| "This sermon will be different. On other Sundays, I usually offer a kind of twenty-minute "essay," one that has a beginning and an end and hopefully with a clear conceptual development in between. But this week I just couldn't pull off that kind of sermon. "Death" proved, somehow, too difficult and mysterious a subject for that. So why am I tackling the topic of "death" at all? Well, for one thing, the Gospel Lesson that our lectionary sets for today is John 14, and that's a text we read at most funerals and memorial services. And then, too, pastorally we've been having a year full of death, what with both 9/11 and its 3,000 local obituaries and the unusually high number of cancer cases and other serious illnesses suffered by persons who've been part of this community of faith. For better or for worse, death is very much on our minds and hearts. And far from lurking at the margins of our lives, where we would certainly want to consign it, death has asserted itself in such a way that it is now standing front and center. But as I said, "death" is a tough topic on which to write an essay-first, because death and what lies beyond it really are mysterious, and second, because each person's experience in facing death is as unique as their fingerprint or DNA sample. Then, too, I've taken heed of a warning issued by my Old Testament colleague Gerald Janzen, a warning that arises from his experience of his sister Judy's death from cancer at age 57 and of his nephew Tony's death from a car accident at age 22. Janzen writes: "Judy's death brings home to me, with unabated force, that almost anything I might attempt to say intelligibly about death itself would be glib and presumptuous. I am no nearer to comprehending death itself than I ever was. …[I]n its lurking presence and ravaging power it remains a mystery unfathomable to me.… [And] I just trust that if I have the courage to look through the hole punched in my heart by Tony's dying, I may see the face of God." So in my remarks that follow, I do not presume to offer an organized essay. Rather I propose simply to present on the subject of facing death several threads of thought and reflection. And my hope is that at least some of these will offer you materials you can use to construct for yourself a sermon on facing death that will help you today, to the end that you, too, may come to see through the hole in your heart the face of God. A first thread of thought. In studying today's brief Gospel Lesson in its larger literary context, I noticed that when Jesus himself is facing imminent death, he chooses to face it not in isolation but in community. On the night of his arrest, he sits down at table with disciples and shares with them his thoughts on death and on the gift of eternal life that lies beyond physical death. And what Jesus promises to his followers after their death is the gift of an eternity lived in community with God and in fellowship with Jesus, an eternity transcending every apparent boundary between life and death-in whatever mysterious way that eternity may be created and constructed by God. And in the aftermath of the death and resurrection of Jesus, what emerges in the early Christian church, as we learn in this morning's First Lesson, is a dynamic community of active care and concern for one another, the kind of community that helps Jesus's followers find the strength and the fortitude to face down the specters of Jesus's death and of their own deaths, the same strength and fortitude that Jesus himself showed in the face of death. We have had some glimpses of that kind of active community of care and concern here at Rutgers, manifest in our response to the horror of 9/11 and in our response to recent illnesses in our congregation. And as a community, we have proven to be an immense source of strength and fortitude for our members in the face of death. In reflecting on today's two lessons, I observe in light of my own experiences in pastoral ministry, that those most deeply connected to a community of faith have been the ones best equipped to cope with the process of dying and all its attendant pain, both physical and emotional. They've been the ones-aided by others-who've proven best able to face courageously that process. They've been the ones-aided by others-who've negotiated most comfortably the difficult journey from this life, through the portal that is death, to the life beyond. As Father Walter Burghardt, S.J. has said: "In consequence of Calvary, death is that unique point between time and timelessness when the Sprit of Christ, the Spirit of life, can take permanent possession of my spirit, without my earthbound resistance.…" Still, as Roberta Bondi makes clear: "What form, ultimately, our ongoing life in God will take, we do not know and cannot say, only that we have been promised [ongoing life] by a trustworthy maker of promises"-Jesus himself. A second thread of thought. In reading today's Gospel I noticed that at least one of the things Jesus tells his disciples to do is extraordinarily hard to do-in fact, next to impossible to do-at least during the first stages of facing one's own death or of facing a loved one's death. Jesus says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled," and he says that not just once in the lesson I read to you, but twice (John 14:1, 27), the second time adding, for good measure, "and do not let [your hearts] be afraid." Well, who can really do that, in the face of death? The first thing that happens when we, or our loved ones, are told that we, or they, have cancer or a disease that can lead to death-the first thing that happens is that our hearts are troubled and we do become afraid, and the next thing that happens, at least with many of us, is that we get good and mad-angry at our fate, angry at God! Just last weekend, the Religious Communicators Council gave its Wilbur Award for the best TV drama of the year 2001 to an episode of The West Wing that was aired last May, as the season finale. Perhaps some of you watch this TV series about the fictional President of the United States, Jed Bartlett, and his staff. If you don't, I highly recommend it. The Wilbur-winning episode focuses on the fear and anger created in the President by a combination of three things, all related to facing death: the nearly fatal shooting of a trusted aide who's like a son to him; the President's own life-sapping disease, multiple sclerosis; and the sudden death in a car accident of his beloved secretary. Have you noticed how often crises of death seem to come in batches, with the fear and anger we feel at each becoming cumulative? Now, President Bartlett is a faithful, believing Roman Catholic, yet following his secretary's funeral in the National Cathedral he gives explosive vent to his accumulated rage at God, an outburst worthy of a biblical figure like Job or Jonah. And referring to the shooting of his son-like aide, the President snarls at God: "That was my son! What did I ever do to yours but praise his glory and praise his name!" I think this episode won the Wilbur Award for 2001 because in a year of such profound national grief, it offered such a realistic portrait of the fear and of the anger at God we all feel in the face of death. Yet Jesus says to us, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." Yes, fear and anger in the face of death are natural and inevitable, yet "dying well" is a process through which that fear and anger dissolve, like salt, in a solution compounded of hope and love. And in my own pastoral experiences I have found that those most deeply connected to a community of faith have been the ones best able to let their fear and anger dissolve in hope and love. They've been the ones best equipped to arrive, after a long journey, at an untroubled heart-by letting their fear and anger dissolve in the hope and love of the whole community. A third thread of thought. We need to consider that the phenomenon of death may not be in and of itself an evil. Could it have some providential purpose hidden from us? The early 18th-century English satirist Jonathan Swift once wrote in all seriousness: "It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to [hu]mankind." [Thoughts on Religion, quoted in The Living Pulpit, July-September 1998, p. 32] And the contemporary physician Rachel Naomi Remen has said: "Life is a spiritual path, and death may be the experience of the soul that integrates and clarifies it." [quoted in "Death," The Living Pulpit, July-September 1998, p. 32] And the brilliant contemporary author and poet Kathleen Norris, who by the way is a Presbyterian, has written this "small song," as she calls it: "I know for sure that at the end the playful stranger who appears is not death but love." Is it possible that there is an eerie and iridescent beauty to dying into love that heals the life that is past and leads the way to that which lies beyond? And last but not least, a fourth thread of thought. "Those who have cared for the dying often say that the experience strengthens them and helps them understand the meaning of their own life and death" [Kenneth Arnold, "Re- imagining Death," in The Episcopal New Yorker, April/May, 1998]- and that participating in the death of another person better prepares them for the death they themselves will someday experience. For example, in tending to others through their process of dying, we can discover many other ways of offering hope to a dying person than just offering elusive, high-risk physical cures. [Amy Platinga Pauw, "Dying Well," in Practicing Our Faith, ed. Dorothy C. Bass (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), p. 165] And when in the future it is our turn to make choices about treatments during our process of dying, this learning can be of immense help. And in tending to a friend or loved one through their process of dying, we have the opportunity to exchange with him or her the words of love and forgiveness that we may have found so hard to say earlier in our relationship. By so doing, we can establish bonds of peace and reconciliation that can inform and instruct us about how to love and be reconciled in our other relationships as well. And by the way, even when the dying person is in a coma or is otherwise unconscious, it is highly likely that they can still hear what is said to them. Hearing is the last of our faculties to go, and while there is breath it is rarely too late to speak a word of love and forgiveness to a dying person. Yet in tending to a friend or loved one through their process of dying, it is not necessary always to talk. It is often the best thing simply to sit with them quietly, perhaps praying or reading psalms silently, or perhaps practicing a ministry of simple presence, simple healing presence, sharing strength through the offering of silent community. And while we simply watch and wait with others, we will have many moments to clarify our own values. For somehow setting priorities seems to become more important and far easier to do when we are facing a life's culmination. And finally, the process of dying is often messy and physically unpleasant. Every caregiver knows the truth expressed by Mother Teresa in her work with the dying. She often said: "You could not pay me to do this. Only love is rich enough to deal with death." You see, "skilled and compassionate ministry to the bodily needs of dying persons [is one way to mediate to] them a profound sense of God's merciful presence." [Pauw, p. 175] And such a profound expression of caring community in Christ as caring for the body of a dying person can also help us to make peace with our own bodies and our own bodily functions. Well, my sermon time is up, though there is much more that we need to say to each other about facing death-within community. This morning, I've offered four threads of thought to help guide us through our pain to the light of God's love. In the days ahead, let's keep this conversation going. Amen |
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