Justify Death Psalm 90: 1-6, 10, 12, 14 and Romans 14:7-9
Contemporary Worship, Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church 2/19/2012
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Romans 14:7-9
So, your questions have been coming in. They’ve been very interesting - intriguing. Thank you for them. I’ve been asked all kinds of questions in all of my years doing ministry. Most commonly, Are ministers perfect? NO! Do dogs go to heaven? YES!
Why do the evil prosper? I DON’T KNOW!
One of the greatest questions I was ever asked happened at a children’s time. And I asked the kids if they had any questions (big mistake!). This one little boy raised his hand and asked, Does this church have any secrets?
So, recently, when we asked for your questions this one appeared. Two words on a green sheet of paper – JUSTIFY DEATH. It should be noted there was no question mark. So, it seems it’s more of an exclamation than a question, more of a dare, or a challenge, or a cry.
I want you to know I take this question very seriously. I may not be able to answer it. Who can? But I believe it is one of the most important questions each and every one of us has to address in our life. We all have to come up with an answer. And the answer we discover will be crucial because it will propel us down one life path or another.
We can be led towards life or death, towards triumph or despair, towards anger or hope, towards grief and sadness or love. Down one path we do everything we can to hold on to all that we have, to clutch life and hold it tight. Down the other path we learn how to let go. We learn about freedom. We learn about what it means to trust God in all things.
What it means to trust ourselves into the hands of God and perhaps even more difficult, entrust those we love. So, this is a very important question. Thanks for submitting it.
In this sermon I’m taking the Oreo cookie. On both sides, the beginning and the end we’ll be talking about what we believe, what we know because of the gospel. We’ll be talking about what kind of world God created and at the end we’ll be talking about the hope we have in the resurrection. And in the middle, the squishy part is my own experience. What I believe. What is true for me. And I’m not suggesting it has to be your truth. Finally, we all have to find our own. So, buckle up, here we go!
God created this world. Now, it doesn’t matter if you approach that truth as a Creationist or Evolutionist. Whichever understanding you have you know there is a power beyond all this, beyond all things. There has to be. There is a force in this universe that calls into being this world, orders it, and brings it to its Providential fruition. And we call this force God. That small word (three letters) which we use all the time doesn’t begin to capture the awesomeness, the grandeur, the eternal mystery and power of this Creative Force. It’s a word that points to a much larger reality but does not capture or contain it. No way.
God did not create a spiritual world. God created a physical world where there are atoms and molecules and particles and neurons and protons and this physical world is governed by the laws of nature, which God established. There is gravity. There is expansion and contraction. There is a coming to life and there is a decay for all things. All things.
This is part of what it means to live in a physical universe. We all are born. We all live. We all die. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes we live to a ripe old age. Modern medicine is quite amazing in keeping people alive longer and longer. By the way, that’s a mixed blessing, not to mention an expensive one.
The average lifespan in the United States today is 78.3 years. 75.6 for men. 80.8 for women. We are 36th on the list of all countries. Number one is Japan, where people are likely to live well into their 80’s. (Eat more rice and tofu.)
For some, death comes prematurely. There are wars and violence. There are germs, there is illness, there are natural disasters and accidents. And we have all had friends or loved ones taken away from us in one of these ways. And it is terrible. It’s tragic. But it’s what happens when you live in a physical universe. We are not immortal. We are mortal.
This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. The season when we prepare our hearts for the Lenten season and begin carrying the cross to the tomb and to Easter. In Lent we walk with him, even as he walks with us.
I invite you to attend worship this Wednesday. It will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Sanctuary.
We will remind ourselves of our mortality as we feel the cross of ashes marked on our foreheads – and the worship leaders will say to each of us exactly what God says to all of us in Genesis 3:19: You are dust, and to dust you shall return. How sobering is that!
It’s important to remember that God created the world this way. Though we do not understand all things we know this is how God created the world. With all of its beauty and wonder and power and tragedy and awesome mystery. This is the way God created the world. And, according to Genesis 1:31, God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
My father died two years ago. He was in good health, hale and hearty at 88, but he was hit by a car as he crossed the street outside his home, walking to get the mail at the post office. There was the ambulance and the ICU and doctors, hospitals, surgeries, but we lost him within two weeks of his accident. That’s my own most recent and most personal encounter with death.
Since 2002 I have officiated at 143 funerals in this church for members of this congregation or friends in the larger community. I cannot tell you what an honor that is. We have lost some incredible disciples and friends. The stories of their lives would fill volumes. It’s such an honor to do this work. And it is such an honor to work with colleagues like Cathie and Chris and Joan. Our ministry together is full of life and it is surrounded by death. And we witness every day the heroic way our people live. And we are inspired.
One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 90.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn us back to dust, and say, “Turn back, you mortals.” For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong. Even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. So teach us to count our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. One of my heroes is Soren Kierkegaard, a great saint of the church, Danish Christian who spoke of death as “The Master Teacher.” And, according to Kierkegaard, here is what there is about that death that gives it the power to teach to teach us how to have hearts of wisdom.
First, there is death’s finality. When it comes there is not one second more. Life is over and done. From this we can learn how precious life is, how valuable. How wonderful.
What a great gift each of us has been given. How beautiful life is. How holy and sacred. It is not to be wasted. There is a great passage from a wonderful book called My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok that goes like this:
I drew, too, the way my father once looked at a bird lying on its side against the curb near our house. It was Shabbos (Sabbath) and we were on our way back from the synagogue. “Is it dead, Papa?” I was six and could not bring myself to look at it. “Yes,” I heard him say in a sad and distant way. “Why did it die?” “Everything that lives must die.” “Everything?” “Yes.” “You, too Papa? And Mama?” “Yes.” “And me?” “Yes,” he said. Then he added in Yiddish, “But may it be only after you live a long and good life, my Asher.” I couldn’t grasp it. I forced myself to look at the bird. Everything alive would one day be as still as that bird? “Why?” I asked, “That’s the way the Ribbono Shel Olom (The Master of all Creation) made his world, Asher.” “Why?” “So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever is never precious.”
So, there is the finality of death and second, there is the democracy of death. It is the great leveler. The great equalizer. It comes to rich and poor, famous or lowly, it does not matter. It is the one thing that makes us all equal. It obliterates all of the distinctions we make so much of. From this we can learn how ephemeral are the standards we use to judge people - ourselves and others. How unimportant they are. How, in the end, we all stand alone before the throne of God.
Third, there is the uncertainty of death. It can happen at any time. An awareness of this should free us from putting off doing the things that matter the most. Every day we should seek to accomplish the things that need to be done, the relationships that need to be fixed, the wounds that need to be healed. Each and every one of us has a life purpose, a plan, and we shouldn’t wait to find out what it is and to begin accomplishing it. It gives life meaning and purpose and time’s a wastin’! I don’t know whether I will live another three days or thirty years so I must learn to make every day count.
One of our great modern American poets is a woman by the name of Mary Oliver. This is her poem entitled, “When Death Comes.”
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
When death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
In another one of her poems, The Summer Day, Mary Oliver ends the poem with this:
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
We do not have endless time to squander and so each of us has to answer the questions: How will I live? What difference will I make in this world? Will I be just a visitor here on this earth or am I here to make a difference? What will you do with your one wild and precious life?
John 3:16 says, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son. God sent his Son into the world. Not as God pretending to be man. Not as a spiritual being disguising himself in the physical. God sent his Son into this physical world to become like us in every way. God incarnate. In the flesh. When he died this was not some spiritual exercise. It was real. As real as real can be. The crucifixion is not some symbolic or imaginary event. No, it is the ultimate act of incarnation, where God becomes man and takes on our sin and takes on our death. Don’t ever think the Bible doesn’t take death seriously. The promise of eternal life does not diminish the anguish of death, the pain of losing a loved one. The grief. The Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 15 says, The last enemy to be destroyed is death. The last enemy!
Jurgen Moltman, says, Death is where Christian hope flourishes. And that’s surely what we see in Jesus and know through the gospel. We begin this walk we make every year this Wednesday as we enter into Lent. For forty days we carry the cross. We walk with him, as he walks with us. At the end we come to Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The sad uncertainty of Saturday. Then Sunday morning. The glad discovery of the empty tomb. Totally unexpected. When we had lost all hope. When death seemed to be the winner. The empty tomb. The last enemy is defeated by the resurrection – which is about both the promise of abundant life now and eternal life after this earthly sphere.
Friends, this is the good news of the gospel!
