Hamas has paraded four coffins through the streets of Gaza as though they were trophies. Men brandishing their rifles, flagging Hamas regalia while masking their faces, cheered and accompanied four black coffins carrying four Israelis who had been taken hostage on October 7 and murdered subsequently. The 4 coffins included an elderly man, Oded Lifshitz, 83, the two little Bibas children, and their mother, Shiri.

The remains of these 4 human beings were then presented on a stage wrapped in anti-Israel messages and weapons to threaten.

Once the bodies were handed over to the Red Cross and eventually returned to Israel, propaganda was found stuffed inside the coffins. If such insult and injury were not more than the grieving could cope with, it turns out Shiri Bibas was not among the dead. Hamas had placed the body of another woman inside the coffin.

We ought to feel sickened inside at the pictures being shown around the world; I am. I will not show the footage here. Instead, here are Israelis lining the streets as the coffins are driven by.

To humiliate the body of the deceased is to move into a new level of hatred. It is to join the ranks of cultures who abused flesh and bone to humiliate and cripple them in the life to come. This is the action of a deranged and evil group. Sadly, we can already imagine the excuses and justifications being uttered in Hamas’ defence, such are the times we are now living in. 

Criminals are afforded a proper burial. Even in war, the dead are respected by the enemy. Mustafa Kamal famously said of the Anzacs buried at Gallipoli,

You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

The human body matters, both in life and in death. Our physical being is part of who we are. God has made us with body, mind, heart, and spirit. Harming the body is an affront to human dignity and life. Mistreating the remains of the dead signals a level of disdain both for the dead and for those who are left behind that is inhuman.

A human body is treated with such respect because the life of the human being is of incalculable worth. To return the wrong body and to return bodies with ignominious glee and to stuff coffins with propaganda is unspeakably shocking.

God values the human body so much that his only Son took on human flesh. He became incarnate, a man. When Jesus was crucified he was buried. When God raised the same Jesus to life, he was resurrected, that is with a real physical living heart beating body. 

There is so much evil in our world. It has been this way since the fall. The hubris of the optimist believed that with advancing science and technology, and with prosperity winning globally, the world will enter a new age of progress and even ‘the end of history’. This is not utopia. Recent years have taught us that humankind is bent on repeating history. 

It is an evil world. Ours is a beautiful world with much to love and enjoy, and yet from the human heart spawns tremendous wickedness. It is astonishing that God should show such patience and grace.

Here is what my Bible reading was this morning, and frankly it is not what we deserve and it cuts against even how my own society often thinks of the human body, and yet it is profoundly good and light and life. In death and life, while enjoying the warmth of the sun or sitting in the darkest place, here is God’s promise, 

“Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.  For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body must be clothed with immortality. When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place:

Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where, death, is your victory?
Where, death, is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)