Pastor Jason Andersen, friend of the Presbytery and citizen of Sanityville recently shared this on Facebook and I thought it would be appreciated here. The original post was made by Pastor Matt Richard of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in North Dakota.
“Prior to the 20th Century, funerals were organized and handled by the family, the church, neighbors, and friends. The family washed the body, dressed the body, washed and combed their hair, laid them out, all the while lamenting the loss. As shared by a husband, “After my wife had died, the nurse gave me time and space to prepare her body for burial. I took this time to wash her body and hair, doing so with my tears at times. So many memories and thoughts stirred in my mind, including the story of the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. With the nurses’ helping I then put some clean and beloved clothes on her body. Trembling, I anointed both her head and heart with a fragrant anointing oil as I spoke these words, ‘May God the Father, who created this body; may God the Son, who by His bliss redeemed this body; may God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be his temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh.’ Then my daughter and I wrapped her remains in a freshly white sheet.” [Taken from the 2026 Dying Well Conference; Immanuel Lutheran Willow Creek]
I have come to see how deeply our culture has forgotten that bodies matter.
And because we have forgotten that bodies matter, we have largely forsaken Christian Funerals for “Celebrations of Life.” In doing so, we have become functionally Gnostic in the way we deal with death. By and large, Celebrations of Life avoid the deceased body, downplay the grave, and shift our attention almost entirely to personalities, romanticized memories, and sentimental assurances that the deceased will somehow “live on in our hearts.”
But that is not the Christian hope.
You see, the Christian body is not an empty shell. God created that body. Christ redeemed that body. The Holy Spirit sanctified that body in Holy Baptism. And on the Last Day, Christ will raise that body from the grave. So Christians do not merely gather to remember the dead. The Christian Church actually takes the physical body of our beloved dead, carries the body to the cemetery, and places the body into the earth, while confessing the astonishing promise that Christ will raise the dead.
Listen up! Christians do not need to look away from the dead body. A Christian funeral looks death squarely in the face and calls it what it is: an enemy. And then, right there in the presence of death, the Church speaks the promises of Christ, while carrying the body from the church to the cemetery with Scripture, prayer, hymns, and the confession of the resurrection ringing in our ears.
Indeed, we lay the body into the earth not because the body no longer matters, but precisely because it does. In the words of Dr. Kent Burreson, “The earth is the natural resting place of the Christian body until the resurrection.”
Christians care for the body. Christians carry the body. Christians bury the body. And Christians expect the Lord Jesus Christ to raise that body on the Last Day.”
