I do not want to speak of death.

I do not want to speak of death because I am not qualified to speak of death.

I have experienced very little death in my life. Very few of those close to me have passed away.

I experience this reality with some ambivalence. To be sure, I have been spared a lot of sorrow in my life.
But I have also missed out on an important dimension of life —
the experience of death.

It may seem strange to call death a dimension of life.
But our tradition teaches us that death and life bear an important relationship to one another.

It was rather uncomplicated for me to lose a grandfather at 5 years old. The mourning process was short and was quickly overshadowed by the theological lesson that my parents thought it important for me to learn:

Grandpap (as I called him) is with Jesus now. We will see him again someday.

I carry a very vivid memory with me to this day of seeing my grandfather lying in his casket — he looked as though he was smiling. That took me completely by surprise. But, at the time I took this to be a confirmation that he was in fact with Jesus; that he was even happier now that he had been down here with us. I didn’t remember him smiling very much in life.

To experience the death of a loved one as an adult, I suspect, is a very different thing — as many of you will know better than I do.
It’s one thing to loose a grandfather you’ve only known for a few years, and whom you’ve only ever loved with innocent abandon.

It’s another thing for an adult to loose a husband, a wife, a sister, a mother, or a child — someone whom we’ve adored and cared for,
or someone we’ve resented and treated poorly.
In almost every case, it’s a mix of all of these things.

Our lives become knit together with those we are closest to. We create a common story. That story may be a happy one, it may be an unhappy one. In either case, when we lose that someone, it feels as though that story has suddenly come to an end. The love we’d always intended to share, the apology we’d always meant to make, the gratitude we’d always meant to make known, now weighs on us with a seemingly unbearable heaviness.

Reconciliation is never so longed for as it is when it seems no longer possible.

No matter how expected, death always takes us by surprise.

***

I do not want to speak of death.
I do not want to speak of death. But I cannot not speak of death.

It is as though, I had no choice.

Friday, the eve of all Saints Day, was Halloween, a day popular tradition has turned into a spectacle of the dead (and the undead).

Saturday was All Saints Day: when we remembered those saints who have gone before us and set an example for us, before they departed this life.

Sunday was All Souls Day: when we remembered those close to us who have died but whose lives continue to affect our own. We have memorialized some of those souls with these stars painted overhead.

Tuesday is Remembrance Day: a day when we remember those who died in war.

The calendar in late October and early November is full of death.

I could not not speak of death today.


***

Not long ago I participated in my first funeral service with Fr Stephen. We subsequently toured the funeral home. I learned, in some detail, what processes kick into motion and what choices need to be made when someone passes away.

A pastor friend of mine was reflecting on an experience he’d recently had: He was attending the bedside of a man who was very sick, in order to pray with him. As he was leaving the hospital room, he claims to have seen something like a vapour rise from the man’s mouth. He later found out that the man died just after he left the room.
It’s all the more striking when you understand that this pastor friend of mine is not one given to superstition of any kind.

When I sat down to reflect on this week’s scriptures, I was drawn, almost irresistibly, to the Epistle. To Paul’s vivid description of the dead rising to meet Christ in the clouds.

I could not not speak of death today.

***

But the fact is, I did not want to speak of death.

I did not want to speak of death because in some ways I am the product of my own culture.

Ours is a culture that does not like to speak of death.

In fact, our culture aspires to life without death.

It is virtually a commonplace to understand life to be simply the opposite of death.
Life is what there is before death takes it away.
Life would be the absence of death.

There is something so ingrained about this conception of life, that it’s hard to think of it otherwise. But let’s try.


***
I don’t want to romanticize the days before advanced medical science. I very much support the sciences being used in the service of human health and flourishing. But, at the same time, that is not all that the rise of the medical sciences has has meant for contemporary society.

Death, and by extension, life have become medicalized concepts for us.
- Caring for the dying, or as it is now called, “end of life care,” has become almost exclusively the domain of professional medical practitioners and technology;
- Defining the threshold between life and death has become a more and more contested exercise.
And highly politicized.
Think of Brittnay Maynard or Terry Shaivo.

The church, and other religious traditions, continue to practice medical chaplaincies. But the role is highly circumscribed and even subservient to the “experts” on life and death — the medical professionals.

The impression seems to be that a theological understanding of life, death, and dying, is antiquated, or at the most a strictly private matter.

There are many and complicated reasons that have lead to the rise of such a secularized and medicalized understanding of life and death. But we might wonder if such an understanding is adequate. If something is lost in the secularization and medicalization of life and death.

The Christian tradition does not understand life as the opposite of death, or of death as the absence of life. Indeed, Christians cannot speak of life without speaking of death and of dying. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but We speak of death all the time in the church — and not just at this time of the year.

Such an unflinching focus on death sits in sharp contrast to the prevailing understanding: What seems to be of supreme importance in our day, is the keeping of death at bay or of diminishing it’s affect. Dying well has come to mean a death with little or no trace of dying at all. There is no grace in dying, it would seem.

Take the example of Brittnay Maynard. Last week she took her own life with the help of medical professionals, under the so-called “death with dignity” law in Oregon — it was on All Saints Day, as it turns out.

I won’t pretend to understand the agony of living with an inoperable brain tumour. I won’t pretend that I would have made a better decision. I am not Brittnay’s judge.

But I was struck by one of the reasons that she gave for choosing to take her own life. Listen to her words.

Because the rest of my body is young and healthy, I am likely to physically hang on for a long time even though cancer is eating my mind. I probably would have suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months.
And my family would have had to watch that.

I fully understand Brittnay Maynard’s desire to protect her family. It pains me to think of what it would be like if my family were forced to watch me in a situation of such vulnerability and suffering.

There were clearly compassionate grounds for her decision. What strikes me, however, is that Brittnay’s language about her own life and death is highly medicalized. It is as though she had no other way to understand herself. There was no sense that dying might be a space of grace.

Now, assuming this is the only appropriate way to speak of life, death, and dying then I suppose the ethical reasoning is sound. But is this the only way to speak about life, death, and dying?


***
I’m not here to make pronouncements on medical ethics. I only want to point out that the prevailing understanding of life, death, and dying in our culture is not the only way to understand them. And that our tradition offers us another way.

As Christian people we simply don’t have the option of thinking about life without death. A browse through the New Testament will quickly reveal that life, true life, new and abundant life, does not come to those who are spared the ordeal of dying; but is given to those who have gone through it; to those who have participated with Christ in his death — and his resurrection.



The Christian understanding of life is one that happens in and through death.

Consider St Paul’s words in Galatians: I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

Life happens through death, not without it. As opposed to the prevailing contemporary understanding, for the Christian there is no life without death.

We cannot not speak of death.

But this is far from a morbid or pessimistic perspective. Because, if there is no life without death, nor is there death without life. And that is Paul’s point in today’s epistle. Having spoken of death, having acknowledged death as a part of life. We can also move beyond death.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, [says Paul] even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.

Paul’s words offer consolation to those who have lost loved ones, to be sure. But there is more here than consolation -- there is authentic hope. This is not just a supernatural vision of life after death.
It’s an image of life that encompasses death and moves irresistibly towards resurrection.
It’s an image of a community who shares a common story, not just until the point of death. But a common story that weaves together life and death, the living and the dead, dying and resurrection. It’s the story of a community of reconciliation.

That love we’d always intended to share,
that apology we’d always meant to make,
that gratitude we’d always meant to make known,
need not weigh on us as an unredeemed guilt.

It can become the substance of our prayer and the basis of our hope --
Like Paul we can be ... convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.


That love that Christ has opened up for us is the space where the community of Christ dwells, the community of the past, the present, and the future, the living and the dead -- together. In this community love continues to flow, reconciliation continues to happen, even between the living and the dead.

the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.

This cloud is not a spectacle that movie special effects might be able to approximate. This the reality of a people who has faced death as part of life, and embraced dying as a space of grace. Because we know that this is all moving irresistibly towards resurrection.

There is no life without death.
Nor is there death without life.

There is only a community of all the saints and all the souls -- past, present, and future; living and dead: this is the community of the resurrection.

We cannot not speak of death
Because we cannot not speak of resurrection.

Amen.