Standing Up To Death Preaching on Death at Sunday Worship
Sermon
In Sure And Certain Hope
An Anthology of Exemplary Funeral Messages
Robert Noblett
If it has not happened to you yet, you can be sure that sooner or later life is going to acquaint you with death. We can decide whether or not we want to go to Australia; we have the option of eating horsemeat or not eating horsemeat; but we do not have the option of meeting death or not meeting death. We will meet it, perhaps have already met it, of this we can be sure.
But meeting it does not mean that we automatically have made our peace with it. Meeting it does not mean that we have accepted it, befriended it, integrated its reality into our lives. Young people are listening to a song these days that carries the line, "I'm going to live forever." It's repeated many times in the song and maybe some hear that so often they begin to believe they will never have to die.
I realize this isn't a pleasant subject, but it is an important one. Failing to come to grips with it now can mean setting ourselves up for much unhappiness later. Where are you in the process of accepting death - your death and the death of people who are close to you?
A way of answering that question for ourselves is to answer for ourselves other questions. Questions like these:
When people around me begin to talk about death, do I find myself changing the subject?
When I talk about the death of other people, do I find myself employing euphemisms? Do I say that John "passed away" or "has left us" or "has gone onto his reward" instead of saying "John died"? In thinking of my own death, do I couch it in terms like, "If anything should ever happen to me?"
Have I taken steps to make sure that my house is legally in order? Have I, for example, made out a will?
With regard to final arrangements, does someone else know what my preferences are - what kind of service I want, what I want done with my body, how much money 1 prefer to spend?
I raise these issues not to start your day off on a sour note, but rather to remind you that our Christian faith is not silent on this matter of death. It stands ready to help us and it helps us concretely in the following ways.
Death is Natural
The Christian faith reminds us of the Biblical truth that death is natural. It is not an alien intruder coming to bring something that, under normal conditions, would not be in the picture. lt is not a spoilsport. Death is a reality we share with all of the created order. The Old Testament speaks of a man "full of years" being "gathered to his people."
Psalm 90 relates the naturalness of death too -
Thou turnest man back into dust;
"Turn back," thou sayest, "you Sons of men;"
for in thy sight a thousand years are as yesterday,
a night-watch passes, and thou hast cut them off;
they are like a dream at daybreak,
they fade like grass which springs up with the morning
but when evening comes is parched and withered.
To employ a phrase from St. Paul, as human beings we bear "the image of the man of dust." Our organic systems, bionics notwithstanding, were intended to come to a point of zenith and then decline.
This naturalness is conveyed, I think, in a bit of dialogue from Margaret Craven's book I Heard the Owl Call My Name. It is the story of a young vicar, serving the Indians of the Northwest, who faces an early death. At one point this young vicar and his bishop are returning to civilization and when they reach an inlet, this interchange ensues:
When they entered the inlet, the Bishop motioned Mark to stop the engine.
"Let's not hurry," he said. "It's so seldom I have a few hours to myself."
The breeze was gentle with the first promise of spring. They could see the float moored to the inlet side and beyond it they could see the jagged scar of the great slide.
"Always when I leave the village," the Bishop said slowly, "I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it into words, it comes out one of those unctuous, over-pious platitudes at which Bishops are expected to excel."
They both laughed.
"But when I reach here and see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know."
"Why, my lord?"
"That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world."
"And that, my lord?"
"Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die," and the Bishop motioned Mark to start the motor, and they went on.
To be ready to die at the end of life is as natural as being ready to grab hold of life at its beginning. It is this lesson that older people can and do teach us. I've talked to a countless number of people in the afternoon of life who have said to me that they are ready to die, not afraid to die, open to death and I am reassured by their feelings and expressions.
Death as the Absence of Quality Life
But the scope of death is infinitely greater than its dominion over our bodies. And that dominion is both negative and positive.
It's positive in the sense that some parts of our lives have to die so that other parts can be born into their fullness. A family, which has been two, dies to its twoness so that it can become a threesome. A minister dies to one parish so that he can be born to another and well I remember the dreams of death in Boston as we prepared to move to Glens Falls. A person dies to her vocation in later life so that she can be born into the delights of life's late afternoon. Although the text has been victimized by those whose faith has soured
and become dogma, the New Testament reminds us that we "must be born again." Indeed, our faith sometimes has to die (and we call that death of faith doubt), so that a deeper and more viable faith can be born (and we call that birth conversion). "Death appears in order to make way for transformation," writes James Hiliman, and each day we are in the process of becoming more whole and more human. Here the contribution of death is positive.
There is a line from Bernard Malamud's novel, God's Grace, where God declares: "From the beginning, when I gave them the gift of life, they were perversely greedy for death." This points to death's negative dominion over life.
We've seen enough television and watched enough films to have in mind the procedure a doctor follows when he is examining a person to see if physical death has occurred. The doctor feels for the pulse and listens for the heart. It's all rather cut and dried, although with the development of medical technology and its ability to artificially sustain life, a gray area has evolved. Still, the signs are fairly obvious.
The New Testament suggests there is an obviousness about the death of the inner person. And the sixth chapter of Romans spells the reality of this death right out. A few sample lines will make this clear -
"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:3-4)
"So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ." (Romans 6:11)
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
It is wholly possible for a person to be, organically speaking, disease free and be dead on a far more insidious basis. The living dead, we sometimes call them. You've seen them, and I've seen them. The New Testament calls them people captured by sin. To use that word is to open a can of worms because there are always folk who want to particularize it and label this particular act sin and that particular act sin, resulting in a version of Christian life not unlike that childish game of walking the sidewalks, but not stepping on the cracks. The Bible, particularly the New Testament, has a more comprehensive understanding of the word. Paul reminds us that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. Sin, according to the New Testament, is more condition than act and fundamentally it means separation from God and God's purposes. It is separation from God and God's grace that is the hallmark of the living dead. A list of the living dead might include the following:
Those preoccupied with a perfection that is beyond human reach.
Those whose energies are kidnapped by and now serve the forces of an inordinate guilt.
Those whose relational ways are the ways of manipulation.
Those who place economic gain over human welfare.
Those who think far too little of themselves and carry an imaginary sign over their heads that reads, "Unworthy, unworthy."
Those who think too much of themselves and adopt patterns of condescension.
You can probably call to mind individuals you know who are dead on this basis. The Bible, too, is full of people like this. But it is also the story of God rescuing people from the jaws of this death.
As we talk together about this, the imagery of a massive jail comes to my mind and in this jail there are many cellblocks, with each of these cellblocks containing many small cells. People like you and me populate those cells - cells of separation, loneliness, moral failure, depression and fear; cells of death. Suddenly God comes through the front door of this massive jail and in God's hand is a ring of keys. God is running from cellblock to cellblock, opening all these cell doors and as he does so, He is imploring people to come out. "Come out of there," God is saying, "You've been in there for far too long. You are mine and I need you in my kingdom building. Your sins are forgiven. Come out into the light of my day and into the warmth of my presence. Together we have work to do and without you, my efforts will be less than they can be with you. Stand up! Gather up your belongings! Follow me - out the front door and into the light of my kingdom!"
Standing Up To Death
Finally, the Christian faith helps us because it stands up to death. In death's presence, physical or spiritual, it does not cower or crawl or beg or whine or squirm. To the contrary, our faith says - eyeball to eyeball with death -
"O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?"
I know from the experience of my own life that God can call us from the death of an unfulfilling life. Furthermore, I can't begin to tell you how many times I have stood at the edge of a grave for a committal service. What happens there seems far removed from the central thrust of Christian affirmation. The action really isn't there - near the grave nor in the grave. The action is with God and God's raising of his children.
That this is so will never be proven on the basis of scientific evidence. How could it be? To try and prove the resurrection in the same sense that the scientist proves her theory or that the mathematician proves his theorem makes as much sense as the scientist or the mathematician trying to prove that someone is in love; it's like trying to build a house with a sewing machine: the tool is inappropriate to the job! The scientist, on the basis of scientific procedure, ascertains scientific veracity. But the soul also knows what the soul knows.
The other night I had a dream of my mother-in-law. Mother has been physically gone for over three years now, but it is the verdict of my unconscious that mother is not gone. The church affirms the communion of the saints. That my mind can neither prove nor disprove. But my heart and my soul do not really care what my mind believes or not. They know what they believe.
The Christian faith helps us stand up to death. It looks death in the eye and says, "Death, you have been overrated; your power has been overestimated; your influence has been miscalculated. Some influence you have, but much that people have led us to believe you can do you cannot. You can't squelch my ultimate identity; you can't destroy what is essentially me; you can't kidnap me from God. From you I will not run. Do to me what is yours to do, because you will not be my undoing. Death, where is your victory? Grave, where is your sting?"
If it has not happened to you yet, you can be sure that sooner or later life is going to acquaint you with death. We can decide whether or not we want to go to Australia; we have the option of eating horsemeat or not eating horsemeat; but we do not have the option of meeting death or not meeting death. We will meet it, perhaps have already met it, of this we can be sure.
But meeting it does not mean that we automatically have made our peace with it. Meeting it does not mean that we have accepted it, befriended it, integrated its reality into our lives. Young people are listening to a song these days that carries the line, "I'm going to live forever." It's repeated many times in the song and maybe some hear that so often they begin to believe they will never have to die.
I realize this isn't a pleasant subject, but it is an important one. Failing to come to grips with it now can mean setting ourselves up for much unhappiness later. Where are you in the process of accepting death - your death and the death of people who are close to you?
A way of answering that question for ourselves is to answer for ourselves other questions. Questions like these:
When people around me begin to talk about death, do I find myself changing the subject?
When I talk about the death of other people, do I find myself employing euphemisms? Do I say that John "passed away" or "has left us" or "has gone onto his reward" instead of saying "John died"? In thinking of my own death, do I couch it in terms like, "If anything should ever happen to me?"
Have I taken steps to make sure that my house is legally in order? Have I, for example, made out a will?
With regard to final arrangements, does someone else know what my preferences are - what kind of service I want, what I want done with my body, how much money 1 prefer to spend?
I raise these issues not to start your day off on a sour note, but rather to remind you that our Christian faith is not silent on this matter of death. It stands ready to help us and it helps us concretely in the following ways.
Death is Natural
The Christian faith reminds us of the Biblical truth that death is natural. It is not an alien intruder coming to bring something that, under normal conditions, would not be in the picture. lt is not a spoilsport. Death is a reality we share with all of the created order. The Old Testament speaks of a man "full of years" being "gathered to his people."
Psalm 90 relates the naturalness of death too -
Thou turnest man back into dust;
"Turn back," thou sayest, "you Sons of men;"
for in thy sight a thousand years are as yesterday,
a night-watch passes, and thou hast cut them off;
they are like a dream at daybreak,
they fade like grass which springs up with the morning
but when evening comes is parched and withered.
To employ a phrase from St. Paul, as human beings we bear "the image of the man of dust." Our organic systems, bionics notwithstanding, were intended to come to a point of zenith and then decline.
This naturalness is conveyed, I think, in a bit of dialogue from Margaret Craven's book I Heard the Owl Call My Name. It is the story of a young vicar, serving the Indians of the Northwest, who faces an early death. At one point this young vicar and his bishop are returning to civilization and when they reach an inlet, this interchange ensues:
When they entered the inlet, the Bishop motioned Mark to stop the engine.
"Let's not hurry," he said. "It's so seldom I have a few hours to myself."
The breeze was gentle with the first promise of spring. They could see the float moored to the inlet side and beyond it they could see the jagged scar of the great slide.
"Always when I leave the village," the Bishop said slowly, "I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it into words, it comes out one of those unctuous, over-pious platitudes at which Bishops are expected to excel."
They both laughed.
"But when I reach here and see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know."
"Why, my lord?"
"That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world."
"And that, my lord?"
"Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die," and the Bishop motioned Mark to start the motor, and they went on.
To be ready to die at the end of life is as natural as being ready to grab hold of life at its beginning. It is this lesson that older people can and do teach us. I've talked to a countless number of people in the afternoon of life who have said to me that they are ready to die, not afraid to die, open to death and I am reassured by their feelings and expressions.
Death as the Absence of Quality Life
But the scope of death is infinitely greater than its dominion over our bodies. And that dominion is both negative and positive.
It's positive in the sense that some parts of our lives have to die so that other parts can be born into their fullness. A family, which has been two, dies to its twoness so that it can become a threesome. A minister dies to one parish so that he can be born to another and well I remember the dreams of death in Boston as we prepared to move to Glens Falls. A person dies to her vocation in later life so that she can be born into the delights of life's late afternoon. Although the text has been victimized by those whose faith has soured
and become dogma, the New Testament reminds us that we "must be born again." Indeed, our faith sometimes has to die (and we call that death of faith doubt), so that a deeper and more viable faith can be born (and we call that birth conversion). "Death appears in order to make way for transformation," writes James Hiliman, and each day we are in the process of becoming more whole and more human. Here the contribution of death is positive.
There is a line from Bernard Malamud's novel, God's Grace, where God declares: "From the beginning, when I gave them the gift of life, they were perversely greedy for death." This points to death's negative dominion over life.
We've seen enough television and watched enough films to have in mind the procedure a doctor follows when he is examining a person to see if physical death has occurred. The doctor feels for the pulse and listens for the heart. It's all rather cut and dried, although with the development of medical technology and its ability to artificially sustain life, a gray area has evolved. Still, the signs are fairly obvious.
The New Testament suggests there is an obviousness about the death of the inner person. And the sixth chapter of Romans spells the reality of this death right out. A few sample lines will make this clear -
"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:3-4)
"So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ." (Romans 6:11)
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
It is wholly possible for a person to be, organically speaking, disease free and be dead on a far more insidious basis. The living dead, we sometimes call them. You've seen them, and I've seen them. The New Testament calls them people captured by sin. To use that word is to open a can of worms because there are always folk who want to particularize it and label this particular act sin and that particular act sin, resulting in a version of Christian life not unlike that childish game of walking the sidewalks, but not stepping on the cracks. The Bible, particularly the New Testament, has a more comprehensive understanding of the word. Paul reminds us that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. Sin, according to the New Testament, is more condition than act and fundamentally it means separation from God and God's purposes. It is separation from God and God's grace that is the hallmark of the living dead. A list of the living dead might include the following:
Those preoccupied with a perfection that is beyond human reach.
Those whose energies are kidnapped by and now serve the forces of an inordinate guilt.
Those whose relational ways are the ways of manipulation.
Those who place economic gain over human welfare.
Those who think far too little of themselves and carry an imaginary sign over their heads that reads, "Unworthy, unworthy."
Those who think too much of themselves and adopt patterns of condescension.
You can probably call to mind individuals you know who are dead on this basis. The Bible, too, is full of people like this. But it is also the story of God rescuing people from the jaws of this death.
As we talk together about this, the imagery of a massive jail comes to my mind and in this jail there are many cellblocks, with each of these cellblocks containing many small cells. People like you and me populate those cells - cells of separation, loneliness, moral failure, depression and fear; cells of death. Suddenly God comes through the front door of this massive jail and in God's hand is a ring of keys. God is running from cellblock to cellblock, opening all these cell doors and as he does so, He is imploring people to come out. "Come out of there," God is saying, "You've been in there for far too long. You are mine and I need you in my kingdom building. Your sins are forgiven. Come out into the light of my day and into the warmth of my presence. Together we have work to do and without you, my efforts will be less than they can be with you. Stand up! Gather up your belongings! Follow me - out the front door and into the light of my kingdom!"
Standing Up To Death
Finally, the Christian faith helps us because it stands up to death. In death's presence, physical or spiritual, it does not cower or crawl or beg or whine or squirm. To the contrary, our faith says - eyeball to eyeball with death -
"O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?"
I know from the experience of my own life that God can call us from the death of an unfulfilling life. Furthermore, I can't begin to tell you how many times I have stood at the edge of a grave for a committal service. What happens there seems far removed from the central thrust of Christian affirmation. The action really isn't there - near the grave nor in the grave. The action is with God and God's raising of his children.
That this is so will never be proven on the basis of scientific evidence. How could it be? To try and prove the resurrection in the same sense that the scientist proves her theory or that the mathematician proves his theorem makes as much sense as the scientist or the mathematician trying to prove that someone is in love; it's like trying to build a house with a sewing machine: the tool is inappropriate to the job! The scientist, on the basis of scientific procedure, ascertains scientific veracity. But the soul also knows what the soul knows.
The other night I had a dream of my mother-in-law. Mother has been physically gone for over three years now, but it is the verdict of my unconscious that mother is not gone. The church affirms the communion of the saints. That my mind can neither prove nor disprove. But my heart and my soul do not really care what my mind believes or not. They know what they believe.
The Christian faith helps us stand up to death. It looks death in the eye and says, "Death, you have been overrated; your power has been overestimated; your influence has been miscalculated. Some influence you have, but much that people have led us to believe you can do you cannot. You can't squelch my ultimate identity; you can't destroy what is essentially me; you can't kidnap me from God. From you I will not run. Do to me what is yours to do, because you will not be my undoing. Death, where is your victory? Grave, where is your sting?"
