As often I do when visitors arrive early, I take them on a little tour of our building, to see where the other congregations meet, and introduce them briefly to our life together. I was standing with Charlee and Buddy, Mike's brother, in the courtyard, when Ezra Bulgrien, still under two, came around the corner with Josh, his father, and his three year old brother Micaiah. Ezra saw Charlee and trotted up to her and gave her a big hug. He knew her and welcomed her from the time that he had visited Mike early on in his illness. I thought of the Gospel, "Unless you become such as these . . ." It was a little sign of the kingdom come to one who has to be trying to figure out these strange Christian friends of Mike's.

Mike continues to teach me. It is interesting to walk through death with Mike in light of readings I've been doing over the past years. Many of you know that I read, and even am associated with through the book I edited, "Conflicting Allegiances", a theological movement called Radical Orthodoxy. The writings of those associated with this thought is very abstract and esoteric -- often infuriatingly and frustratingly so -- in their engagement with the western philosophical thought. Yet they emphasize the Eucharistic, liturgical center of Life, found in the difference that is the Triune God, to sustain a real difference in creation, a difference seen in the concrete life of the church -- local bodies of Christ who lives for the peaceable kingdom of God in this world amidst the violent kingdoms of man. They do this in contrast to what they find in postmodern thought -- an eclipse of real difference, real distinction by the sameness of nihilism -- the reduction of everything to nothing. My readings in the pre-Vatican II Ressourcement movement arises from going back in the face of the 'nothingness' of this type of postmodern nihilism to the sources of the Radical Orthodox thought, and its relationship to the concrete life of post-Vatican II Catholicism. It some ways, what these thinkers see is that the postmodern is an inverse of the modern, the "end of the modern" in its constant repetition of the new and improved, the reduction of everything to nothing by making everything a commodity -- and nothing else. Worth and meaning comes according only to the "value" ascribed by competitive political/market forces. "Reality" is shaped by fundamental violence; it is nothing but violence, the eternal conflict to produce worth that is the market the consumes all (non)reality.

What does this have to do with Mike? As many of you know, Mike was poor. There is no shame in this for so was our Lord. As was our Lord, one's poverty becomes especially manifested in one's death -- Jesus depended on the care of his body by a rich man after his death. Friday night the same issue of the care of the body arose for Mike.

Mike had desired to donate his body to UCSD to be used for research -- in his death, to give his body as a gift for others. It was also a way to save others from incurring expense in the care of his body. Yet it was not to be. Legalities and illnesses that Mike bore in his body made the institution not desire his gift. The higher up in the bureaucracy that one spoke, the more evident this became by the rudeness and strength of the rejection.

The social worker who advised those who had taken responsibility for Mike's body said that there is a county program for the care of the deceased. It was decided to go that route. Yet on Monday, it was discovered that this program was basically a "disposal program" -- forgive me, but not too different from picking up carcasses from the street to dispose of for public health purposes. In this program, the bodies of the poor are cremated (not unusual in So Cal). The disturbing thing is that the body, now transformed into ashes, will not be returned to anyone for internment. Ashes are combined, and then "disposed" -- taken to the garbage dump?

The poor lose what little human dignity that the liberal capitalist society gives them in life in their death. Return of the ashes to friends or family, or reverent internment in the ground or scattering ashes in an appropriate place would not be too costly. Yet such dignity is withheld, most likely to avoid incentives for persons to use the program -- and thus incur more costs to the county. The poor become literally the dust that fills the land fills -- indistinguishable from other cast offs from the society. In other words, nothing. One sees here the nihilism that the market produces, the assessment that human beings sustain "worth" only by what "worth" they produce or what others attribute to them. Dignity does not adhere to the human being, made in the image of God, for whom God sent the Son as human to redeem and sanctify, but is found in human valuation that has its grounding in nothing. Without this grounding the human body is reduced to the same gray, indistinguishable dust that the poor are forced to live within daily. Post-modern nihilism that levels the body of the poor to the nothingness of dirt, the reduction to the sameness within the discarded of society within the landfills.

Of course, as Christians we know, as we observe on Ash Wednesday, "from dust we came; to dust we shall return." In this we share the conviction with the post-modern nihilists that we are creation, matter, the same dust as all creation. But as creation, we sustain a difference from all other creation -- because we are created by God in God's image. God in whom all difference lies, sustains us in our difference even in death -- the basis for the hope in the resurrection in the age to come. Therefore, we cannot -- and will not -- allow Mike's body to be so treated. He is not "nothing," but still our friend and brother, and we will honor his body in our memory, and care for him in the ultimate weakness that he has experienced in his death. We will do this in celebrating a Christian funeral -- an Easter liturgy, in which we mourn but hope.

We will do this by not turning his body over the the county for disposal. He will be treated with the dignity and honor that one created in the image of God, one redeemed and sanctified by Christ, bears as a witness to us all. Amidst a culture of death, we will celebrate and sustain life even in the face of death. In so doing, God has used the nihilism of our age to return us to one of the works of mercy -- the burying of the dead.

This practice was prominent within earliest Christianity in which the congregations refused the dehumanization of the treatment of the poor dead by the Romans. Those of wealth built vast memorials for internment above ground to display their honor, their humanity in their wealth, for all to see. Like today, one's humanity in death was seen as a function of wealth.

The early church thought differently. They cared for the bodies of their own, even in the death of the poor in their midst. Robert Wilken writes, "To the casual observer, the Christian communities in the cities of the Roman Empire appeared remarkably similar to . . . a burial society . . . Like these other associations, the Christian society met regularly for a common meal; it had its own ritual of initiation, rules, and standards for members; when the group came together, the members heard speeches and celebrated a religious rite involving offerings of wine, prayers, and hymns; and certain members of the group were elected to serve as officers and administrators of the association's affairs. It also had a common chest drawn from the contributions of members, looked out for the needs of its members, provided for a decent burial, and in some cities had its own burial grounds. . . . The Christian communities, writes the Roman social historian Jean Gage, 'offered at first glane an astonishing resemblance to a type of fraternal association, namely the funerary or burial society'" (Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 44).

It is interesting that God can use contemporary neo-pagan nihilism to force us to resurrect an ancient Christian practice that the church gave up when it surrendering the bodies of its dead to the liberal state, and thus to the market. May God sanctify our bodies as well as we journey together, not towards nothing, but towards God. We discover in real, concrete ways we as a congregation possess citizenship in a different city, the city of God, rather than the city of man that surrounds us.