You will f ind these words in Isaiah 45: “I will give you the treasures of darkness.” Two of the darkest places I have ever seen are the night sky, and the bottom of a grave. Having been a minister, I have officiated at more than a few funerals— for members, strangers, friends and family. When I came to Rockdale, the first friends I met were the Joneses of Phillips and Luckey Funeral Home, who invited us for July fireworks. As odd as it may be, during the short years I was a hospice chaplain, I would often take my lunch break in the quietness and solitude of cemeter ies. Surely, the treasures of the night sky are the mesmerizing myriad of stars. But what are the treasures of the grave, symbol of the end of earthly life?
The Bible itself is full of references to graves and burials. The first burial in the Bible is that of Sarah. The first financial transaction recorded is that of the purchase of a burial plot in Canaan, for which Abraham paid “four hundred shekels of silver.”
Rachel was buried near Bethlehem and Jacob set a pillar (think headstone) upon her grave. When Jacob instructed his sons to bury him in the cave of Machpelah, he said, “There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.” Moses was buried in Moab, but no one knows where. Both Jacob and Joseph were embalmed in Egypt.
A “heap of stones,” a sign of abhorrence, was placed on the grave of David’s rebellious son, Absalom. The slain body of King Saul was cremated. Lazarus was buried in a cave. The body of Jesus was anointed and buried in a tomb that Joseph of Arimathea had prepared for himself.
A wonderful treatise on death and dying, funerals and burials, almost poetic, is a book by Thomas Lynch entitled: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. He opens with these words: “Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople.” He adds these words of commemoration and affection for the families that have entrusted him with their deceased loved ones: “By sharing with me the details of their lives and deaths, they have made me aware of just how precious we are to one another.”
Lynch is challenging as he shares just what an undertaker is and what undertakings are.
“Undertaker—someone who stood with the living, confronted with death, and pledged to do whatever could be done about it.
“…undertakings are the things we do to vest the lives we lead against the cold, the meaningless, the void, the noisy blather, and the blinding dark. It is the voice we give to wonderment, to pain, to love and desire, anger and outrage; the words that we shape into song and prayer.” The richest treasure we may find in the darkness is our love for one another.
I am honored to claim as one of my ancestors the American poet William Cullen Bryant, who composed these lines: “So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
The treasures of darkness are hinted at through this epitaph of an astronomer: “We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
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