death

"The walking dead.” These are the words of African-American soldier Leon Bass as he described the horror he saw when Americans liberated prisoners in the Buchenwald prison camp in April 1945. Today some call confirmed drug addicts “the walking dead.” Then there’s the book/film Dead Man Walking—which describes many of us spiritually.

Luke 24:1-12

After 9/11, an incredible respect for life wove together the disparate humanity that worked the edges of the New York abyss. Iron workers, rescue teams, volunteers, chaplains, tourists, stricken loved ones—all were woven together in the solidarity of citizenship of those regarded by God as “for a little while lower than the angels.”

I was in Cuba this summer on a mission trip, when our host pastor, Héctor Méndez, approached me, his face grave and drawn. “They have attacked a Presbyterian hospital and school in Pakistan,” he said, “and people have been killed.”

As values change, so do funeral practices.