-26, we read, "For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death."

When we, who have been saved, die and pass from the earth, we are separated from our bodies until the resurrection. The body goes back to the dirt from which it came. Until He comes again for His Bride, our remains remain here on earth and in the earth. At His coming, He will raise forth the bodies of all the dead, and we will gladly be rejoined with our then resurrected and glorified bodies.

The resurrection of the dead is an often forgotten doctrine, but yet is an essential of the Christian faith. We confess that we believe this to be true in the three most widely used creeds of Western Christendom. We proclaim our union with Christ and that because He Himself was raised from the grave so too will we. "For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." I Corinthians 15: 16, 17

Imet this old man one time, a hearse driver in fact, who told me that back home in Kentucky when he was a b oy they used to sometimes call graveyards "bone gardens," or his favorite, "skull orchards." Well, that's just about right. Sounds like someone has been reading his Bible back home in Kentucky .

It is in faith and hope that we plant each seed and bulb into the earth. And it is in faith and hope that we lay down our fellows in the faith. Paul, in I Corinthians 15, even explains how it is that the dead and rigid are made alive and living in terms of sowing kernels of grain. Just as gardens are cultivated in rows with families of plants together, and just as we sit and kneel together in rows with our families as we worship, so do we rest together in similar form out in the churchyard. In corruption and curse we are lowered beneath the clay and in glory we are raised to forever be with the Man who gave us life. Perishable bodies put on the imperishable and mortal bodies put on immortality. And we will see, with our very own eyes, our Lord as He is.

Lifeless dirt is made new and fertile with the hope and future of the last resurrection, when "graves restore the dead which they contained before," and Jesus Christ brings death to the last remaining death. And for a fruitful season, the bodies of the members of Christ's Body rest and wait in peace in the gardens of our glorified futures.

Jonathan “Digger” Daugherty claims to have had many near-death experiences.