The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley, and lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you knowest.” Again he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, slain, that they many live.” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great host.

Jesus Has Conquered Death

The call came in the middle of evening choir rehearsal at my congregation. It was my (Kent) mom. My dad, Allen Burreson, had fallen and suffered severe head trauma and bleeding in his brain. The prognosis was that he would not recover. If we wanted to say our goodbyes, our family would have to drive the six hours from Saint Louis, Missouri, to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the middle of the night. So I rushed home, and my wife, our two daughters, and I drove to Cincinnati, my childhood home, to make the final journey with my dad.

We arrived at the hospital and after the initial hugs and tears, our entire family joined in vigil around my dad. It is one of the most sacred experiences that I have had in my earthly life. Surrounding my father, I led all of us in the rite that commended him, a child of God, into his heavenly Father’s arms. With death pounding on the door of his life and leading the rest of us into life without him, we all needed to hear a word of promise from God.

Reading for all of my family to hear the words of the risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene outside his tomb from John 20,1 I placed my hand on my dad’s head and said, “Go in peace, Dad. May God the Father, who created you, may God the Son, who redeemed and saved you with his blood, may God the Holy Spirit, who sanctified you in the water of holy baptism, receive you into the company of saints and angels to live in the light of his glory forever.”2 It was a reminder of the promise that my dad, baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, would share in the Lord’s victory over death. “‘O death, where is your sting?’ . . . Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55, 57). Jesus has conquered death and all those who believe in him shall be victors over death as well.

All Christian burials are declarations of victory. The church buries its dead in the sure and complete confidence that God the Father will raise from the dead that body we entrust into the ground. This confidence in the resurrection in the face of death’s destructive power is born from the living Word that proclaims Christ has risen from the dead and is the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). As the prayer at the end of the committal rite in my tradition proclaims, “Receive our thanks for the victory over death and the grave that He won for us. Keep us in everlasting communion with all who wait for Him on earth and with all in heaven who are with Him, for He is the resurrection and the life.”3 Christ reigns over the great enemy, death, and so do all who trust in him.

That promise of victory is not empty. It looks empty as we place the cold, lifeless bodies of those we cherish in the ground. Death stings. As we stand around that grave, we taste death in our mouths, we breath it into our nostrils, we touch it with our hands. But “The Strife is o’er, the battle done; NOW is the victor’s triumph won.”4 Christ’s victory and the promise of our victory over death are filled with a specific hope: the resurrection of our bodies. It is the promise that God will raise the body we place to rest in the ground. He will raise a dead and decayed body and it will be imperishable. It will never die again. God will clothe it in immortality, in eternal life. Death that no longer holds sway over Jesus will no longer hold sway over our resurrected bodies. This is a mystery. We cannot comprehend it, but it is the hope proclaimed at the grave, embodied in the imperishable and immortal body of the risen Lord Jesus.

In the hope of the victory of the resurrection, the church waits. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:7-9, “As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” In fellowship with the risen Lord, we participate in the building of his kingdom. He came to establish God’s rule and reign over all creation: destroying the power of sinful humanity, death, Satan, and hell. At the center of that kingdom stands Jesus’ resurrection.

His victory over death is the animating pulse that enlivens every inch of God’s kingdom, filling the lives of all who are the first fruits of his resurrection. As the angels in Revelation sing, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). Into that kingdom the Lord will invite those who have died and whom we place through burial in the Lord into the ground.

The Great Renewal Story

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” These words are spoken at many funerals. When we place our human bodies back into the ground from which God created them, we confess something about this kingdom that God establishes through his Son Jesus Christ and by his Spirit. We confess that it is a kingdom of the earth and that it is for the creatures that God created from the stuff of the earth. God’s kingdom is one of renewal, restoration, and recreation. God the Creator will renew the creation rent asunder by human rebellion and death’s destruction. The resurrection of our bodies is part of the culmination of God’s re-creative activity.

This story of God’s kingdom expresses itself in the written Word of God in several different ways. Through Israel, God seeks to bear witness to and accomplish the renewing activity of his kingdom. Through the prophet Ezekiel he promises such living renewal to the exiled people of Israel:

The Lord promises to re-create his people—give them a new heart and a new spirit—and so to demonstrate his kingdom of renewal to all the nations. Ezekiel 36:29-30 goes on to detail that he will re-create the land as well with abundant grain and fruit. The renewal God intends is a complete renewal of his creation.

Jesus, when he appears on the scene in the Gospels, proclaims, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15). And the sign for the coming of God’s kingdom of restoration was at hand in the last prophet, John the Baptizer. As the disciples are coming down the mount following Jesus’ transfiguration, they ask him, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” That is, why is the coming of God’s kingdom preceded by the coming of Elijah. In the tradition of Ezekiel, Jesus responds by saying that “Elijah does come, and he will restore all things” (Matthew 17:10-11, emphasis added). Then he affirms that Elijah has come in the person of John the Baptizer. The one who was promised, the great prophet Elijah, the forerunner who would announce the renewing kingdom of...