Bones Talking Back: Theology and Public Mourning after the Crash of Flight MH17

Abstract

In this article I formulate a theological response to the shocking event of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (MH17), which was shot down over Eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014. None of the 298 passengers survived the crash. Moreover, since the plane crashed in territory where separatist militias were involved in an armed conflict with the Ukrainian military, the victims’ bodies could not be removed from the crash site for several days. I address how displays of public grief, such as those in the aftermath of MH17, are embedded in a ‘politics of mourning’ in which feelings of loss and despair are expressed against the backdrop of particular political entanglements and national histories. In the case of MH17, these entanglements included a construction of the civilized Western mourner versus the barbaric Ukrainian separatist who does not know how to properly treat a body. Taking the body as my point of departure and using Mario Aguilar’s notion of a ‘hermeneutics of bones’, I trace some of the ‘past narratives of God and bones’ in the Old Testament. These narratives show that Old Testament accounts of bones testify to the deep notion of human beings as created by God and are therefore a place to locate God in times of despair (e.g. in Job). Moreover, Old Testament renderings of bones can offer the comfort of language and speakability. They show how bones can be a site of ultimate humiliation, but also the site where dignity is restored. I then turn to a more in-depth reading of Rizpah, who in 2 Samuel 21 publicly mourns over the bones of her sons for six months until they receive a proper burial at the hands of King David, thereby changing the power constellations that had led to their deaths in the first place.