VIEW POINT
Ron Thomlinson wonders how we can convey the fact that death has been overcome
A
N unexpected telephone call from the offices of her nearby cemetery detonates a bomb under Annie’s world. Annie* became a young widow when her husband died 14 years earlier, leaving her to raise two young teenagers on her own. After that telephone call Annie is beside herself. Life is difficult enough for her: under the banner of efficiency, her hours as a cleaner have been slashed and all her employment guarantees removed. The reorganisation gives her a zero-hours contract, no holiday pay, nothing if she becomes ill and no pension. When there is work, she earns the minimum wage. The devastating telephone call must be put into its cultural context. In the Netherlands land is scarce and therefore costly. The same, of course, applies to land used for burials, and so graves are rented. It is possible to buy a long lease or a plot in which to be buried, but that requires significant financial means. For people like Annie, renting a grave for ten years was her only option. Those ten years came and went, as did the extra four years she received for free. In fact she had not given it another thought till someone rang from the council to say that, in the following week, her husband’s grave would be gerooid. In other words, he would be exhumed: it was being rented out to someone else. Annie had two choices: she could bury
him all over again in another part of the same cemetery or the council could gather his remains and place them, unmarked, in a collective grave alongside other nameless people in another section of the graveyard. Despite it costing more than €1,300 to bury him again, this is what Annie decided to do. A few days later the council official met Annie, her children and three friends at the entrance to the cemetery. The small group, not knowing what was expected of them or even how the process of reburying worked, walked in silence towards a brand new coffin resting above a freshly dug grave. At the graveside not one word was spoken – there were only tears. There were no instructions. There was no ritual. Though Annie and her husband had been faithful adherent members, there was no Salvation Army officer present: the corps had been closed. Because of distance, Annie had never settled into another corps nor joined a nearby church. When the silence became too much to bear, she nodded to the man from the council, and the mourners, lost and broken, slowly walked away. It had been a desolate experience of absence and emptiness. Thinking about Annie, some lines from a song made famous by Aretha Franklin came to mind. The quote is taken wildly out of context but describes perfectly Annie’s emotions: ‘When my soul was in the lost and found, you came along to claim it.’ Two days later a friend sent me an article he had been asked to write about what Easter meant to him. ‘As a parish minister Easter has always confronted me, in Churchill’s words, as the time of “blood, toil, tears and sweat”.’ Why so tough? Anyone
who thinks that Easter is about bunnies and spring blossom has not yet grasped the magnitude of what the Easter preacher is trying to convey. Resurrection is absolutely unique. There are no analogies to latch on to. Luther’s butterflies don’t cut it for me. How do you convey to ordinary mortals that death – that dreadful reality – has been transformed, overcome, not just courageously but actually? How do you convey that we encounter in the risen Christ the new and ultimate form of humanity? I wish I knew an easy way to do that, but I don’t. I believe it and affirm it. But preaching it takes me right to the edge. Miss the mark here and you miss everything. Should it be so tough? Yes, absolutely! On the first Easter morning, Mary of Magdala is inconsolable with grief when she discovers Jesus’ body has gone missing. She pleads with the gardener: ‘Please tell me where you have put him and I will take him away’ (John 20:15 J. B. Phillips). All she wants is to bury him again. Annie knows that reburial is not part of the Easter story. Faith in Christ’s resurrection gives her strength. However, the rub is that in ten years’ time she will have to do it all over again: another decision, probably another reburial in another plot of ground and definitely another invoice from the council. One of Paul’s questions haunts me: ‘O death, [where] is your power to hurt us?’ (1 Corinthians 15:55 JBP). My answer is: just ask Annie. * For reasons of privacy Annie’s name has been changed
RON LIVES IN THE NETHERLANDS Salvationist 20 April 2019
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