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What does Nietzsche mean by "What after are all these churches now if they are not tombs and sepulchers of God?"

I'm writing a paper and my friend who was reviewing it pointed out that this may be Nietzsche saying he thinks churches are unnecessary and he is skeptical of their value, but I had interpreted it as a legitimate concern of whether these valuable community centers and places to connect and feel belonging with others will simply disappear now that god is dead.

Full context:

>Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

>"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

>Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves.

>It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

>[Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]



If anyone with some knowledge on the subject could shed some light on what Nietzsche's intended meaning was it would be appreciated. Thanks!
gpt
It seems like Nietzsche could have a lot of things in mind.

I would think that Nietzsche is playing on the double-meaning (for Christians) of saying that churches are "the tombs...of God."  That is, if God is Dead (as the madman proclaims) then churches are merely monuments to this dead God (and all He stands for), but, more literally, for the Christian who thinks their God (as Jesus) did *actually* die and is all over the place memorialized on the cross (etc.), the church really is, in a way, a tomb for God.

So, both for the theist and the madman, the church is an appropriate place for a *requiem aeternam deo*.  

In this way, the madman has been cast out by both the atheists and the theists for strange reasons.  The madman's coming is everywhere untimely.