We Live Among the Tombs
My family and I just returned from a week-long trip to Great Britain. The primary reason we were there was so that I could defend my dissertation. But since I was traveling there anyway, we took the opportunity to take the older boys and tour London, Oxford, and Ireland. When you’re in England (or Europe in general), you’re reminded just how young a country America is. We visited the Tower of London, which was built in 1078 by William the Conqueror. We saw churches and buildings that were begun in the Middle Ages, added to during the Reformation, and expanded by the Tudors, the Hanovers, and the Windsors up through modern day. In London, we visited Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace where the Queen lives. In Oxford, we visited Christchurch Cathedral and the Kilns where C.S. Lewis lived. In Ireland, we visited Lewis’s childhood vacation spots that inspired Narnia as well as tombs and stone tables that are as old as the pyramids.
And though there are many things worth sharing from our trip, I wanted to highlight one of them by way of exhortation for us this morning. It’s remarkable that for the English and Irish today, they live their daily lives amidst all of these places and monuments of great historical significance. There’s a Starbucks across the street from the Tower of London. There’s a lawyer’s office next to the Eagle and Child where Lewis and Tolkien had breakfast every Tuesday. There’s a great little pub (with an X-box to keep the kids entertained) right next to the 2000 year old Roman walls that still stand inside the city of Chester. If you want to get into the 5000 year old Fourknocks tomb in Ireland, you just need to get the key from the farmer who owns the land. The blending of modern life with ancient monuments is a remarkable thing. I kept wondering whether the people who live, work, study, and play realized the significance of the buildings and monuments that they walk by every day?
But even more than that, the regular signs, monuments, and statues were a constant reminder to me about the reality of death. Whether it’s the hundreds of nobles, soldiers, and poets who are buried in Westminster Abbey; whether it’s the Martyr’s Memorial that commemorates the burning of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley in Oxford in October 1555 or the 5000 year old Fourknock’s tomb that was built on a high place as a pagan passageway to the afterlife; or whether it’s the grand tomb of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, or the simple stone nestled among all the other crumbling stones in the graveyard of the country church in Oxford where Lewis is buried, as we toured, we couldn’t help but be reminded that we were constantly walking among the dead. And that’s not just true of England. This whole planet is a graveyard and we live, work, and play among the tombs. For me, there was something sobering and deepening about the constant reminder that death comes for us all, small and great, noble and common. The constant reminder was a little disorienting. I kept thinking: “He’s buried there. She’s buried there. There are bones beneath that stone. He died here.” And that constant reminder could be a joy killer. Or a joy deepener. It could add a gravity to our gladness. As Lewis said once, “Joy is a very serious business.”
This reminds us of our need to confess our sins, so let’s seek him together.
Confession
Our God and Father, we often forget our own mortality. We forget that all flesh is grass, and all of our glory is like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flowers fade, and even when we put up stones to remind us of the glory of particular flowers, they still crumbled and fall and in the end come to dust. We confess that we have failed to number our days, to remember that life is a vapor, and that some day, our bodies too will lie beneath the ground. And in this forgetfulness, we have committed great evils. We’ve turned aside to our own way and thought ourselves immortal. Forgive us, O Lord, for our forgetfulness and for our self-reliance.
Father, we know that if we in the church regard sin in our own midst our prayers will be ineffectual. So we confess our individual sins to you now.
Father, we thank you that because of Christ, this graveyard that we live among is in fact a garden. Every body in the ground is a seed of the body that is to come. And just as Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection, we live, work, and play in this garden of death called the Earth in anticipation of our own resurrection at the last day. Thank you for the living hope we have in Christ. Help us to walk with gravity and gladness in the Holy Spirit. Through Christ we pray, Amen.