Thumbing Your Nose at Death
Of cemeteries, funerals, and a divine promise.
In the fall of 2024, I had to take a business trip to Vienna. (Yes, I know, tough life.) My wife and I decided to fly in a few days early and make a mini-vacation of it, and so when we landed in Vienna, we took a sleeper train to Verona, Italy.
We had great accommodations in the center of town, just around the corner from the arena the Romans built there and time has mercifully spared. To get acquainted with the city, we spent our first morning on one of those hop-on-hop-off sightseeing buses. Yes, they can be a little pricey, but they’re a great way to get the lay of the land in an unfamiliar city.
It was on the bus that I saw it at the end of the street. It was clearly a cemetery. I would later find out that it is called the Cimitero Monumentale. But what caught my eye was not the ornate sculptures at the entrance, sublime though they were. It was one word, carved into the facade in huge letters, so it cannot be missed: Resurrecturis.
I absolutely love this. This memorial, built as a house to remember the dead, proudly thumbs its metaphorical nose at the whole concept. “Hey Death! You will not have the last word here. These graves will be emptied, the bodies planted here restored to life and wholeness. So enjoy your mini-reign. It is coming to a sure and certain end! Resurrecturis!”
Paul basically says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55:
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory. “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
A couple of months ago, our church said “goodbye” to a deacon, husband and father of two young kids. His wife is one of my wife’s best friends. David was a good man, whose faith never wavered in the face of cancer, pain and decline. We all miss him terribly. I regret not having more time to get to know him better.
David’s funeral was a party. We celebrated a life gone too soon but well lived. We shared stories that made everyone laugh. His daughter shared a poem she had written, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
And we remembered together that this “goodbye” is not forever.
The promise stands.
Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25)
When he comes again, those bodies buried in that cemetery in northern Italy, and my friend David, and all who have died in Christ, will emerge from those graves, whole and fully alive. And I can imagine us all thumbing our nose at death. “Is that all you got? What kind of victory is that?” Maybe we’ll blow raspberries at the grave. Maybe (if such a thing is allowed to sinless beings) a middle finger or two or ten million will be raised in salute to Death.
Resurrecturis. Latin for “for those who will rise again.” Or as I like to translate it: “Laugh it up, Death. Your time is coming.”