Last weekend, for the tenth anniversary of our father’s death, my sister, my niece, and I traveled to the cemetery where he is buried. As we walked through the grave markers, almost every one of them a modest plaque flush with the earth—no statues or obelisks or worldly glory of any kind for these mostly Dutch Calvinist immigrants and their descendants—one epitaph appeared over and over. One word, directly under the name and dates of birth and death spanning their life: “Redeemed.”
Redeemed. It may strike one at first as arrogant. How do they know they are redeemed? Why are they so focused on their reward, the eternal life of their individual soul, for their believing? But this epitaph isn’t necessarily a sign of spiritual pride. For many it is simply a sign of their trust and hope, based on the verse from Acts 16:31: “And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” They believed, and they rested in the blessed assurance that they had been saved. This gave them comfort in life and their families comfort in their death, knowing that their sins had been washed away and that they were in heaven with the Lord who had atoned for them, not suffering eternal punishment for their sins.
As we walked among the redeemed, my sister noticed one marker that carried a different epitaph: “In His Presence.”
These three words, “In His Presence,” set me wondering, about the person who had chosen those words as the sign of his or her life to others, and how that sign might be different from “redeemed.” Was this person’s longing in life to be always nearer to God, more and more in God’s presence, trusting that when their body died and their life on earth ended they would experience that Presence fully, with no barriers? As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Perhaps this, too can be seen as arrogant, to claim that one is in God’s presence, has reached that station in death that was never possible in life, or been taken there as a reward for one’s trust while alive. For can we ever make such claims as fact? No. These epitaphs read as claims of fact, but they are signs of trust, and true in this sense.
You may say there is no difference in these two epitaphs. To claim, in trust, one is redeemed is to say one is enjoying God’s presence forever (as the Heidelberg Catechism says it so beautifully), and vice versa. But words matter. And this woman or man chose “In His Presence,” not “Redeemed,” to signify the direction in which his or her life was always moving. These three words focus less on the redemption of the individual soul from sin, and more on the joy of dwelling in the Presence of the Holy One, in this life, and beyond it.
I left the graveyard where my father is buried wondering. About that person who chose those three words, “In His Presence.” About what their experience of communion with God had been, and is. How they imagined coming into that Presence. Standing before the Judge? Wrapped in the loving embrace of “our Father in heaven”? Caught up in the joy of experiencing the end for which the world was created: enjoying God forever?
I like this thoughtful post. Graveyards can be a very interesting places, can't they?
ReplyDeleteMy dad's favorite scripture was Psalm 16, which says, "You make known to me the path of life, you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand." Thanks for the reminder to keep moving toward the Presence of God.