TEACHING YOUR GRANDCHILDREN HOW TO DIE

(Preached on Sunday, February 11, 2007)

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.                                                                -1 Corinthians 15:20

 

One of the greatest preachers of the last century, the Rev. David H. C. Read, long-time pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, once remarked how he remembered being warned by a fellow preacher that one must never use the word Adeath@ in a published sermon title. I imagine some of you agreed with him when you read the title for this morning=s sermon: ATeaching Your Grandchildren How to Die.@  It certainly is a rather morbid title, quite shocking I imagine.

 

We do not like to think about death.  We do not like to talk about death.  We do enjoy watching death on the television and in the movies.  Between all the crime shows, hospital shows, and shows about mediums, ghost whisperers, etc., the majority of network television viewing includes a goodly number of dead bodies.  But all of that is really a part of our practice of Adenying death@ as a culture.  We have pushed death to the margins, pretending for the most part that it simply doesn=t exist.  Nevertheless, even while all the advances in medical science and technology have greatly delayed death, it is still inevitable for all of us.

 

Not only is death inevitable for all of us, so are the questions of our children regarding death.  As much as we try to shelter them, they still encounter it.  Like the four-year-old boy who ran up to his father on the beach and grabbed his hand, leading him to the shore where a seagull lay dead in the sand.  ADaddy, what happened to him?@ the son asked.  AHe died and went to Heaven,@ the Dad replied.  The boy thought a moment and then said, ADid God throw him back down?@

Or the three year old who asked her Episcopal priest mother, AWhen we die, will God make us real?@ after two of their close neighbors had died.

 

Author and retired editor Ralph Milton is working on a book called AThe Spirituality of Grandparenting.@  He contends that grandparents are often the ones who teach their grandchildren about death, and about life after death.  (And he doesn=t mean by dying.)  Rather, it is  we grandparents who are most often asked AAre you going to die?@ by our grandchildren.  The question for us is, what will we do when asked that question, or the other toughie, AWhat happens when you die?@  If we do the avoidance thing C a skill most of us grandparents have almost perfected C and change the subject then our grandchildren will get the message that death is a terrible, fearful thing you don=t talk about.  Especially you don=t talk about life after death.  But we are the ones who will teach the growing generation how to die.  And we will teach them.  We will teach by our fear, by our silence C or we will teach by our clear-eyed and faith-filled confidence in a loving and caring God who has something wonderful planned for us when we die.

 

So it is important for us to think about death from time to time.  Not in a morbid, worried, frightened way, but in a reflective, curious, God-seeking way.  That is what the apostle Paul is doing with the Corinthian Christians.  Paul is challenging some of their thinking about death.  Obviously he had heard that some of them were denying the resurrection of the dead.  That really should not surprise us.  In the early days of the church, Christians had come from one of two backgrounds C Judaism or Greek culture.  Some Jewish people, most notably the Sadducees, denied any thought of life after death.  Many Greeks, Plato for instance, believed in the immortality of the soul.  They did not believe in the immortality of the body.  For Greeks, the soul only became immortal when the evil flesh of the body was destroyed and the soul released from its earthly prison.

 

Paul did not believe in the immortality of the body or of the soul.  But, neither did Paul believe that this existence on earth was all we would have.  Paul did believe in the resurrection.  And this is how he understood resurrection.  Paul thought when you die, nothing lives on.  Your body, your soul, your spirit, your heart, your mind, everything that ever was, is dead.  Completely dead.  100% dead.  Gone.  But C and here is the gospel, the good news, as Paul understood it C God will raise the dead!  Just as God raised Jesus!  When God does this, then we will have new bodies (and presumably new souls and spirits and whatever else we need).  Then we will be immortal.

 

The issue, really, is a matter of trust.  Paul sees the doctrine of an immortal soul as a dilution of radical trust in God.  If we embrace such thinking, we may need God to guide our immortal souls to heaven, but we never really cease to be.  We always maintain that measure of dignity, of identity, of control.  No!  Paul says.  We die!  And if we die, we must trust God to raise us from the nothingness of death.  Which is why the resurrection of Jesus is critical, as an indication that God can and will do that for those God loves.  And why Jesus= message of radical love and forgiveness from God is so important C so that we understand that God loves us and therefore can trust that we will be part of that general resurrection some time in the future.

 

Now, you may or may not agree with the apostle Paul.  Most modern Christians don=t.  In truth most of us actually function with a belief more like that of an immortal soul than of a radical Pauline belief in the resurrection of the body.  One of the hottest topics among theologians and biblical scholars continues to be the resurrection.  They debate what really happened; what it means; does it have any meaning if it did not literally happen.  None of which should disturb us for the Bible itself manifests a diversity of understandings.  Even, at times, within the same document.  For example, in John=s gospel Thomas is invited to touch the body of the risen Jesus, but just a few verses before that Mary is told, when she encounters the risen Jesus outside the tomb not to touch him for he has not yet ascended to his father.  All four gospels have variations and different emphases and Paul presents another view.   Instead of viewing these contrasting viewpoints as reasons for invalidating their witness I believe they are stronger evidence for the truth.  After all, the reality they are trying to convey is outside the realm of physical experience and in the realm of spiritual and relational experience.  In the final analysis, we walk by faith in God who raised Jesus from the dead.  This God leads the disciples into a radical conversion where they experienced forgiveness, courage, power, and a new relationship of love and loyalty to Jesus whom they previously had denied.  This witness brings us back, as the apostle Paul=s arguments did, to the issue of radical trust in God. And that is the most important lesson we can teach our grandchildren about how to die.  By first teaching them how to live trusting God.  For that is how we truly live with the crushing knowledge of our human mortality.

 

In closing, let me offer a few suggestions of what living with radical trust in God might look like.  First, it includes Aliving each day as if it is our last.@  That is, living by remembering how fragile and precious is this gift of life.  Remembering how suddenly death can come upon us ought not paralyze us, but rather instill a greater sense of urgency to live fully, not leaving any significant relationship unresolved, or anything important to us left for a later time.  Along with that we can Awatch and pray.@  That is, we can be sure to pay attention to the people around us, to our work and play, to nature, to food, to our own internal processes, to the gifts of God=s grace.  If life is short, then we do not want to fritter it away without attending to it.   Whatever life we finally have in God, in this world, this is all we have. Finally, remembering the grace we have received from the hands of God, let us strive to live graciously, learning to give up our judgmentalism, looking with appreciation and sympathy at other people, understanding that all of us are vulnerable and afraid of death, we are more alike than unlike.