Death the Advisor
Sermon by The Rev. Paul J. Carling
Acts 7: 55-60; John 14: 1-14
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life…”
It feels like I’ve been to a lot of funerals lately. In the last few weeks, three of our longest term parishioners died, and a half dozen more lost parents, a sibling, a niece or a close friend. For 10 days now, I’ve been going in and out of the city, tending to my 101 year old mom. Even though she’s pretty healthy and lives on her own, one morning a bit of her breakfast went down the wrong way, and before we knew it, she was unconscious in the emergency room, hooked up to a ventilator, and I was giving her the last rites.
As it turns out, today she’s on the slow road to recovery, but in the process, I’ve been thinking a lot about life and death. Sitting by her bedside in the ICU last Sunday as she struggled to breathe, I opened up today’s scripture lessons, and John’s gospel hit me right between the eyes. It is, of course, the most popular gospel reading for… yup, funerals. “Do not let your hearts be troubled… In my Father’s house, there are many dwelling places... so that where I am, you may be also.”
Funerals may be the time when we’re held most tightly in the grip of the essential paradox of Christian life – we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world, and we need to learn over and over that it is only through the doorway of death that we come to discover life. This paradox accounts for some strange behavior at Christian funerals. From the Book of Common Prayer the priest prays, “All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” And as God’s close-knit flock, even as we huddle together in our grief, even as we reach out blindly for a God who seems to have abandoned us, we stand and sing hymns like “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” or “Welcome happy morning.”
And as we shed our sacred tears, we dig deeply into the life of the one we’ve loved and look for the key, the signature note of their life. When we find it, we suddenly grasp the truth that though their body is gone, their soul cannot die, and we glimpse, however tenuously, the truth of their resurrection. Experiencing the unique qualities of our loved one, the ones so beautiful and powerful and alive, that they transcend death, we find ourselves incorporating some of those very same qualities into our own journey – we find that their death, and the amazing grace that was their life here on earth, breathes new life into us.
That’s why, at Christian funerals, instead of standing before a grave that’s about to be filled, we stand outside a tomb that’s been vacated. That’s why every death, whether of a loved one or of Jesus himself, becomes an advisor about how we are being called to live.
And that’s why we read from chapters 14 to 17 of John’s gospel in the final weeks of the Easter season. Set in Jerusalem after the Last Supper, scholars call this the “Farewell Discourse.” Dense with John’s theology, each passage yielding at least ten sermons, seminarians playfully describe tese chapters as the “Big Long Chat.” With so little time left, Jesus is giving his fearful disciples a crash course in how to “live the way;” how to flourish in a post – resurrection world. “Death” Jesus is saying, “ – in this case my death – is your greatest advisor about how you should live.”
That’s exactly what Jesus means when he says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Throughout the gospels, Jesus makes it clear that death and life exist side by side. We have to pass through the doorway of death in order to find life. And he doesn’t mean by dying at the end of a long life, but by dying every day – to sin, to unhealthy choices, to selfishness. “The one who wants to save his life will lose it,” Jesus says. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, reminds us that Jesus’ coming has “brought us out of death into life;” and the First Letter of John sums it up beautifully, “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.” Side by side, like competing products in a supermarket display – the choice is always between life or death.
Jesus’ life teaches us that, if we’re willing to choose life over death in each present moment, even though it often takes time, the Good Friday stench of death is inevitably transformed into the lily-sweet fragrance of Easter resurrection.
Of course, most of the time, we’re not even aware that we’re choosing. We spend the bulk of our time being numb, operating on auto pilot. That’s why it’s usually the prospect of our own mortality, kicked up by a loved one’s death, or a job lost, or a health crisis of our own that shocks us into considering different choices.
Death is an advisor, not just at the end of our physical lives, but in every little death we experience, what the poets call, les petites morts – the emptiness we all feel, the sense of being lost, the sense of failure, and the painful consequences when we respond by choosing death over life – whether it’s lashing out in anger, betraying a loved one, abusing our bodies with alcohol, or simply making our faith a matter of one hour every other week instead of a daily encounter with God.
Advisors, of course, are only as helpful as the quality of their advice. If we panic at the thought of our mortality, and use it as an excuse to go out and buy another expensive toy, or acquire a lover, or increase our work hours in a desperate effort to be even more successful… well, we all know the hangover we feel after those poor choices.
But we also know the relief that comes after we stumble, and then find the grace to return to our true selves – beloved children of God, forgiven, and strengthened for another set of healthier choices – when we invite God to break our habitual preoccupation with ourselves, to send us out into a larger mission, one that deepens our faith, one that immerses us in a loving community, one that helps us reach out to our neighbors.
As my experience with my mother reminded me this week, any one of us could die at any moment. That’s why I find God’s advice in the Book of Deuteronomy so helpful as a guide for how I should live every one of the moments that precede my funeral. “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses,” God says. “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”
