Hilton Head Island, SC – June 29, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
I Corinthians 15:12-19, 51-58
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. – I Corinthians 15:19
The Christian Affirmation of Death
The Christian affirmation of death? The Christian affirmation of death? Why would anyone affirm death? And why should Christians, in particular, affirm it?
Death comes to everyone and everything. All animals die, all plants die, all trees die, all people die. Even mountains die, in that over millions or billions of years they eventually erode into dust. The molecules of all dead things are reconstituted into other animate or inanimate things, and the process of life and death goes on forever. Thus everything and everyone, including you and me, shall die. It is written into the very nature of nature.
Nevertheless, what is to be gained by Christians affirming death? What is to be gained by acknowledging the inevitability and even the benefit of our death?
I have preached about this before. Having officiated at hundreds of funerals and memorial services, I have acquired a lively interest in death. No doubt I shall preach about it again, unless I should die soon, which I do not anticipate. But periodically I re-address this subject; it seems to me too many people are too afraid of or mystified by or constitutionally opposed to the very idea of death. Death just doesn’t seem right somehow to many people.
Many folks are put off when other people conscientiously begin to prepare to die. The New York Times carried a small story about a man named Jeffrey Piehler. He was a surgeon, he was dying of cancer, and he both knew it and accepted it. So he started to build his own pine coffin. The story said that his friends objected; they thought it indicated he had given up on life. But Dr. Piehler insisted it made him appreciate life even more, and he believed it helped to put things into the proper perspective for him. He was quoted as saying, “It’s pretty much impossible to feel anger at someone for driving too slowly in front of you in traffic when you’ve just come from sanding your own coffin.”
He’s right, of course. What will happen if somebody ahead of you drives too slowly? Would that (perhaps you will pardon me) kill you? Absolutely not, but cancer might, and Jeffrey Piehler made his peace with that sober reality. There are things that are far worse than death, lots of things. Refusing to affirm the inevitability of death is one of them. That can kill you before your time, whatever “before your time” means. Incidentally, I don’t think God determines when anyone dies. We all die when we die, and we shall never understand why it is when it is.
Trudy Yates, my ever-faithful Cotswolds Clipper, sent me a clipping from The Times of London which told about the establishment of Death Cafes in the UK over the past couple of years. Jon Underwood, the founder of the movement, said, “There are very few places where you can talk about death. You’ve got your hospices, your cemeteries and funeral directors, but it’s all specifically for people who are dying. I’m trying to provide a new kind of space which is dedicated to death for those who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to discuss it.”
Think of The Chapel Without Walls this morning as a Death Café. During the coffee hour, you can drink coffee and eat some pastry and talk about the glorious denouement of every living thing, including yourselves. The Death Café movement hasn’t swept Britain yet, but it isn’t for lack of effort. Dying should always be a lively topic, if we agree to make it to happen.
Our responsive reading was the 23rd Psalm. The last verse, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” is not an intimation of immortality from the Hebrew Bible, even though it is the most frequently used passage of scripture in Christian funerals. The ancient Hebrews did not believe in life after death. The writer of this Psalm thus meant that as long as he lived, he would regularly go to God’s temple in Jerusalem. By the time of Jesus, many Jews did believe in eternal life, but most didn’t. If we are to accept the basic thrust of the four Gospels as being essentially historical, then we can affirm that Jesus strongly believed in and frequently preached the concept of life after death.
For years I have had a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte on the bookshelf, but I never read it. Finally I did, when Lois was in the hospital. It is an excellent mid-19th century novel which illustrates how many women think women think and how many men think women should think, which is quite a literary feat. The story is told in the first-person-singular by Jane Eyre herself. She makes numerous wise and humorous observations. When she was a child of nine, the dour Anglican clergyman who oversaw her residential school for orphans confronted her, suggesting she was an evil girl. Listen to the dialogue: “Do you know where the wicked go after death?” “They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer. “And what is hell? Can you tell me that?” “A pit full of fire.” And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there forever?” “No, sir.” “What must you do to avoid it?” I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.”
There you have it! The way to keep death at bay is to keep on living! But we can’t do that indefinitely, can we? Sooner or later, death shall make its unavoidable appointment with us.
Shortly thereafter Jane learns that lesson with her little friend Helen, who lies in bed, dying. Jane asks her, “But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?” “I believe; I have faith; I am going to God.” “Where is God? What is God?” “My maker and yours, who will never destroy what he created….” “You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, and that our souls can get there when we die?” Helen is sure, but Jane isn’t.
That is the subject Paul was addressing in the 15th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. This, incidentally, is the only chapter in the entire Bible which is devoted entirely to the reality of death and the Gospel promise of life after death. Paul begins by stating that he previously had preached to the Corinthians that Jesus was crucified and was buried, but that he was resurrected by God, and that he appeared to many witnesses, including Paul himself.
However, apparently not all the Christians in Corinth were convinced of Jesus’ resurrection, or of the promise of their own resurrection. The concept of the resurrection was so central to Paul that he insisted if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then everything he or anyone preached about Jesus was all in vain. “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are all people most to be pitied,” Paul said (I Cor. 15:19). A few verses later, Paul said, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (I Cor. 15:26).
Only those who believe that God has prepared an afterlife for everyone can state that with conviction. Otherwise, death indeed is an enemy, the last enemy, the final, invisible, terminal enemy over which there can be no ultimate victory.
When we die, how can we know we shall be raised to eternal life with God? The simple answer is that we cannot know it; all we are able to do is to believe it. In that sense, seeing is not believing, because we can neither literally nor figuratively see this. Furthermore, believing is not knowing. It is impossible to know beyond doubt that death will not be the end of us. Obviously it could be. But the Christian faith is founded on the conviction that there is a life beyond death. That is the most distinctive of all Christian beliefs. Nothing else compares to it in importance.
Paul ends his treatise on death by referring to an idea frequently addressed by Jesus and widely believed by most of the first Christians. They thought the world was going to end very soon, in months or a few years at the most. So, Paul being Paul, he attempted to explain what he initially admitted was a mystery. “Lo, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (I Cor. 15:51-52). Many of you will recognize that verse from a bass solo toward the end of Handel’s Messiah. When Paul said that they would not all “sleep,” by a strange euphemism he meant they wouldn’t die. When the end of the world came, however, all those who had previously died along with those still alive would be raised to heaven with an imperishable body. That seems to be an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, because all bodies perish at some point or another. Nevertheless, that was the deep conviction which motivated Paul in everything he preached, said, or wrote.
Caitlin Moran is one of the primary columnists in the London Times. A while back she began a typical think-piece in this way: “When I was 6, I knew what happened when you died – you stopped breathing, and were put into a glass coffin, and then you turned into a swan.” When in her teens and twenties, however, she said she “became a passionate advocate against my notion of an afterlife. Ninety per cent of the problems of humanity, it seemed, stemmed from a simple cognitive dissonance: refusing to acknowledge that this is it.” But she concluded her column with these words: “At 38, I think when I die, I need desperately to be handed a stiff drink and be allowed to ask, ‘What the hell was going on all that time?’ Come on – why did they build Stonehenge? Where did my first passport disappear to? What were the Neanderthals really like? Where did my second passport disappear to? …Where did I lose my wedding ring?...I don’t want swan’s wings. I don’t want my own planet. I don’t want eternity. I just want to know everything, ever – then be reordered across the universe, again.”
What does any of us know about death - - - really? Will we know everything when we die? Perhaps ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, but we would do well not to count on it. Knowing everything is in the province of God alone, and only He can manage it. So do not anticipate becoming omniscient on the other side of the Jordan, because it won’t happen.
Matthew Parris is another Times of London columnist. (What would this particular sermon be without Trudy Yates?) An April column was entitled “When would you like to die? I’m choosing 83.” He said he decided to write himself a letter which was to be opened on his 75th birthday, and the letter was to be reviewed annually after that. He is now 64. “Dear Matthew,” his letter to himself says, “To the following eight questions a box is to be ticked, ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ …If the answer to either of the first two questions is ‘yes,’ then brush this letter aside and live on. If the answer to both is ‘no’ then read no further, and reach for the razor blade.” The first of his queries to himself is as follows: “1. Do you still, on balance and taking good times with bad, enjoy being alive? 2. Is there anyone whose life would be devastated by your death?”
Here are his other six questions. “3. Are you still of practical use? 4. Are you more or less of sound mind? 5. Are you more or less in possession of your physical faculties? 6. Are you still curious about the world? 7. Behind your back, do people pity you? 8. Can you justify the cost to others, to the National Health Service and to your country of staying alive?” He concludes his sardonic treatise by saying, “It’s a beautiful Derbyshire day outside as I write. Life is sweet. The moment it turns permanently sour I should be doing neither myself nor my fellow men any service by remaining.” Then he intimates that he will take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. In other words, he shall take measures to end his life.
I predict that within two or three generations, physician-assisted suicide will become fairly common, but it isn’t going to happen in our lifetime, especially in such sanctimonious states as South Carolina. However, it will never account for the majority of deaths; of that I am certain. Too many people oppose suicide under any conditions for it to become commonplace.
The movie version of Steel Magnolias is as good as the stage version, and that almost never happens. Toward the end of the film, after M’Lynn’s daughter Shelby (played by Julia Roberts) has died of complications from diabetes, M’Lynn’s closest friends are with her at the gravesite after the committal service has finished. The ever-evangelical but always well-meaning Minelle (Darryl Hannah) tries to comfort M’Lynn (Sally Fields) by telling her that in God’s plan Shelby’s death is a good thing. M’Lynn refuses to accept her explanation. She wants to know why Shelby died. We, who are not so personally involved in the situation, know she died because she had two pregnancies when the doctor told her she never have any. Clarice (Olympia Dukakis) tries to deflect M’Lynn’s shattering grief by telling her to hit their irascible and self-absorbed chum Weezie (Shirley MacLaine) in order to get it all out of her system. “Are you crazy?” Weezie shrieks at Clarice. “For once in your life do something for your fellow man,” says Clarice to Weezie. And at that they all, including M’Lynn but with the exception of Weezie, break out into uproarious laughter.
Is death a dark subject, a forbidden subject? Certainly not. In this world every day close to a million people die. God doesn’t make a million mistakes per day. Nature requires death, although it is God who provides all life everywhere in the universe. But for at least all sentient beings, meaning thinking beings, and possibly for other beings as well, God intends for life to extend beyond death. That is the unique and most compelling claim of Christianity.
Johann Sebastian Bach lived to be 65 years old. I recall that was life expectancy for Americans when I was in high school, though it is considerably higher today. Bach had had two surgeries for cataracts. I was astonished to hear that. Who would have guessed that over 250 years ago doctors knew about that frequent vision problem of older folks. The second such surgery ultimately killed Bach, because he acquired an infection which could not be stemmed.
The last of Bach’s compositions, composed a few days before his death, was a choral prelude, called, in German, Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit. The German rhymes, but the English translation doesn’t. Translated, the text is as follows: “Before your throne I now appear/ O God, and humbly bid you: Turn not your gracious face/ Away from me, poor sinner.”
There never was a composer more grounded in Christian faith than Herr J.S. Bach. He knew he was dying, but he presented himself before the throne of God in the unassailable conviction that he would soon see God. He and his music give us great hope to believe as he did.
Might death truly be the end? It definitely could be. But doesn’t life take on an immeasurably more positive meaning if we allow ourselves to believe God wants us to live with Him forever? I cannot speak for you, but speaking only for myself, I can give a one-word answer with profound if also unproveable fervor: YES!