Death
Death is hard. Is that statement really necessary? It seems really obvious… Here is a concept, an idea, a reality that no living thing can escape. Everything from human beings to worms in the ground to the flowers in your garden will eventually cease functions of life and turn back to dust. I know – super morbid.
So we see this fact of life and have experienced it second hand to some degree. One of the true honors that I have as a pastor is when people allow me to come alongside them in their journey of mourning the loss of a loved one. I have the opportunity to sit down with families as they share with me what made their parent / child / sibling so incredibly special to them. Between tears and laughter, they share a pain that I’ve become convinced we were never designed to understand.
I remember my grandma Cassiday. Both of my grandfathers had passed away before I turned 2, and my maternal grandmother passed away when I was in the 5th grade. Grandma Cassiday, though, I remember spending New Year’s Eve nights with, her living with my family my senior year of high school, and eating Pizza King pizza from across the street while working on the jigsaw puzzle that was always on the card table beside her dining room table. Then, while I was living in Kentucky and going to seminary, she got sick. I was married in December of 2009, and between the cold and her health, she was unable to make it to the small town of Keithsburg, Illinois where Eva and I made our vows.
It wasn’t too long after that my parents informed me that she was in the hospital and likely wasn’t going to make it. And then, on a spring day, while Eva and I were sitting in the car in a parking lot in Lexington after being to a new pizza place, my father told me over the phone that my grandmother wanted me to officiate her funeral. The quote might be wrong, but I believe the phrase, “Of course, Ben will do the funeral, right?” I wasn’t even a pastor yet, never done a funeral, honestly hadn’t been to many at all… and it took me close to a week to give my parents my affirmative. It was painful. This had been my only grandparent that I had been able to develop a relationship with built on my own experiences with her instead of simply stories from back in the day.
Eva and I hadn’t been in our second apartment for long. I remember sitting down on our couch which was truly too big for the living room space it was placed in struggling with finding words to say for the homily. Then Eva sat down next to me, seeing me struggling, and sharing with me some of the wisest words I had heard: “I don’t think we were made to understand death.” As I pondered this statement, I soon realized how right she was (and no, I’m not surprised!).
I find that we were not designed to understand death. We were made in God’s image. In the two creation accounts that we are given in the first two chapters of Genesis, we don’t see where God made humanity with an expiration date. He didn’t tell Adam and Eve after they had been formed to go out, plant a garden, then after so many years, dig a 6-foot hole in the ground to bury theirselves in. We don’t see that kind of morbid detail in humankind’s blueprint. Instead, God made mankind in God’s own image. Last I checked, God doesn’t die because God is eternal. So we were made in God’s image, yet we die… how is this possible?
Take a moment and think on the nature of God. More directly, recognize that God is triune – that there is this three-in-one aspect to God that is really hard to nail down. Within God’s self, you see the aspects of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all in relationship with one another. So, God’s very essence is relationship. When we were made in God’s image, it didn’t mean that we were given 10 fingers, 10 toes, 1 nose, 2 eyes, etc… It wasn’t that since Adam was first in the creation account that God must be a man… To be made in God’s image means that we were made with the capacity for relationship. God made us to be able to love and be loved in return. So this process of the soul part of us reaching out and touching others’ souls as we form bonds with each other is a holy thing. As we truly love each other we emulate aspects of God’s love. Since this is the part that makes us made in God’s image, this is the eternal part of us. We were not made to be isolated! This is why it can feel like a piece of is lost when someone close to you passes away – because in a very real sense, a piece of you is lost as you are no longer able to express and grow that relationship.
Jesus says in John 14 that we should not let our hearts be troubled because even though he was going where his disciples could not follow him at this time, he assured them that he was preparing a room for them in God’s house. Then he assures them that he would be coming back for them – they would not be orphaned. This is huge! For us being made in God’s image then experiencing the severing of our relationships is devastating for us. Yet Jesus here is promising that this relationship with the disciples would not be severed. This is not the devastation that they had experienced first hand before, but rather, hope in the face of the most powerful force up until that point: death.
“Where, O death, is your sting?” We read in 1 Corinthians 15:55. What we find in Christ is that the sting of death of being separated from God and others has been removed. Yes, we will die here on earth. We shall shed our mortal coils, but that’s not the end. Jesus shares with us that he is going before us to prepare a place, so that when we do follow him after life (when we die) we will still live as we participate in and practice our relationships.
When it comes to our days here on earth, this thought gives us varying degrees of comfort. In the United Methodist Book of Worship’s Service of Death and Resurrection I use when I preside over a funeral, there is a line in the Greeting of the liturgy that goes, “We come together in grief, acknowledging our human loss.” When we separated from God (for that’s what sin is, a voluntary separation in relationship), death was introduced as humanity (Adam and Eve) chose their own way apart from the author and source of life. This very much makes our loss a human loss. Yet our God is so good to us that through the forgiveness offered in Christ Jesus, death isn’t the end for experiencing a relationship with God. That experience will be different for sure, but the part of us that is truly made in God’s image will live on.
So, is death hard? Certainly. Is death the end? Not so much. As we acknowledge our human loss, “May God grant us grace, that in pain we may find comfort, in sorrow hope, in death resurrection.”
Photo credit: YouVersion Bible App for iOS
