How Do We Live With Dying?
Luke 20:27-38
Sermon preached at Midway Hills
Christian Church
November 7, 2004
I’ve been thinking a lot about death this week. It started with our beautiful All Saints service last Sunday. Then on Tuesday, Election Day, I was reminded that November 2 is celebrated in Mexican culture as Dia de los Muertos—The Day of the Dead.
The Day of the Dead is a festive time when families gather in graveyards and in their homes, preparing the favorite foods of their loved ones who have died and welcoming the souls of the dead who have returned to be with them on this occasion. This festive interaction with both the living and the dead is a way of recognizing the cycle of life and death that is part of human existence.
And then there is the assigned lectionary gospel for today, in which the Sadducees engage Jesus in a conversation about death—and resurrection. This passage captures a prevailing attitude many people have about death. They, like the Sadducees, deny it altogether. It is much more comforting to talk about the afterlife. Who will we know in heaven, what will it look like, what will we look like?
Jesus’ response shifts the conversation entirely: “those considered worthy of a place in that age neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are children of the resurrection. God is not a God of the dead but of the living; for to God all of them are alive.” Jesus doesn’t want to talk about the details of the afterlife, he wants to talk about the reality of death, and the reality that even though we die, God gives life to the dead.
I am not quiet sure why the lectionary places this text here on the Sunday after All Saints, but I can venture a guess that it is to invite us to consider our attitudes about death.
A few weeks ago I visited Martha Nielsen in the hospital. She told me about the party Midway Hills threw for her this summer to celebrate her 90th birthday. She said she wished she could have died right then because everything was so beautiful and wonderful. Martha and I talked some about death and heaven. She would have been right at home in this conversation with Jesus and the Sadducees. She told me about a relative of hers that spends a lot of time speculating about the details of the afterlife. Martha said, “I don’t believe in all of that. What I do believe is that when it is time for me to die I will become part of a loving light.”
The book of Ecclesiastes states “to every thing there is a season—a time to be born and a time to die—and God has made everything beautiful in its time.” When it is time to die death can be, not something to fear, but something beautiful. Death is a doorway or entrance into our Creator’s presence. This life we now live is a prelude to a dimension of life that never dies.
Having this kind of attitude about death doesn’t mean that death will be easy. People who study death tell us that there are predictable patterns we all go through as we let go of our hold on this life. There’s shock and denial and then the experience of anger. At some point we try to bargain for a little more life, and then depression may set in until finally we reach acceptance.
Others describe biological death as the last in a series of deaths, beginning with vocational death, when we can no longer work, followed by social death, when we can no longer be out and about with our friends and family, followed by psychological death, when we lose our mental capacities, followed by physical biological death. There is often a long and difficult process of letting go. But just because this process is difficult, doesn’t mean it can’t be meaningful and even beautiful.
SO HOW SHALL WE LIVE WITH DYING?
We live with dying by understanding that death is essential to newness of life. We see it every year with the changing of the seasons, the planting of seeds, and even the liturgical seasons of the church. Without death, newness is not possible. Without death, resurrection is not possible.
We live with dying by embracing the importance of death in our spiritual journey. Not only will each of us die a physical death, we are called to die little deaths everyday. The little deaths of ego. The death or letting go of an old self so that a new self might be born. The apostle Paul wrote about these little deaths often. He said “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet it is not I who lives but Christ in me.” He tells the Corinthians, “For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us…We do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what cannot be seen is eternal.”
Death has so often been portrayed as our enemy, but I believe as Christians, as children of the resurrection, death brings us many gifts.
I did the bulk of my work on this sermon on Wednesday of this past week—the day after the elections. Wednesday had the potential of being a pretty morbid day. There I was reading and contemplating death while all sorts of people drifted in and out of my office grumpy and depressed because of the outcome of the elections.
As I read the New Testament commentaries on this passage from Luke’s gospel I couldn’t help but frame it in the context of the elections. The Sadducees were political leaders. Aristocratic, wealthy, conservative. They didn’t even believe in the resurrection, so their reason for asking Jesus the question was not a sincere one. It was meant to manipulate, to set a trap for Jesus, and to divide the audience that would hear the conversation. Sound familiar?
I believe the elections turned out the way they did because we are living in a culture defined by the fear of death. Politicians like the Sadducees are dangling the fear of terrorism, the fear of death, in front of us in order to manipulate and trap us.
Our response needs to be that of Jesus. Our response needs to be a resurrection response. A response that shifts the question away from fear to claim we are children of the resurrection. Fear of death has no hold on us.
Now more than ever this community, Dallas, the world needs the witness and ministry of Midway Hills Christian Church. Let us not be depressed but subversive. Subversive with the good news that dying is part of our living. Subversive in our example of the transforming power of death that leads to newness of life, now and in the age to come.
On Thursday, I received an email from a friend of mine with some challenging words for these post-election days. He said: “Do not be depressed. Depression is a weight we cannot afford to carry right now. There are plans to make, and hopefully, plans to put into action. Why are so many people voting against their best interests in favor of letting fear guide their politics? Fear has won this round. We will need all our resources not to fall to it. There is nothing to be gained from becoming the victim of a weight that is not ours to carry. Breathe—sigh. And get that dirt off your shoulders.
This will be the legacy we leave. We will be even louder. Write even better. Live even fuller. We will not be bought into a de-habilitating stupor. We will not be medicated beyond awareness. Alongside that fear you are feeling is an adrenaline rush. We know now, it is the very soul of our planet we are trying to save. Nothing less.
Do not be depressed. Be aware. Be awake. Be resistant. Be your ancestors. Be your future. Be alive. Be alive.”