To Die Is Gain
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series VI, Cycle A
"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." So says the apostle Paul. Really? We are tempted to mutter, "Not for us, it isn't." We look around the world and see little children dying of exposure and starvation and our hearts are torn because so little is being done. We watch in horror as older citizens waste away in the relentless onslaught of age finally wanting nothing so much as surrender. We see friends knocked down in the prime of life by debilitating disease that finally claims them, and we hate death! Instead of seeing death as sweet release, we think of ourselves and feel a profound emptiness, a deep sense of loss. Loss is the opposite of gain, at least for those of us who are left behind. Think of death as Paul did? Not easy.
Why? Selfishness, obviously. We would much rather not be deserted by our loved ones. My dad has been gone from me for years; I would love to be able to talk with him again about things of mutual concern. I would like to share church experiences, to talk of preaching and teaching, to ask advice ... maybe even to play a little golf. I wish he were here. I know his life today is better by far than anything he ever experienced on this earth (especially the way he played golf), but selfishly, I can still wish he were here.
But there is more. Our thoughts about death, our dislike of it, respond to some innate reverence for physical life. We grow up learning that all life is precious. In backyards all over the world there are buried shoe boxes with the remains of pet turtles and parakeets over which children have shed sad tears. Young soldiers return from the horrors of war with reports of nothing so awful than coming face to face with another young soldier from the other side whom they are forced to kill. The abortion debates that continue in our nation center on this belief in the sanctity of life. There is something about life that we see as grand and glorious, which makes its end so utterly depressing.
Perhaps death distresses us so because we see what it does to those who are still here: family and friends. We feel it. On the night my father died, after all the friends and acquaintances had come and gone, the family sat around the kitchen table talking quietly. We talked about our dad. We missed him. We were not worried about him. With every fiber of our collective being we knew where he was and that he could triumphantly say with Paul, "for me ... to die is gain." But finally Mom said, "I've lost my best friend." It was a heartrending moment.
Tennyson wrote:
In Memoriam
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more.
Too common! Never morning wore to evening
But some heart did break.
That is what we hate about death ... what it does to those who are left behind.
Then can we ever get to the place of thinking about death as the apostle Paul did? He said, "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far." The Greek word he uses is the word for striking camp, loosening the tent ropes, pulling up the tent pins, and moving on. Death is a moving on.
As to what awaits following the move, we have only the sketchiest details, but we firmly believe that there is more to life than what we experience here. We believe that death is not a period but a comma in the story of life, and we know what Jesus said: "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:2-3). No wonder Paul says, "to die is gain." He has a place in heaven set aside for him and his landlord is Jesus Christ.
As to not knowing what lies on the other side, we know what scripture has to say about it, of course ... gates of pearl, streets of gold, bejeweled walls ... poetic language to describe something indescribable. No more pain, no more tears, no more death. It will be incredible. The wonderful evangelist of a previous generation, Dwight. L. Moody said, "Someday you will read in the paper that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, Massachusetts, is dead. Don't believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that's all ... out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body fashioned like unto his glorious body."
It was the same kind of confidence that enabled Dietrich Bonhoeffer to say, as Nazi soldiers led him to his execution, "For me this is the beginning of a new life, eternal life." Moody and Bonhoeffer were right, of course. For them, to die was gain.
Years ago, a clergyman was summoned to the deathbed of an old man in one of the slums of London. Flight after flight of stairs he mounted until he came to the topmost flat and found his way into a miserable room with hardly any furniture. There a poor half-starved old soul lay in great pain. As the minister came into the room, he could not help but say, "Oh, but I am sorry for you."
"Sorry for me?" the old man replied. "Why, think of my prospects." Indeed.
"For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Why? Selfishness, obviously. We would much rather not be deserted by our loved ones. My dad has been gone from me for years; I would love to be able to talk with him again about things of mutual concern. I would like to share church experiences, to talk of preaching and teaching, to ask advice ... maybe even to play a little golf. I wish he were here. I know his life today is better by far than anything he ever experienced on this earth (especially the way he played golf), but selfishly, I can still wish he were here.
But there is more. Our thoughts about death, our dislike of it, respond to some innate reverence for physical life. We grow up learning that all life is precious. In backyards all over the world there are buried shoe boxes with the remains of pet turtles and parakeets over which children have shed sad tears. Young soldiers return from the horrors of war with reports of nothing so awful than coming face to face with another young soldier from the other side whom they are forced to kill. The abortion debates that continue in our nation center on this belief in the sanctity of life. There is something about life that we see as grand and glorious, which makes its end so utterly depressing.
Perhaps death distresses us so because we see what it does to those who are still here: family and friends. We feel it. On the night my father died, after all the friends and acquaintances had come and gone, the family sat around the kitchen table talking quietly. We talked about our dad. We missed him. We were not worried about him. With every fiber of our collective being we knew where he was and that he could triumphantly say with Paul, "for me ... to die is gain." But finally Mom said, "I've lost my best friend." It was a heartrending moment.
Tennyson wrote:
In Memoriam
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more.
Too common! Never morning wore to evening
But some heart did break.
That is what we hate about death ... what it does to those who are left behind.
Then can we ever get to the place of thinking about death as the apostle Paul did? He said, "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far." The Greek word he uses is the word for striking camp, loosening the tent ropes, pulling up the tent pins, and moving on. Death is a moving on.
As to what awaits following the move, we have only the sketchiest details, but we firmly believe that there is more to life than what we experience here. We believe that death is not a period but a comma in the story of life, and we know what Jesus said: "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:2-3). No wonder Paul says, "to die is gain." He has a place in heaven set aside for him and his landlord is Jesus Christ.
As to not knowing what lies on the other side, we know what scripture has to say about it, of course ... gates of pearl, streets of gold, bejeweled walls ... poetic language to describe something indescribable. No more pain, no more tears, no more death. It will be incredible. The wonderful evangelist of a previous generation, Dwight. L. Moody said, "Someday you will read in the paper that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, Massachusetts, is dead. Don't believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that's all ... out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body fashioned like unto his glorious body."
It was the same kind of confidence that enabled Dietrich Bonhoeffer to say, as Nazi soldiers led him to his execution, "For me this is the beginning of a new life, eternal life." Moody and Bonhoeffer were right, of course. For them, to die was gain.
Years ago, a clergyman was summoned to the deathbed of an old man in one of the slums of London. Flight after flight of stairs he mounted until he came to the topmost flat and found his way into a miserable room with hardly any furniture. There a poor half-starved old soul lay in great pain. As the minister came into the room, he could not help but say, "Oh, but I am sorry for you."
"Sorry for me?" the old man replied. "Why, think of my prospects." Indeed.
"For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."
