Thursday, June 13, 2013

Cemetery Plots

The White Bluff community in which I live is home to two cemeteries. It's a good and healthy thing to visit a cemetery occasionally, well that is if you are able to leave on your own power anyway. Now I personally don't think a visit to a cemetery is morbid, especially when no funeral is actually taking place. It is more a place of perspective, reflection, honor, gratitude and even enlightenment.

When we first moved to White Bluff and were deciding on whether to buy or build, which we ended up doing, there was offered to us, with a little negotiating, a parcel of land on which to build backing up to the Fort Graham cemetery. I called it the lot by the plot. I thought it was a great lot. It was a great deal financially. It had some good trees on it and next to it.  It was a nice size.The neighbors to the back of the lot seemed very peaceful. There were no neighbors on either side. We wouldn't have to build a fence for the dogs--the cemetery had one around it. (I figured I'd just put them in the garage when an interment took place.) It would be a great place to build. Every day one could be reminded of one's mortality and keeping the scripture, Psalm 90: 12: "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Well, that should be easier. Every day you would thank God for life and everlasting life. You could even respectfully walk among the headstones, reading the epitaphs and learning a bit more about life-- oh yeah,  and death. And when "the time" came, it would be a short walk out the back door for that last trip. But, alas, the wife had other, more practical ideas.

So I don't live next to the cemetery but I'm reminded to visit there occasionally. You can learn a lot with the plots. Some people avoid the thoughts of death and dying as much as possible and would never visit a cemetery no matter how peaceful, grounding or enlightening it could be. Other folks have been acting as though they were already there on so many levels. I would advise against either extreme. When you read the markers in  the cemetery you read some good advice, touching sentiments, and too often see dates that indicate someone got there too quickly. You wonder: cancer? accident? war? Did they do something that hastened their arrival like smoking or drunk driving? On the other end you see numbers of extreme length and hope their joy and purpose in life was as deep as their life was long.

There are a couple of burials I'd love to conduct at a cemetery. There are a couple of extremest I'd love to bury. I seem to recall a John Wayne movie when he told someone he buried some bad guys he had shot..."Well, I wouldn't have buury-eed 'em if they didn't need buury-en."  One thing that needs buury-en in our churches is legalism. It was around in Jesus' day and in the Apostle Paul's day. It hangs around like crabgrass in the yard. It has a crushing, crippling, and condemning effect and promotes a particularly insidious kind of arrogant pride. It has no regard for human suffering, needs or history. It often supersedes forgiveness and precludes reconciliation and reclamation. I'd love to conduct that funeral.

The other extreme is antinomianism (against or without the law). Here anything goes and pretty much all our morals have in this country. No objective standards. Truth is what works for you but may not be my truth. Tolerance is the antinomianist dogma. Emotions and pleasure make the decisions. Judgement is anathema. The word equality is thrown around a lot but has no meaning because justice loses its foundation and teeth. Popular opinion is the gold standard for discerning the way to live and any thought of a Holy God whose holiness is displayed through laws and precepts as a teaching tool to see His majesty and glory is declared dead or worse, irrelevant. I'd sing at the this funeral in full, off-key voice. (Honesty requires me to admit that an awfully lot of Christians through the centuries were accused of being antinomian. Once grace gets hold of a man his freedom may look a lot freer than some are comfortable with.)

Our tendency in church is to react to the antinomian, no law, no limits world by tightening the screws, getting more rules to show our moral superiority. Don't fall in that cemetery plot. This strategy never changed a heart. Either road of legalism or antinomianist leads to the cemetery. It doesn't matter which gate you come in, you're still dead.

So what do you do to avoid these plots? Grace...forgiveness...reconciliation...justice...holiness. Oh, I know what you're thinking..."you dumb preacher, you say that to everything. How do I come to know and live all those huge concepts?" Ok you got me. Just try this: Fall in love with Jesus, the real, living One of the Bible and of today.  Learn everything you can about Him and copy, follow, imitate, react and love like He does. That will keep you out of the cemetery for a long, long time--except to visit.

Still Plotting along,
Cos






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