Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the
two brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing, is not resting in
peace. After being killed in a shootout with local police, no cemetery within
the United Sates has yet to the
allow his body to be lowered into their soil. Furthermore, a funeral
director named Peter Stefan who was responsible for preparing Tsarnaev’s body
is being called “un-American” because of his willingness to handle Tsarnaev’s
funeral, while protests rage outside of his funeral home full of crowds
brandishing flags and chanting “USA.”
According to an article on the
Guardian’s website written by Tom Ukinski, one protestor was heard screaming,
“Throw him off a boat like Osama bin Laden!”
All of this raises important questions
about the way we view the dead, the value of life, and the whether those who
commit evil atrocities still possess a shadow of the imago dei. Or, as Audie Cornish of NPR fame asked earlier this week
on All Things Considered, “Can you
separate the sin from the sinner?”
Her question was directed towards poet
and undertaker Thomas Lynch surrounding the national quandary regarding the burial
of Tsarnaev. His response to Cornish has given me much to ponder this week.
“I can certainly understand the
mix of unfamiliar emotions that attends the handling of the corpse of a person
who has done a community a great harm that this man has done, but I think it's
like the arguments against torture. If we do it, we become victims of that
mindset. And if we don't care for humans, dead humans, the way that humans do,
we become less human in our refusal.”
Specifically as Christians, what
is our responsibility and testimony towards those we call our enemies not only
in life, but in their death?
