University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

Psalms 24:1-10
The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers. Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation. Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.

Isaiah 25:6-9

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

I thought we had covered the topic of death.  I thought we had discussed and explained and dealt with death with our almost-six year old daughter.  She has, after all, been to more than five funerals in the past few years.    And she seemed to cope with it just fine.

But the reality of death really was brought home in the way it does for many families of my generation, with the death of a pet. 

A few weeks ago our cat, Ginger, died.  After returning home from the vet’s, we sat down with our daughter and told her what had happened.   We talked about our grief, and what a good pet Ginger had been, and how she was, not mincing words, dead.

We’d done all of the things you are supposed to do, and yet as we stood above the hole in the ground in our front yard, our daughter looked up and asked, “when will Ginger get up out of that hole?”

I realized, that, for all of our well intended efforts, she didn’t understand death at all.

You don’t have to be six years old to live in that neighborhood, of course.  Six or Sixty.  Who does understand death?

Craig Barnes, Presbyterian pastor in Pittsburgh, suggests that some of our lack of understanding is because in the 21^st century, we take great pains to avoid death and anything related to it.  He writes:  “My grandmother and her generation talked about death all the time, but they never mentioned sex in polite society. Now we talk about sex all the time but never mention death. If you want to bring a dinner party to a grinding halt, just try to get a good conversation going on death and dying. Soon guests will look at their watches and start talking about the babysitter's curfew.”[1]

It’s easy to avoid, the realities of death.  We don’t participate in death as a part of life in the way people of previous centuries--or decades--, have.  Out-of-sight has, for many of us, led to out-of-conversation.  The ends of our own lives or those that we love.  Out of conversation.  But not out of reality.

We know it’s not true, but in little places, and sometimes large, we like to lie to ourselves and pretend as though we are not mortal.    No matter how smart or busy or important or quiet we are, we are all subject to the same truth.  We will die.  We hope it will be after a life fully lived, before we become less than who we are.  Death does not make this promise. 

And most of us, at one time or another, sometimes more times than others, and sometimes less, are fearful of death, afraid of the questions for which we have no answers.

After all, as Winthrop S. Hudson wrote in 1946[2],

“It is hard for us to acclimate ourselves to fear.  We have been so self-confident, so complacent, so assured.  Since the time of the Renaissance, we have been living in a world of eager hopes, of expanding possibilities, of infinite opportunities.”

And yet, faith calls us to embrace our lives at the same time expecting death.

The life of faith is filled with such paradoxes. 

God is here and more than here. 

The kingdom of God is always but coming[3].

We are called to accept our deaths and embrace our lives, a belief made possible because we believe in a Lord who was born, who lived, who died, and Who.  Was.  Resurrected.

“’Don't be afraid.’ [these words from Jesus on that first Easter morning] announce that resurrection is, that God is, more than a match for any emptiness we face. Resurrection announces that the grip of death is not the last hold on us, so death no longer determines our living.”[4]

Death is a part of our story.  It is a part of our story, whose proper place can only found when we hold it close rather than fearing it.

Many months ago, someone inquired as to the condition of a church member who was in the hospital.   “Will she be okay,” they asked?  And I didn’t know how to respond.  I did not know her medical condition.  I paused.  There was silence as I reached for what to say, finally remembering the story that has been told since before my birth and will be told after I cease to live.  I did not know if she would live or die.  But I did know, she would be okay.

In life or in death.

In life and in death, we are surrounded, enveloped, encouraged, and comforted by the love of God.  So we are told.  So we believe.

In the most recent issue of the Christian Century, L. Gregory Jones, dean of the Duke Divinity School writes about an conversation he had with a young man from eastern Congo who, in spite of living in a country almost completely defined by violence and poverty, had successfully started a university.  After the man had described the programs and classes of the new school, Jones, amazed at his courage and ingenuity, asked him: “What causes you to become discouraged?"
 

The visitor responded… "Oh, I never get discouraged," then added: "Yes, there was one time—when I was confronted by a 12-year-old with an AK-47. I don't get too worried if I encounter an armed adult, because I can usually talk him out of whatever he's planning to do. But with 12-year-olds it's different. They will almost always kill you, because they think they have to obey orders. So I was discouraged.

"But once I talked the boy out of killing me, I realized that there wasn't any reason to be scared or discouraged. I just need to keep myself and my work focused on God. As long as I do that, I don't get discouraged."

Jones concluded:

“The point is that we are to trust in the providence of God as we plan and act. If we cultivate a bold humility, acknowledging that an intimate relationship with God is linked to planning and action, we'll find that there isn't any reason to be discouraged.”[5]

We do not need to be discouraged.  As we consider what it is God is calling us to do, where God is calling us to go, how God is calling us to be.

How do we do this?  How do we embrace the life God has intended, a life that includes death?

Craig Barnes writes:

in order to receive this new life, we have to stop clinging to the old one. We have to stop… [looking for ways to avoid death]. Stop obsessing over the right career move, stop pressuring the kids to be perfect, stop fantasizing about what the latest diet will do for our bodies. It is all going to die anyway, so stop. And go to the empty tomb, where there is the promise of a new life that will never die.

We can only be fully alive when we give God our lives, lives that we can’t keep, even if we pretend to ourselves that we can.[6]

Faith and belief will not completely eliminate our questions about death,  about what is beyond this life, of course, nor the grief that comes when someone we love dies…  Faith and belief allow us, instead, to hold death in balance, in its proper place and go forward to fully, faithfully, live.

We learn to inhabit this truth by proclaiming it each and every week.

Gathering in this place, and acknowledge our life and death, and that in all times, in all places, we belong to God.

The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;

When ashes are placed on our foreheads to mark the beginning of Lent.

When, at funerals, we hear that baptism is complete in death.

When, on All Saints Day, we acknowledge the very real grief created by the deaths of others, and know that we are all a part of the same chorus.

These are not just words, they are a part of a sacred truth we profess and embrace.  Each week, and then, as we grow, the days in-between, too.  Little by little.  Little more by more.

We need not be afraid.  To live.  To embrace God. To seek out, boldly and humbly, the lives God has in store for us.  And we need not be afraid to acknowledge that death is a part of life and know, this is the only way we can truly live.

Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces…  This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Thanks be to God.  We will be okay.  Thanks be to God.

Some Additional Information:

From a study of terminally ill patients in England:

The ten per cent of the subjects who were most firm in their faith and attended religious services weekly were the least afraid of dying, but those who held a loose religious faith were the most anxious, with the nonreligious being intermediate in death anxiety (Hinton, 1972: 84). 

Richard D. Kahoe and Rebecca Fox Dunn, “The Fear of Death and Religious Attitudes and Behavior,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1975 14(4): 379-382.

And, in The New York Times on November 1:

Chronicle of a Death We Can’t Accept, By THOMAS G. LONG

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01long.html?_r=1

The final paragraph:

“Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead, and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people,” William Gladstone, the British statesman, is said to have observed. Indeed, we will be healthier as a society when we do not need to pretend that the dead have been transformed into beautiful memory pictures, Facebook pages or costume jewelry, but can instead honor them by carrying their bodies with sad but reverent hope to the place of farewell. People who have learned how to care tenderly for the bodies of the dead are almost surely people who also know how to show mercy to the bodies of the living.