The Cemetery

A Resurrection Yet to Come

Tomb of Agripita de Sanchez. She introduced the rules of soccer to Guatemala. She came from a wealthy family.

Cemeteries are special and difficult places for many of us. It is where we remember those who have transitioned to a different realm before us. It is where we mourn and learn from the mistakes of those who preceded us. In Guatemalan culture, the cemetery is where we celebrate the life of those who are no longer with us. We remember them.

All of the stories of the resurrection have something in common. The gospels place these scenes of the narrative in a garden, a cemetery. The women hear the good news of Jesus’ rising from the dead as they visit his tomb. Angels appear to them in the graveyard. What is more, In the case of the women who witnessed the resurrection, the cemetery became a learning space. It transformed from a place of mourning to a place of healing.

Over the last almost twenty years, I have come to know the Cementerio General de Guatemala (General Cemetery of Guatemala City) in a very special way. I have walked its streets hundreds of times, and in doing so, it has become my teacher. For it is the perfect space for social and theological reflection. In there, I can walk between the mausoleums of presidents, poets, writers, artists, and common people. I can also see the tombs of people who could not afford a permanent burial place, people whose families rent small cement boxes where their remains rest for seven years. After that, their bones and whatever is left is taken out and thrown into a common mass grave.

Many years ago, my friend Joel Van Dyke and I started taking groups of foreigners, students, and Guatemalan leaders on cemetery tours. We designed a series of stops that would allow us to talk about the hurt and suffering Guatemalans have experienced throughout our history. We did so as an introduction to the Guatemalan context and a way of reading the biblical text from below. At the end of each tour, we would open the Bible and read it in the middle of the tombs to ask beautiful questions about what Scripture has to say in the midst of suffering and pain.

Familia Castillo tomb, one of the wealthiest families of Guatemala. Right next to it, common burial boxes. These boxes are for rent and remains are taken out after seven years.

The cemetery has been a great teacher. It was in its streets that the idea of Collective Woundedness came to me. There, I understood how my country is so deeply and collectively wounded. The tour has five stops. Each listening point during the tour represents a specific wound within my context, classism, racism, religious division, sexism, and foreign intervention and abuse. The graves have taught me that the collective woundendess is a history of traumatic events that wraps us all in a constant whirlpool of rivalry. If we don’t bring our pain to sight, we will constantly try to find someone to blame for what we have done to each other as a society.

However, talking about the collective woundedness is not just about the pain of our society. It is also about hope and resurrection. As I have written in A Human Catechism:

Wounds can heal, and the use of the term “collective woundedness” suggests the possibility of collective healing. People and communities that have undergone stressful and traumatic experiences can overcome their sufferings. This does not imply that pain goes away immediately. It means that hope for growth and healing will spring by finding new narratives in the midst of pain and suffering. Such is the case of Jesus as he “continues to bear the wounds of his suffering, and ours, in his resurrected body. The resurrection does not mark the end of woundedness, but its transformation.” (Pg. 38)

As I quoted Geography of Grace at the end of writing the previous paragraph, I was reminded that for many of us resurrection is still to come. We may not see it yet, but we can trust that is coming. The resurrection is a tale of a transformation that is yet to happen. It is a process. Perhaps, if we enter our collective woundedness and we give voice to our pain, we may ignite the slow process of a resurrection yet to come.

The tombs of our context speak to us. The cries of those who have passed away because of our violence are begging us to not make the same mistakes. The resurrection gives us a different way of being in the world, a way that moves us from rivalry to peacebuilding so we can create cities where everyone can flourish—Yes! everyone even those we consider our enemies, those we consider sinful, and those we rather not have around.