Wise Christians Clip Obituaries (3/3)

DEATH CAN BE A COMFORTER

Death can be a consoling thought for those who face particularly difficult losses or trials. The lost loved one that we miss so much is waiting for us on the other side of time. Our broken-down body will not greet us in heaven. Instead, we will rejoice to meet a “new and improved” version without the aches and pains and propensity to sin.

And even more important, death ushers us face to face into the presence of the one our heart cries out for, the one, true God, and this is our greatest consolation. Any sincere Christian experiences at least a certain degree of loneliness, for we long for a more intimate walk with our God — a walk that will be realized beyond our dreams once we pass the threshold of eternity.

It is normal and healthy to experience the pain of death — Jesus, after all, cried at the death of Lazarus — but death can also bring hope, not for what it is, but for what God promises us on the other side. The Christian life does not make complete sense without the consoling thought of eternal life. Paul himself said we should be pitied above all if the Christian faith is only for this temporal world (1 Cor. 15:19).

Because of Christ, because of the Resurrection, because of the goodness and mercy of God, death, our enemy, can be a consoling thought. There will be an end to our struggle for righteousness; a limit has been placed on our pain; our loneliness will not go on forever. Another world is coming.

KEEPING DEATH ALIVE

On Wednesdays I occasionally attend a Communion service at Falls Church Episcopal Church, which dates back to the eighteenth century. As is not uncommon with older churches, the building is surrounded by a graveyard. Every Wednesday I must walk through the grave markers on my way in, and past them on my way out.

That short walk does almost as much for me as the service. I am reminded as I face the second half of the week that one day, my body, my bones, will be lying in the ground. My work on earth will be done. What will matter then? What should matter now in light of then?

I am fond of old graveyards – not out of morbid preoccupation, but because they inspire me as few other things can. I want to use death the way Thomas a Kempis used death: “Happy is he that always hath the hour of his death before his eyes, and daily prepareth himself to die …. When it is morning, think thou mayest die before night; and when evening comes, dare not to promise thyself the next morning. Be thou therefore always in a readiness, and so lead thy life that death may never take thee unprepared.”

Another way that I keep death alive is by living in the communion of saints. I will post a picture or a quotation here or there of someone whose faith and life has encouraged me, as a reminder that work has an end. If the world can get by without a Dietrich Bonhoeffer or a Blaise Pascal, it can get by without me, and one day it will. I have a limited time to use that may be much shorter than I realize — neither Bonhoeffer nor Pascal made it into his forties.

When a contemporary saint dies, I live with their death for weeks. The passings of both Regent College professor Klaus Bockmuechl and New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce, just to name two relatively recent examples, gave me great pause and live with me today. I admire them for what they have done, and I thank the God who conquered their rebellion and blessed them with the call to become his sons and servants. Wise shoppers clip coupons. Wise Christians clip obituaries.

But the supreme way for a Christian to keep the thought of death alive is to remember the crucifixion of our Lord. Every time we take Communion we should do so with the awareness that just as Christ’s work on earth had a beginning and an end (as he ministered in a human body), so the mission he has given us has a beginning and an end. “Death is the destiny of every man,” said the writer of Ecclesiastes, “the living should take this to heart” (7:2, NIV).

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