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"Dealing With Death" Sermon preached by John C. Hall on March 4, 2007 Text - Luke 13:31-35 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when † you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ” Our gospel lesson shows us one way the early church dealt with the “problem” of Jesus’ death. Now you’re probably asking, “What’s the problem with Jesus’ death? After all, he rose from the dead.” The problem lies in the Jewish perspective on Jesus, and you need to remember that the first followers of Jesus were Jews. Jesus was the Messiah. This was the basic conviction that Jesus’ disciples had. The problem was, the Messiah wasn’t supposed to die. The Messiah, by definition, was the leader who would be victorious on the level of this world and who would make things better for Israel. Even though Jesus rose from the dead, the first problem was that he didn’t make things better for Israel, in any visible way. And second, the Messiah especially wasn’t supposed to die on a cross, because crucifixion was the most shameful way to die. In the book of Deuteronomy it says, “Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree.” That’s what happened to Jesus, he was hung on a tree, to die a slow death in public view. That wasn’t very Messiah-like. The problems with Jesus’ death are dealt with in various ways by different parts of the New Testament. Luke has his own way of dealing with it. Luke sees Jesus primarily as a prophet. So for Luke, it was fitting for Jesus to die in Jerusalem, because that’s what happens to prophets. Prophets typically get stoned in Jerusalem, by their own people, and Luke sees crucifixion as the equivalent of death by stoning. I’ve preached many sermons over the years on various ways of understanding Jesus’ death and what it means. These are called theories of the atonement, and if you’re interested, I can send you a past sermon on that subject. What I’d like for us to think about today is how we deal with our own death. I realize this isn’t a subject that makes you wake up on Sunday morning and think, “Oh boy, today I look forward to contemplating my eventual death.” But it’s a subject very much at the heart of the Christian faith, and it’s such a huge issue for humans in general, that it’s something we can’t avoid. We should address it at least once in a while. You will find in your bulletins a half-sheet of paper with a space for you to write something. What I’m going to do now is to say a few things to get you thinking, and then you can write whatever you want about this subject. I’ll combine all your statements into one document and make it available for all of us read. To make this a bit more light-hearted than it might otherwise be, I’ll tell you a little about the play I recently directed, “Underneath the Lintel” at Oddfellows Playhouse. One reason I liked the play was that it dealt with death but there was a lot of comedy in the play too. In the play the one character, a Dutch librarian, offers a number of musings about how the fact of death, the fact that we will all die, could make life seem absurd and hopeless. The librarian in the play tells us, for example: On January 25, 1971, Helen Shattock was walking her dog in Dayton, Ohio, when a frozen block of urine from the lavatory of a Pan Am jet fell and hit her on the head, killing her instantly. Not exactly a glorious death. He mentions that every year in the United States, 14 people die from vending machines falling in them, when they shake it to get back the 50 cents that the machine devoured. He mentions that in his Dutch town of Hoopdorf, “a million tiny insects are caught in a million tiny balls of lint behind a million couches everyday, and nobody knows. A flood in Honan China in 1887 killed 3 million people. No one in Hoopdorf, Holland, batted an eye at those 3 million deaths, so the insects behind the couch shouldn’t take it personally. That’s just the way it is. It could have been 3 million and one people who drowned, but what’s that one to anyone, but that one? … “In two hundred years, five hundred, or ten thousand, will anyone care that any of us perished? No, we’re all behind the couch, struggling mutely with our lint. Not a cheery thought.” The play also includes the “myth of the Wandering Jew.” This is the story is about a man who is condemned to wander the earth unable to die. Imagine if you couldn’t die. Would anyone want that? Would that be a blessing or a curse? Most people, or at least many people, reach a point when they are ready to die. They’ve lived long enough. They’ve seen it all, or seen enough. They’re tired. There are many strategies —mental strategies, ways of thinking — that help us deal with death. The most popular strategy is denial. We just don’t think about it most of the time. But there are many other strategies. In Christianity, for example, we say “If we die with Christ, we will rise with Christ.” We’ll be with him in paradise, like the thief on the cross. We go to heaven. You don’t need a specific view of heaven to use this strategy. Heaven can mean many things. Buddhists deal with our individual deaths by saying that our individual lives are really an illusion. We’re all part of the great One. Everything is a part of the larger Buddha Nature that encompasses all things. That sounds to me something like dying in Christ and rising in Christ. Jews deal with death by emphasizing the continuity of the Jewish people in history. The individual may die, but the community lives on. In Hindu religion, there’s the concept of reincarnation. Other cultures have ancestor worship. We revere our ancestors. Those who come after us will revere us. These are some ways of imagining what comes after death. But then there’s also what comes just before death. What will it be like when the end is near? I’m sure I’m not the only one here who hopes I’ll live a healthy life to a ripe old age and then die in my sleep without any warning. That would be easy. But that’s not the usual way. Most people have at least a short illness at the end, and sometimes a long illness. Most people see death coming. I’m happy to tell you that many people, at the end, feel an enormous welling-up of appreciation for having been alive and for all the experiences life offers, including the challenging ones. I hope I’ll feel that way. Most of us over 50 probably think about what will happen to our possessions after we die. After 80, many people start giving things away while they have a chance. These are all things that go through people’s minds as part of dealing with death. Now I invite you to write down some thoughts of your own on this subject, about what comes before death, or what comes after death, or how you plan to get ready for death. And indicate your age category, because it will be interesting to see how or whether people of different ages have different thoughts. I suspect the result will reflect the diverse spirituality of our congregation.
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