Genesis 23

Sarah died in the land of Canaan after 127 years on this earth. Where did she go after that? Was her soul extinguished with the death of her body? Jesus once said that God is the God of the living. God said to Isaac in Genesis 26 after Abraham had died, “I am the God of Abraham your father.” Present tense. He is the God of a man who is. Abraham is. Sarah is.

When Sarah died, she died as a stranger and an alien in a foreign land. After so many years of following Abraham as he followed the Lord, her husband did not even own a burial plot in the Promised Land. Therefore he went to the people of Canaan and bought a plot of land.

How humiliating. When you lose someone you love, and their souls go to be with the Lord, their bodies remain on earth. Many people say they don't care what happens to their bodies after they die, but this is not considerate to the living. People who love you will want to know that they have done everything they can to show respect for the body of the person they have loved. We cannot keep our loved ones' bodies alive any more, but we can dress them nicely, respectfully, place them in an appropriate coffin so that people can come to say goodbye, and then have a dignified ceremony to celebrate together what we believe about heaven and earth. But then what do we do? What do we do with the bodily remains of the ones we love? God has told us the truth that our bodies return to dust. We bury our loved ones according to passages like this, and we place our hope in God who raises the dead.

Meanwhile Sarah is alive in heaven with the Lord, with angels, and with many people who have trusted God and finished their days on this earth. We who love and miss those who have died feel the emptiness and the loss. We may praise the Lord, but the Lord who cried at the grave of His friend will understand if our “Hallelujah” is cold and broken. We cannot do much for the ones we love in our grief, but we would like to show our tender care for the bodies we have loved by burying our dead with dignity.

Sarah was dead, and Abraham was still alive on earth, and he had no place to his name that he could use to bury his beloved wife's body. So he went to buy a piece of land according to the customs of his era. He mourned for her. He wept for her. But then he went to get a small piece of land to do the right thing.

In doing this small task, the purchase of a suitable piece of ground for a family burial plot, he had to do what missionaries all over the world must do as they travel in lands that have become their temporary homes. He had to humble himself before the people of his day and follow their cultural practices. This is the only way for us to get by. As we do this, we have an opportunity to live honorably even when we may not feel like we can take another step. In buying this land, Abraham was respectful of the memory of Sarah, he was respectful of the people around him, and he was respectful of the promises of God, who is the God of the living.

Through this public and appropriate procedure, Abraham lived out his faith at a time of great personal loss. It may not seem like very much of a spiritual victory for this man to be able to speak to the people around him, finding the right price through a system that was polite and cordial toward others. Sometimes being able to stand and to keep on going in faith is worth noting.

The end result of this transaction is that Abraham owns his first piece of land in Canaan. He was a wandering Aramean, but now he owns a plot of ground in what will be Israel. That ground will hold the remains of his wife Sarah. She would be buried there in the hope of the coming resurrection.

When Jesus came to that land as the long-expected Messiah, the great descendant of Abraham and Sarah, He came as a citizen of a better Promised Land than Canaan could ever afford. He sojourned during His days of suffering in order to be the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He Himself confessed to those who were following Him that He had no place to lay His head.

Yet He was given a cross, and He was willing to own that tree of death for us. He did not wander anymore once He came to that tree, yet ultimately death could not hold Him. For a time His body was kept in the borrowed grave of a rich man. Yet He did not need that space for very long.

In three days, Jesus rose from the dead. After He had taught His disciples and displayed the reality of the resurrection with man-convincing proofs, He went to the true Promised Land of heaven in order to make a place for us.

For now we live in this world of death here below. Yet in Jesus Christ, we are already in the heavenlies. While we remain here for a few decades, we try to live in a peaceful way with those around us. We try to show appropriate respect for both the living and the dead. If we must choose, we will leave the dead to bury the dead, and we will follow the Man of resurrection to our true heavenly home.

In all that we do, we testify to the truth that Christ has won for us a resurrection life in a world beyond the present day of tears, a world that is. In that place Abraham is, Sarah is, and most of all, Jesus is. One day there will be a final resurrection at the reclamation of the earth. That is why we respectfully bury our dead, and that is why we continue to live as people of life in a world that is passing away.