Remembering the Dead
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Kids, what do you like about holidays?
Did you know that
Today and next week we’re doing something a little different, we’re taking a short break from our Psalms series to touch on two matters of Church History.
This week we’re talking about remembering the dead, and next week we’re going to talk about reformation. Both of these issues touch on problems of the Church in the past, but have great relevancy for us today. We’re going to see what God has to say on these topics from his Word, the Bible.
So diving into today’s topic, lets talk about a history of remembering the dead!
Over the course of history there have been various ways to treat people who have died. In many pagan religions this involved helping the spirits of the dead find peace by honoring them in some way.
In some cases there are people who believe that the dead can speak to the living and even that the dead can help the living in some way.
We must remember that God made us with spirit. We have a body, and we have the soul, or spirit or breath. These two things are designed to go together.
But when our body dies, something of ourselves continues on. When our body stops breathing our “breath” (that is our spirit) continues on.
So a big question is, how should the living relate to the people who still exist, but who are not accessible anymore? But this brings up other questions, like can they hear us? Or, can they affect us?
In ancient history, when God saved the people of Israel out of Egypt, he gave them laws against certain practices that the other nations practiced. In particular they were told:
“ ‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.
and
“ ‘Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.
So we see from the outset that God had something to say about how his people should relate to the dead. It included rejecting the pagan rituals of cutting the body, or marking the body with tattoos for the dead, and it involved not trying to engage with the dead through necromancy and mediums.
When we think of things like necromancy and mediums, we probably imagine fantasy worlds in books and movies, or perhaps charlatans who swindle people out of their money for the illusion of talking to the dead. But God didn’t outlaw such activity because it was a deceitful lie, but because it was a real thing that God wanted his people to stay away from.
Remember the Witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28? King Saul consulted a medium to talk to the dead prophet Samuel.
So God told his people to have nothing to do with kind of stuff. So once people have died, we mourn them yes, but we should not seek them out to speak with them or appease them. They are no longer with us, but we will join them one day in death. David put in poignantly at the death of his son:
2 Samuel 12:23 (NIV)
Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
But what could they do for their dead?
They could remember.
They could look back at days gone by and remember their ancestors, and what God did in their lives.
They weren’t to pray to their ancestors, but to pray to the one who rescued them, and blessed them!
They were called to emulate the faith of those who had gone before.
God’s people were also called to remember the failures of their forebears, so they would not repeat the same mistakes!
For instance God’s people are asked to look back at the incident at Meribah in the wilderness and act differently:
Psalm 95:7–9 (NIV)
Today, if only you would hear his voice, “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
They would need to know the history of those who had gone before them in order for this warning to make any sense!
So I’ve been talking from the Old Testament so far, so we might wonder, did the coming of Christ affect how we think about those who have gone before? Not really, the same principles continue to apply, but we do get some more perspective on how we can do it well.
For starters, we’re told that there are people who will be remembered and honored for their faith:
Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
and,
Luke 1:46–48 (NIV)
And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ... From now on all generations will call me blessed...
But we’re also called to follow the example of those who have gone before us:
We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.
and
Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.
In Christianity we have sometimes fallen into the trap of elevating certain key spiritual figures, and then tell everyone to follow their example, but without the Gospel. You may have seen it, where churches and Sunday school lessons just become “be good like him”, “love God like her”, “be brave like them”. It becomes moralistic. The sermon becomes “Be like David and slay your Goliath,” instead of “Jesus is the new David who slays the Dragon for you”
So there has been a healthy rejection of moralistic teaching over past decades, and a return to Christ centered, Gospel rich preaching, but, this does not now mean we shouldn’t copy the good examples of our heroes of the faith! We still must imitate those who have by faith done what is pleasing in God’s eyes. Consider the outcome of their life, and imitate those who follow Jesus well.
Now this is applies to both the living and the dead.
There is a whole chapter of Hebrews that does this. It holds out the example of faith of Bible heroes, naming their deeds of faith. The author goes to great lengths to drive home their example, recounting person after person after person who trusted in the LORD despite not receiving the fullness of what they were promised in this life.
After this huge list we are given this admonition:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
So the author looked back on all those righteous dead, and held up their example then used that as a launch pad to say “they are witnesses of God’s grace and promises who did mighty deeds by faith, now go forth and do likewise, looking to Jesus as your goal.”
And this is one of the most important features of this idea of remembering the dead, we remember those who have gone before so that we may serve the LORD now. Their example, good or bad, should help us to be faithful now, with Jesus our Saviour as our centre-point.
Jesus himself who died is the ultimate one that we remember and follow. All his ways are perfect, and all his words are right. We should follow him and his example.
His death on the Cross was first and foremost atonement. He paid for our sins. He redeemed our lives with his own.
But in doing so, he also provided the example that we are to follow: to take up our cross daily, to share in his suffering, to consider his suffering and not loose heart when we suffer, lay down our lives in sacrifice, forgive others as he has forgiven us.
And insofar as other believers have mimicked Jesus, we should mimic them.
In the early church, they did a pretty good job of holding up godly examples of Christian faithfulness to follow. They honored those who did mighty deeds of faith, and after they died they would be regularly remembered.
Now as more and more Christians came and went, and more and more great examples of Godliness started to pile up, they needed to make a system. So the churches began to set up a special calendar where dead Christians (aka Saints) they wanted to remember would get a special day once a year when they would be celebrated and held up as a example of faith & godliness.
You may know some of those days even now, like St Patrick’s day, St Valentine’s day. Notably saints and their deeds of faith have fallen by the wayside, instead there are flippant traditions and consumerism.
But the numbers of days of remembrance kept growing, and they only had 365 days in a year. SO they filled the year, and then they started to double up on days. Eventually the church leadership said, lets just all remember some key saints on their own day, and we’ll make one day a year to remember all the rest.
We’ll call it All Saints day on November 1.
I’m sure you can see things were hating to get a little out of hand with all this remembering the dead stuff. But it’s going to get worse.
With the rise of this relentless honoring of the saints came a few issues. One was the idea that we could and should talk to the saints. That is, that we should pray to them! After all, the logic goes that if they are alive, and with God, and they’re freed from earthly constraints they will be able to hear us when we speak to them. And seeing as they are loved by God, and they are with him, the perhaps the saints can get in Jesus ear and speak to Jesus on our behalf.
Another issue was the idea of works righteousness - theses holy examples were paraded around so much, and the idea was born that you needed to earn holiness like these remembered saints in order to get into heaven.
Which leads to another issue, the idea that there were kind of multiple classes of Christians. There were those who were good enough to go straight to heaven when they died, and those who were still Christians, but needed to do some extra work. The term “saint” was then reserved for the holy people who the church “knew” went to heaven.
The rest, it was said, were sent to a place called purgatory. Where instead of Jesus paying for your sins and making you righteous, you have to suffer hell-like torment to purge you of all unrighteousness.
Needless to say none of this stuff is in the Bible. They were making it up as they went along, but it all seemed quite sensible to them.
So now that they had this idea of all theses souls in purgatory, the church said you could pray for your dead relatives to get bonuses in their purgation, to make it a little easier or faster. (Or you could give money to the church to make your dead relatives have a shorter time in purgatory).
So with praying for the dead souls of your relatives, they decided we need a day set aside for that too, we’ll call it All Souls Day, and we’ll have it on November 2.
As was popular back in the day, you would start your celebration of holy days on the evening before, often with a church service or special foods and whatnot. So then the Evening of All Saints Day became important as well, October 31.
Remember, saint means “Holy One” or “Hallowed One” and so the name of that day was in some places called “All Hallows Eve”, or “Halloween”.
In some places on Halloween people would bake little cakes and give them out to poor people. The poor people would go around begging for these cakes, promising to pray for the souls of their departed relatives as they ate them. They called this souling.
This was all getting way out of hand. what had started as a good thing, considering and copying the lives of faithful Christians, had turned into
idolatrous devotion to dead Christians,
praying to people who were not God,
endeavoring to speak to the dead,
works righteousness,
a made up system of purgatory,
extorting people for money, and much more.
It was a mess!!
By God’s grace, the Reformation came to Europe and killed off alot of this stuff in many countries, but alot of this stuff is still taught and wholeheartedly believed by the Roman Catholic church. Pray for their reformation!
The reformation sent people back to the Bible to see what it had to say about our faith.
There they saw
it is not for us to speak to the dead
it is good for us to remember the mighty deeds of faith and the godly lives that others have lived,
But all Christians are saved by grace through Faith, not by being holy enough to get into heaven.
All our remembrance of those who have gone before should lead us to look to Jesus, like this verse says. Fixing our eyes on Him and running the race before us.
Yes we can also remember the failures of those who have gone before too, as a warning to us to avoid those pitfalls and remain faithful. Pitfalls like the woes of the western church before reformation.
One day all the dead shall rise and face the LORD:
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.