Dealing with the Body at Death

I do think this text tells us a little something about what we do when people die that does come along with grief.

We have to actually deal with their body.

And the Bible does not give us a prescription for this.

I wanna be clear.

The Bible does not give us a prescription for what we do with the body at death.

In fact, this says they embalmed him.

And by the way, Egyptian embalming, it took 40 days because it was this long elaborate process.

But this is not a prescription.

This is a description.

You have to understand when you read the Bible, the difference between prescriptive texts and descriptive texts.

This is not telling us that we need to embalm.

It is telling us that embalming is okay.

If you want to have your loved one embalmed, that's fine.

But understand that's not Jewish custom.

The Jewish custom is still even to this day, to bury the body within 24 hours, having only washed it and clothed it, putting it in a wooden casket and putting it in a tomb that has a bottom that is open so that the body is able to go back into the ground.

Most of what we do is not traditionally biblical in the sense embalming and viewing and all that stuff.

It's not.

It's not wrong because that's what they're doing here.

But why is Joseph embalming his father? Because he knows it's gonna be a little while before he gets him to his grave.

So he's prepping the body in a state of stasis so it won't begin to decay and they're able to travel to Canaan and get him to where he goes.

But there's not a prescription here.

Here's the prescription.

You wanna know the prescription? We don't have one.

In general, believers are buried, but that's not a have to, that's just the general.

And we see that like when Moses died, God buried him.

So there is a sense in which that's the general mode, but it's not the only way to do it.

And what we have to remember is whatever we do with the body, it's not going to imperil the soul.

Years ago, there was a man in this church, his name was Don, and this was years and years ago.

He passed away and his family was somewhat divided over what to do with his remains, with his body.

And the family had wanted to fulfill his wishes and his wishes was that he would be cremated.

So they decided to fulfill his wishes and have him cremated.

Well, one of the members of the family had married a man from the Eastern Orthodox Church.

And I'll never forget this, because I wasn't the pastor then.

I was the associate pastor, worked with the youth group, and Pastor Daryl was my boss.

He was the senior pastor.

And so I was with him and he was the mouthpiece at the time.

And we were standing here and in walks this dude who is wearing a vestment that looked very, very Lord of the Rings-ish, the best I can say.

It was just long and dark and black.

He had a giant ivory cross that emblazoned his chest.

He had no hair from here up, but hair for days from here down.

It was long hair down the back, but it was a chrome dome on top.

Just is what it was.

And a long beard.

And he walked in, had his cuffs in, very serious, very somber dude.

I remember when he saw Daryl, the pastor, he says, you may call me father.

And he said, I ain't gonna do that.

So it was one of the most proudest moments I had of my predecessor.

I was like, get him, Daryl.

We don't call each other father.

But he began to chastise the family for choosing cremation.

And he began to argue that they were imperiling the soul of their loved one.

Let me tell you something.

I don't care whether a body is burned or eaten by a shark or blown up in a bomb in Iraq.

God is able to resurrect his own.

The typical mode is burial.

But if you have chosen another mode by your conscience, then may God be blessed in that.

And here's the deal.

Nothing we do to the body can imperil the soul.

Or thwart God's ability to bring resurrection.