Few, outside of Ireland, have heard of the River Boyne. They may have heard of the last great battle the Irish fought against the English in 1691, which takes its name from the river. But they will hardly know much of the burial chambers now being excavated in a bend in that river. It seems to have been an ideal spot for settlement 6000 years ago but we would never have known it had they not left these amazing tombs.
Being the northern hemisphere, the sun is at its lowest in mid December and the passageway into one of the tombs is so constructed that the sun shines right down inside it on just one day of the year. What the ancestors had in mind can not be known for sure but the Irish word for the river, Binne, has the connotation of illumination, brightness and wisdom. Perhaps they had some intimations of future glory.
What can be said, and it can be noted in many places, is that our ancestors paid a lot of attention to the dead. Think of the pyramids of Egypt: huge structures giving some kind of immortality to ancient kings and queens. And we too spend a lot of money on funerals. Some of the coffins you see cost thousands. It is always a shock when people make a little breakthrough in business only to have their earnings wiped out in a single funeral. We are like our ancestors who spend much on the dead but do not seem to show equal energy with the living. There are no signs of the buildings in which people actually lived all those years ago in the Boyne valley or in the Egyptian desert.
It is as though we are not sure about the dead. Do they have some power over our lives so that it is best to do what we can for them to be on good terms with them just in case? We may have differed with them in life but it would be just as well to be a peace with them now that they are dead. The honour given to Joshua Nkomo at his death far exceded the respect he was given when he lived. (And he had a top of the range coffin). Jesus had something to say on this, Alas for you, Pharisees, who build the tombs of the prophets (Luke 11:47). The prophets are safely out of the way so you can now honour them, even if you never listened to them while they were alive.
So perhaps there are two reflections here. We can look on death as the convenient end to the presence of someone or some message we do not want to hear. This avoidance of the questions asked of us by our contemporaries leaves us the poorer. Or we can honour the dead because we will certainly follow them and it is as well to look on death in a hopeful way – as a passageway to the light that will never dim. The Christian faith gives light to this passage, not one, but all the days of the year.
Post published in: Opinions