LIVING and DYING

Memorial Service for William Joseph Day

R. Charles Grant, Pastor

Bon Air Presbyterian Church - Richmond, Virginia

November 6, 2007

Texts:  Ecclesiastes 3   Romans 8

            The English poet G K Chesterton wrote, "Death seems so final".  In this hour of our sorrow, there is no denying our sense of the finality of death.  We mourn the loss of a beloved husband, father, grandfather, friend.  And our loss reminds us our own finitude as well.  So while we may live with hope for God’s good and ultimate victory over death, at the time of death, we come face to face with our loss, our grief, and our own anxieties.  Death seems SO FINAL.

            The scriptures remind us that dying is part of living.  Death is not an exception, but the norm.  Biblical faith recognizes that living and dying is what all of God’s creatures do.  Dying is part of living.  That we WILL die is not open to question.  What is open to question is when and how we die.

            Dying is part of living, but that doesn’t mean we don’t fear death.  Woody Allen said, “I don’t fear death.  I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”  Dying is the most universal of human customs.  And wanting to not talk about dying, wanting to not even think about dying, is almost as universal as well.  We are sad when a loved one dies. We are afraid when we think about our dying.

            Dying leads us into unknown territory. Fearing death is a natural, normal human response. It is even healthy to be afraid of dying – our fear leads us away from dangerous situations.  It is normal to fear death.

            Although dying is part of living, dying remains life’s greatest mystery.  We learn from experience, but we experience our own dying but once.  It is in our dying that our living takes on meaning. Samuel Johnson said something like, “Nothing focuses the mind like knowing your own death is imminent.”  It has also been said there are no atheists on the battlefield. I have known few atheists in the hospital room, and my offer to pray at the bedside has almost never been refused.  Church historian Martin Marty, who lost his wife of many years to cancer, has written, “Death, the definer, gives meaning to life and history.  It is an instrument that helps provide meaning for daily existence.” (LP7:3:30)

            It is in dying that we glimpse the humanity of God, who enters human life and human suffering, living and suffering with us.  And it is in dying that we grasp the divine destiny of humankind created in the likeness and image of God.  So it should come as no surprise that the segment of Jesus’ life which receives the greatest attention in the gospels is the story of his dying.  For despite our desperate fears about dying, we have a fascination with death and dying. We yearn to understand it. And as with Jesus’ life, when we grasp the DYING part, the LIVING part becomes a whole lot clearer and easier.  As the recently deceased writer Madeleine L’Engle wrote, “I rebel against death, yet I know that it is how I RESPOND to death’s inevitability that is going to make me less or more fully alive.” (The summer of the Great-Grandmother, LP Ibid)

            In those familiar words from Ecclesiastes we read that “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:  a time to be born, and a time to die…”  Dying IS part of living. Dying comes to us with every breath we take.  As the seasons of our lives come and go, so also the seasons of creation come and go.  All of creation is in flux.  What remains, all that remains the same, is the love and grace of God.  As Ecclesiastes concludes after surveying all of the changes, turmoils, and triumphs of life, whatever humankind does comes and goes, but the word of God endures forever.

            Chapter 8 of Paul’s letter to the Romans is the summation of the Christian’s hope for living and dying:  “I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Not even the shadow of death can fall between God and us.  When we are afraid, God is with us.  When we have our doubts, God is with us.  When we give up in despair, God is with us.  When we are dying, God is with us.  Even when we are dead, God is with us.  For nothing, nothing at all, can come between us and the love of God we know in Jesus Christ our Lord.

            This is the testimony of our faith.  This is the hope we have in God through Jesus Christ.  This is the power and strength for the living of these days.  That in life and in death, in our living and in our dying, the God we know in Jesus Christ is with us every step of the way.  This is the word of the Lord AMEN.