Notes From Jon

I’ve started a new series during Lent on the hard topics of death and grief. I am a firm believer that the only way to keep these things from ruling our lives is to deal with them honestly and directly. This is a shortened version, really, just my notes… but I think it gets all the main points across.

“A Good Death?”

I used to hear the phrase, “It was a good death.” But I think all of us can agree there’s nosuch thing as a “good death.” Whether you’re 95 and have lived a long full life and die peacefully in your sleep, or whether you die in a car accident at age 26 – death is hard. But there are degrees of dying, dying well and not dying well.

And the difference is not to be found just in the circumstances: You can die at 26 in a car accident and still die well. No, it’s not our circumstances that make the difference. It’s our outlook and understanding of death that makes the difference. And that’s hard for us to hear, because we don’t like to talk about death. We might talk about it in abstract terms, sure. But thinking about our own death… that’s another matter.

We don’t like to think about our own death because we fear death. We fear death because it’s unknowable, uncontrollable – and if human beings are anything, we’re creatures who like to know and to be in control.

• We don’t know what it will be like to be dead – we can’t imagine life apart from… well, life.
• Don’t know what it will be like to die. Even though we might see some ideas in the tabloids by the checkout counter, the fact is that no one can really claim to know what it’s like to go all the way and come back.
• We don’t know when our death will be, so it’s hard to really plan for it.
• We have faith that there’s something (and Someone) waiting for us on the other side, but we can’t really claim to know much beyond that.

And so we treat death the same way we treat other problems we don’t understand or can’t solve. We ignore it. Even popular wisdom tells us that running away from your problems won’t solve them – just watch a Disney movie and you can learn that. But for some reason, we usually decide it’s still OK to do it in some areas of our lives.

“Teach us to number our days…”

We might ignore the fact ouf our death, but the biblical writers do not ignore it. The Psalms are full of these kinds of reminders (39:4 and 90:12 are a couple of examples). Look at Ecclesiastes – quite a depressing look at life based on the writer’s understanding of his own death. While we are used to thinking about the theological significance of it, it’s sobering to note the various times Jesus alludes to his coming death. We find detailed examples of great saints who died well – Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and David to name a few. The biblical writers could not “put off” death as we are able to – with medicines and life support. Death was a daily reality – one you could not afford to ignore.

In movies, cartoons, fables and fairy tales, you find death personified – a tall man in a black robe with a sickle, for instance… notice that it’s usually something frightening. I think that people began to do this in order to come to terms with the fact of death – to try to clarify their relationship with a cloudy and unknown thing.

And that’s really what it’s about when we come down to it: finding a proper way to relate with our inevitable enemy. We can run from death (ignore it, pretend we don’t have to worry about it), or we can run TO death (obsess over it, worry about it, consider suicide). Either way we do not have a proper relationship to death – it is master over us, and not the opposite.

Coming to Terms with Death

I’ve thought of a few things that may help as we come to terms with our own death, to come with a right relationship with it. You can probably think of more. But these are things that we, as Christians, understand about deth that can help us put things into perspective.

First, death is not a wall – it is a doorway. It’s not the end. We know this, but I don’t think we always remember it correctly. Death is not “point-B” in the point-A to point-B route. Our lives are point-E to point-F in the continuum of Alpha to Omega. Of all people, Christians should be prepared to live this way!

Second, we do not have to die alone – we’ve lived in a Christian community, and we can die in the midst of community.

I love to fly, but I’m always uncomfortable when they’re explaining the emergency procedures. I don’t like to think about a plane wreck, but it does happen. And I suppose it’s good to be prepared. But as uncomfortable as it is to think about a plane wreck, there’s something that’s even harder for me to imagine. Have you even been able to sit in an emergency exit row? I remember my first time. I thought, “this is great! Look at all this leg room!” Then the flight attendant knelt next to me and started explaining my responsibilities.

Responsibilities? Who wants to stand at the door of a burning plane and help OTHERS out? And yet airline folks know just how crucial these people can be in a crash – someone standing there, calling out, helping others across the threshold to safety. If it were up to us all to do it by ourselves, we’d probably lose twice as many people in airplane incidents. That’s the difference between dying alone and dying in community.

Third, we don’t know everything about death – there’s no one to tell us about it. But GOD DOES. And we know that the God who made life is, in some way, responsible for the fact of death as well. He’s the master of death, and he can bring us through.

Living Life to the Full

Finally, it’s helpful to know there’s some good in coming to terms with our own death. Not only does it help us die well – it helps us LIVE WELL. In fact, some might argue that we can only truly gain mastery over life itself when we choose to acknowledge its temporariness.

Pretend we found out this morning that the world’s oil problem is much bigger than we ever realized, and that we’re going to run out of gasoline and oil products by the end of the year. Think of all the different places we use oil products and how this would affect our lives. How would you live differently in light of that understanding? What kind of changes would you make to your lifestyle?

Now what would you think if I told you someone knew, but decided they were just going to pretend the problem didn’t exist. They kept driving their truck that got 5 miles to the gallon, refused to think about finding an alternative source of transportation or an alternative heating source.

Now, if we all choose to understand and live in light of our death, how might we live life differently? What kinds of things do you do now that you wouldn’t do? What kinds of things would you want to make sure were done? How about our relationship to God? Deciding to live lives of discipleship instead of putting it off until later, as we tend to do?

I’m not saying we should live the “next five minutes” theology – we’d never get anything done. We can never have our loose ends all tied up… there are just too many. This is (once again) allowing death to rule our lives. But there is a middle ground. We can live in such a way that, if we were to die right now, we could look back and say, “I may not have been completely ready, but I had the important stuff taken care of.”

What is that important stuff? It’s different for every one of us. And the fact is, we have no control over what happened yesterday, and no control over what happens tomorrow. But we DO have control over right now – this moment.

So this is the moment to think… and the moment to choose. Choose to live in the light of death. I think we’ll find that life can be all the richer if we do.