WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT THE FUNERAL?

blogging Genesis 23

² So Sarah died in Kirjath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.

³ Then Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, ⁴ “I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Give me property for a burial place among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”

. . .

¹² Then Abraham bowed himself down before the people of the land; ¹³ and he spoke to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, saying, “If you will give it, please hear me. I will give you money for the field; take it from me and I will bury my dead there.”

I can’t (or won’t) tell you how many times I’ve sat with grieving spouses, children, or parents who said, “Pastor, I don’t know how we’re gonna bury her/him.”  Sometimes that meant they didn’t have the money.   Sometimes they had the money, but no one had made arrangement in advance.  They hadn’t talked about coffins, cremation, graves, markers, or funerals.

They loved their dearly departed, but in their family they didn’t talk about death, especially the business of death.

I won’t tell you how many times, but it’s common.  It’s easy for better prepared families to mock and judge the unprepared, but you’d be surprised how common lack of preparation is, even among people we think of as great, powerful, and admirable. 

The following is a true story.

There was this guy, a minority from out of state.  He’d come into town like he owned the place or he was supposed to.  He’d been caught committing fraud but he’d never been convicted, possibly because he had a following of hundreds of earners who would kill for him --- and had. 

He had two kids, sons.  His oldest lived out of state with the boy’s mother, his ex-wife.  Well, maybe she was his ex-wife and maybe she’d been his official side-chick.  The stories are kinda confusing on that point, but everyone agrees that the man put his first baby’s mama out with his teenage son because of the drama he had another baby by his first wife and then there was just too much drama.  It was like even God knew they couldn’t make it work under one roof.

Now, this guy wasn’t all bad.  He was deeply and sincerely religious, and he absolutely loved his first wife, and, though he made some parenting decisions that under other circumstances would have warranted a visit from child protective services, he sincerely loved both of his sons.   He was fiercely loyal.  I mean, this guy LITERALLY went to war when his nephew got in trouble. 

Our guy, like the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Kennedys, eventually earned the respect of the ruling men around him. 

Over time this man amassed money, jewels, vehicles, and weapons for his private army; but when his wife died he realized that he was technically HOMELESS.

He’d moved around:  eastside, westside, northside, southside.  He’d stay for a while, make some money, maybe get into some trouble, and then move and set up somewhere else.  He had baller status, but no real estate.  For all his power and property, he didn’t own so much as a plot of Earth big enough to bury his wife in.

Was he stupid?  Was he a ghetto fool?  Was he just another thug who should’ve bought life insurance instead of necklaces? Maybe you shouldn’t have any sympathy for this guy.  Maybe he deserved the extra pain of having to negotiate and grieve at the same time.  Maybe this was God’s way of paying him back for being a b-ad baby’s daddy and a convicted felon.

Maybe.   

Abraham went to the men who ran things and asked, “Give me property for a burial place among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight” (Genesis 23:4).

They offered to donate space in their family mausoleum’s but our guy Abraham insisted on paying full price for a burial plot so that the land would belong to his family forever.   After the usual haggling, Abraham bought a tomb and the land surrounding it from Ephron the Hittite for 400 shekels (Genesis 23:5-16).

God had promised that Abraham’s descendants would own all the land where Abraham was renting and squatting. 

On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites” (Genesis15:18-20).

Sarah’s death made Abraham realize how far he was from walking in that promise.  When Abraham purchased Sarah’s tomb he didn’t just arrange for a funeral, he made arrangement for the future of his family.

Abraham acquired a piece of real estate that anchored his family’s claim to residence in the Promised Land through a legal deed witnessed, notarized, and recognized by  the Canaanite tribes that would rule the land until Abraham’s descendants through Isaac and Jacob came to claim it 500-plus years later.  In Genesis 25:9-10 both Abraham’s sons buried him in that tomb.  Through Ishmael and Isaac, the legal anchor of the  Abrahamic claim to the Promised Land was preserved through the Ishmaelites (Arabs), the Edomites (descendants of Isaac’s son Ishmael), and the Jews (descendants of Isaac’s other son Jacob).   Today, a mosque that used to be a church sits atop the spot 3 historically contentious religions s believe is the cave Abraham bought in which to bury Sarah. 

 

The Ibrahim Mosque

The financial funeral arrangement Abraham made resonate 4,000 years later. 

A long, long time ago, an imperfect man said, “Lord, I don’t know how I’m going to bury her.” realized the need to provide a place for those who had gone on and simultaneously to leave something for those who hadn’t come along yet.

In other words, MAKE A WILL, FILL OUT A LIVING WILL, GET SOME LIFE INSURANCE, AND WRITE OUT YOUR FUNERAL PROGRAM so your family doesn’t have to go to the Hittites begging after you die!

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

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