Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Delivered into the Hands of a Mortician
I read an article in Salon.com about a mortician college instructor, Hugh McMonigle, who has taught communicable disease, embalming, and microbiology for 44 years.
He has a head like Winston Churchill. Big round glasses. A couple of chins. Many stories of his mortician adventures over the years. The interviewer asks, “Are you ever freaked out by dead bodies?”
He said that he had one instance where he would go to a convalescent home to pick up a body. He’d get a key, go to the backdoor, retrieve the body, place the corpse in the hearse, and then return the key.
One night while returning the key, he talked longer than usual. When he got back in the hearse, he heard a voice saying, “I hope you don’t mind.”
He jumped from the hearse lickety-split. The voice was from a man in the backseat who had visited a friend in the convalescent home and needed a ride into town. He figured he’d hitch a ride from the mortician.
We can imagine ourselves in this man’s position. But that’s about as far as it goes when it comes to relating to a mortician. But a mortician will handle us all.
We are birthed into the world only to be delivered into the hands of a mortician. And if it all ends in his hands, then we really don’t have a lot to live for.
The Bible says, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; . . . those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).
I believe when we start putting all of our attention on this life and how our body looks more than the condition of our soul, then it produces the holy doldrums.
We have controlled our bodies for decades, and to think we have to let the cold hands of a mortician prepare our bodies is unthinkable.
This is what I like about Joseph of Arimathea, who asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. Somehow I have to believe that Christ would have wanted this.
I wonder what it felt like to carry the skin and bones that once contained the Son of God—limp as a dishrag but sacred as a sacrificial lamb in the hands of a priest. This body, Christ’s body, became in the moment of death the church universal. Fascinating!
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Something New. Read one of Robert's novels in progress. It's a sweet and tender love story that appeals to the romantic in all of us. Click the link: http://ablogofregrets.blogspot.com/
He has a head like Winston Churchill. Big round glasses. A couple of chins. Many stories of his mortician adventures over the years. The interviewer asks, “Are you ever freaked out by dead bodies?”
He said that he had one instance where he would go to a convalescent home to pick up a body. He’d get a key, go to the backdoor, retrieve the body, place the corpse in the hearse, and then return the key.
One night while returning the key, he talked longer than usual. When he got back in the hearse, he heard a voice saying, “I hope you don’t mind.”
He jumped from the hearse lickety-split. The voice was from a man in the backseat who had visited a friend in the convalescent home and needed a ride into town. He figured he’d hitch a ride from the mortician.
We can imagine ourselves in this man’s position. But that’s about as far as it goes when it comes to relating to a mortician. But a mortician will handle us all.
We are birthed into the world only to be delivered into the hands of a mortician. And if it all ends in his hands, then we really don’t have a lot to live for.
The Bible says, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; . . . those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).
I believe when we start putting all of our attention on this life and how our body looks more than the condition of our soul, then it produces the holy doldrums.
We have controlled our bodies for decades, and to think we have to let the cold hands of a mortician prepare our bodies is unthinkable.
This is what I like about Joseph of Arimathea, who asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. Somehow I have to believe that Christ would have wanted this.
I wonder what it felt like to carry the skin and bones that once contained the Son of God—limp as a dishrag but sacred as a sacrificial lamb in the hands of a priest. This body, Christ’s body, became in the moment of death the church universal. Fascinating!
------------------------------------------
Something New. Read one of Robert's novels in progress. It's a sweet and tender love story that appeals to the romantic in all of us. Click the link: http://ablogofregrets.blogspot.com/
© 2007 by Robert Stofel