When I first met my husband Larry, I was in my first year of seminary and he was in his last. That spring semester, he was taking a "Death and Dying" class with a professor who was actually dying of cancer. Every morning at 9 a.m., I'd find Larry sitting in the student lounge with a cup of coffee, perusing one of his many Death and Dying books. Conversations with him and others who joined us often revolved around death, funerals, hospice, suffering, etc. All of this quickly earned him the nickname, "Dr. Death." He wasn't morose about it, he was passionate then, as he is now, about hospice and the incredible honesty and wisdom some people have when they know they're going to die soon. But most of us don't like to think about death, and especially in New Jersey, we didn't like to even acknowledge that death was a reality for us all. We ain't gonna get out of here alive-- but we don't want to TALK about it.
Then I move to, move away from, and then move back to, the Midwest. It's not uncommon for people in these small towns to well, have their arrangements taken care of ahead of time. I've seen gravestones in the cemetery for people who are still alive! To my Eastern-way-of-thinking, this was, at first, incredibly morbid and disturbing. But Midwesterners are very practical people. They see making arrangements ahead of time as being a way of making easier on those left behind. They apparently don't go through an Scrooge-like angst at the sight of their name on a gravestone; as if it's just a bed that's waiting for them for when they get tired.
I grew up with a healthy fear of death. Well, that is, when anybody actually TALKED about it, which wasn't often. Death was always a mysterious, ominous, taboo subject that was only whispered about, and only came up when someone actually died and you couldn't avoid the subject. Death happened to old people. And pets. Death was ugly.
I don't know why, after being a pastor for 18 years, that it is just coming to my attention that death gets a bad rap. I mean, we are all going to die, we can't get out of it. Seems to me, it'd be helpful to make peace with it. You know, "accept the things we cannot change..." It's just dawned on me recently, that if you read the Bible, which has a powerful influence on everybody's psyche, whether they read it or not, death is the ultimate enemy. In the Old Testament, death is a punishment. Don't touch that Ark! (as in the Ark of the Covenant, not Noah's yacht) If you do, well, bam, you're dead. Curse your parents, commit adultery if you're a woman (guys get off better), lie about how much you gave to God, bam, you're dead. Thousands of people die in the Old Testament. They are killed because they were evil or disobedient. Death in the Old Testament is equated with punishment, damnation, the ultimate foe. Jesus came to conquer death-- again, as if it were the last, worst enemy.
No wonder we have a warped image of death. In a way, it's easy for us to justify the killing of thousands of people if they're our enemies, a la Old Testament, and therefore take death lightly, as long as it's someone ELSE-- but then on the other hand, death is the final, darkest punishment. When someone dies too soon, we wonder, what did they ever do wrong? Or if a group of people die, often it is assumed that it's God's punishment. We have to make sense of it; even when it doesn't make sense. We have to make sense of those things that make no sense, even if our explanation makes no sense.
But as Christians, I think Jesus tried to make us see that death is NOT the ultimate foe. I'm not sure Jesus "conquered" death so much as went through it, to show us that it is NOT the ultimate foe. It's a part of life. Even if you go through the worst possible death you can imagine, like he did. Jesus died. And yet he did nothing to "deserve" it, it was not a punishment for something he did wrong. It was like he went through it as if to come out the other side to tell us, "see? it's not so bad..."
I watched a very dear friend of mine die recently of a horrible cancer (is there any other kind?). When I first knew she was going to die, I didn't think I could face it. I didn't think I could handle watching it happen. What was horrible, though, was not death. What was horrible was the illness, and the suffering it caused her. But she faced her coming death with enormous grace and courage, as if to tell me, and anyone else who cared to know it, that death isn't so bad. She only regretted that she was going to miss out on some fun stuff here, but she had a peaceful certainty that death itself wouldn't kill her. Hmmm. And for those moments, as I held her hand, and watched her breathing slow, I knew. I knew she was alright. Better than all of us, actually. And I knew that death isn't the enemy. It's only the enemy in the wrong hands. Death is very powerful, too powerful to be trusted into human hands. It's not ours to play with. But in God's hands, death is ok. It's just an ending, so that something much more beautiful can finally begin. It sucks for the people left behind, still scratching our heads, wanting certainty and answers, and missing the beautiful soul that just went to God. But for the one who gets to go, well, I can only imagine that it's the trip of a lifetime.
Easter is coming. I don't know if I could hang in there with the Bible if it didn't include the Resurrection. The Resurrection makes up for a lot of disturbing things in the Hebrew Testament. It's like hanging in there with a really disturbing book because you know it works out in the end, and the end makes the journey worth it. Easter is coming. Spring is coming. And that's what keeps me going.
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