Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69
Saundra and I have been conducting a fairly large number of funerals over the last few years, and attending more. A while back at a funeral, I met a woman – I’ll call her “Mary” (not her real name) - who was hurting. A relative of Mary’s had died and she was grieving. She was deeply upset. I introduced myself to her and she began to speak. She talked of her relative’s goodness, his kindness, his wonderful kindness. She talked about how he was gone, taken away, gone, gone, gone. She was talking as though the world had ended. And, in her perception, the world HAD ended. For you see, she was not a Christian believer. Instead, she was a person who thought she was a Christian, a person who believed in a vague God, but her belief in God had never made it from the top of her forehead to the depths of her heart, and she had no idea what the role of Jesus Christ was. And so Mary talked on and on about the man that had died, and every couple of minutes, her eyes would cloud up again in tears and she would sob.
And that was good that she talked and she sobbed. For she was imitating Christ Himself, who walked up to the tomb of His friend Lazarus and wept terribly even though Jesus knew that in just a couple of minutes He was going to bring Lazarus back from the dead, to raise him back up alive, and to restore him to health. Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus and Jesus wept!
Jesus wept because He knew that death was not in the original plan, that death entered the world through Satan and the apple and through the decisions that our ancestors made, through Adam and Eve. Death was not supposed to happen, but we let death into our world and it has tormented us ever since. The fear of Death was what was tormenting Mary at the funeral.
As we grow older, we often run into people like Mary. As we grow older, our friends and relatives also become older, and we find ourselves meeting our old friends more and more often at the funeral home instead of at the wedding receptions. In fact, you can tell what phase of life someone is in by where they meet their friends. When we are young, we meet our friends at school, then at football games, then wedding receptions, then class reunions, and finally we meet at the funeral homes. In St. Marys, my home town, Paul Ingram’s Funeral Home is the most popular place in town on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
Although death strikes the young, we do not really recognize death until someone very close to us dies. Death comes walking into most of our lives when our grandparents reach their 70’s and 80’s, but even that is somewhat distant. It really comes home to us when we reach our 50’s, because that is when our parents usually die. And for men, the real test comes when our fathers die, and for women, it is when our mothers die, for that is when we realize that we also are mortal and we now bear the burden of being the oldest one living. But for how much longer?
And there are things about death that we don’t generally realize. As the preacher in the movie “Pollyanna” says, “Death comes suddenly”. No matter whether or not you saw your friend walking around yesterday and got the call that he died in a car wreck this morning, or whether you have watched your mother slowly decline for the last twenty years, sliding downhill into the fog of Alzheimer’s, even if the nursing home called you three days ago, Death arrives suddenly, with a knock at the door and the swing of a sickle as Death harvests another soul. One minute, she is alive – the next minute she is dead. Tik-Tock. The clock’s pendulum has swung and on one tick our friend is alive and by the tock he is gone.
And when we cross that line, we cross it alone. There are no friends who will cross that line with you, there are no loved ones who will walk with you across that one-way line, there are no neighbors who will step over the line into the unknown country that is death just to be a companion for you. We die alone, with no human companions to go with us. Even if we die simultaneously with other people in a bomb blast, we step over the line by ourselves, alone, and now dead.
And deep down in our souls, we know that this is the way it is. Deep down in our souls, we know that one day we too shall close our eyes for the last time. Alone. Deep down, we know that we will die and it frightens us mortals terribly. And so we have developed all sorts of ways to avoid the cold truth of the grave.
We talk about our friend “passing”. We read every article we can find on how the scientists will extend our lives. We pay careful attention to the latest research about new treatments for cancer, for Alzheimer’s, for heart attacks. The Internet is filled with articles which tells us how to “cleanse toxins” from our bodies, articles about which foods are bad for us, and which are the new “superfoods” which will add decades to our lives. We listen intently to stories of the latest person who claims to have died and gone to Heaven, hoping that her story tells of a pleasant place without pain. And we complain about doctors and hospitals who ought to be perfect, never making a mistake, always discovering your ailment on the first visit simply by looking at you, prescribing the miracle drug that will keep away Death and his sickle for another fifty years. And we wonder why those who pay the bills won’t cover all the costs for free, even for those people in their nineties, because deep down, we are frightened about the day when we are lying in the hospital room and the doctor says, “We could give you another 6 weeks, but it will cost more than your family home.”
You see, our fear of death is what drives most of human existence. It is the fear of death that makes us want good health insurance, the fear of death that makes us want perfectly safe cars, the fear of death that makes us diet and eat healthy foods – or the fear of starving to death that makes us eat too much. It is the fear of death that leads us to drink and do drugs and protect ourselves with violence. It is the fear of death that leads us to want our children to take care of us, the fear of death that makes us work hard so there will always be food and a warm home over our heads. It is the fear of death that drives our fear of immigrants, our fear of ISIS, our fear of tropical diseases, our fear of eating in dirty restaurants, our fear of drunk drivers, our fear of driving after dark, our fear of no phone service.
And to think that Death – the hooded man with the sickle that is swung at all people - was conquered by Jesus Christ almost two thousand years ago. Those people who have the Holy Spirit shall always live. As Jesus said, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing”.
What is the worst thing that can happen to you? In any situation, there are really only two outcomes – you die and are with the Lord Jesus Christ – or you live and can praise Him to the people around you. It has been said that a brave man dies only one death, but a coward dies a thousand deaths.
Most of us live a coward’s faith. We proclaim our faith in Jesus Christ, that He died and rose again and therefore we shall live again, but we act like we don’t really believe this, for we worry about death every day, and we manage our lives to avoid death, and we don’t tell people every day that Jesus has conquered death. And so we suffer. We suffer and worry so much more than we need to, for we do not need to suffer or worry at all. Christ already did that – we don’t have to.
Over three hundred years ago, there lived two mathematicians who were also philosophers and theologians, Rene and Blaise. Rene thought about God in the abstract, he doubted everything except what he could know clearly and with certainty. And the only thing he felt he could be sure of was that he was thinking, and if he was thinking, then he must exist, and since he had no idea how he created himself, there must be a Creator outside himself, and thus Rene Descartes decided that God existed. But to Rene, God always remained an abstract, almost mathematical idea, existing, yet not walking beside him. And Rene lived to a good old age, knowing that God existed, but Rene did not involve himself much in life, but he did create the Cartesian coordinates that drove so many people crazy in the second year of algebra, and being know in philosophy for “I think, therefore I am”. But he was distant to the people around him.
Blaise, on the other hand, while trying to prove many things, accepted that we live in a real world and with faith took the world around him to be real and to exist. And Blaise also decided that God existed, but this was not because he had logically proven beyond all doubt that God exists, but because he said that the bulk of the evidence shows that God exists and in the slight case that God does not exist, it doesn’t really matter, but if God exists then choosing to follow Christ is the most important decision that you can make, so Blaise Pascal choose to be a Christian, living his life in a real, concrete fashion with God walking beside him every hour of every day, and therefore contemporaries tell us that Blaise was a much more pleasant man to be around, a much happier man of both reason and faith, and despite having chronic illness was not concerned as his illness grew more terrible and he died in his thirties. Blaise took the abstract God of Rene and made God real in his daily life, for Blaise lived in the world and his book of “Reflections” (“Pensees“) is studied by philosophers even today and Pascal’s Triangle is studied by all students of mathematical statistics.
Is God an abstract idea, or do we put flesh on God, with Jesus Christ guiding our every action of the day? Nothing makes more of a difference in our life and the happiness of our life than how we treat this one question, except for the question that comes before it: Does God exist? This is what our study on Sunday evenings is about – Living the Christian Life as Blaise Pascal would live it, and moving from a life lived as Rene Descartes lived his life. Our study will focus upon the unconscious things we do, the things we avoid, and the entire change of mind that a Christian should make when we understand that God is there, not in the abstract, but is actually standing beside us in the aisle, looking at us and wondering why we ignore God every day so often.
And so many Christians today live as Rene Descartes did, accepting the existence of God Who is floating around somewhere, but not realizing that a real God means that we must turn around our entire life to respond to the God who is there, and to recognize the deep changes in our way of living – and in our outlook on our entire life – that this change brings – as Blaise Pascal realized as he realized that God is there beside you at this moment. A God who is there means nothing is the same. Yet most Christians today still fear death, still worry about the length of their life, and worry about all those things that the fear of the hooded man with the sickle brings.
And if this is what we Christians do, knowing that Christ has destroyed Death for us and that we shall live forever after a brief transition…what must life be like for our neighbors and relatives and friends who do not know the Living God, the Son of God who rose from the dead and promised that we shall do the same? Is it any wonder that they suffer terribly deep down in their souls, anxious and depressed at the same time, fearful of all things, worried about life, worried about love, worried about their very existence?
And so, when you meet a friend who is suffering in his or her soul, you don't need to do a deep psychological analysis. Simply look at them and think of the fear of death in their lives and what that is driving them to do. For it is this fear that is slowly destroying them, making every minute alone an agony for them as their minds drift back to the questions in their lives: What if? What if?
A person who suffers always is asking “What if?”
· What if I don’t have the money – and the devil answers: Everything will fall apart and you will die.
· What if my spouse leaves me – and the devil answers: Then you will be alone for the rest of this life and you will die alone.
· What if my child dies – and the devil answers: Yes, you will be alone and you will die alone.
· What if my house burns – and the devil answer: You will freeze to death this winter trying to sleep under an overpass and you will die.
No matter what the question is, the devil works on that deep fear and tells you that in the end, you will die, and you will die alone.
And so your friends and neighbors and family suffer because they are afraid of death and a lonely death and they do not know anything different because no one has explained Jesus to them, no one has explained God’s overpowering love to them, because you have not taken the time to speak with them.
And so they try their very best to get by, living their lives of fear.
Some have learned to drink until they become drunk because when they drink they can’t think so clearly about the death in their future. Some have learned to drink because just for a little while they feel alive as the alcohol tickles a part of their brain that gives them a lift, a joy, a high.
Some use other drugs or exercise madly for the same reasons. When you are lifted up by the drugs or the exercise, there is a part of the brain which fires faster than normal, and you feel like you did when you were young and running with your pet dog home from the last day of school in the spring sunshine, awake and joyful and ALIVE! But that feeling is soon gone.
And others do much the same with sex and with other people. They date and spend the night together because it makes them feel alive and for a little while, the shadow of death has left them, and they can walk together with someone and not be lonely, but soon the feeling of being alive is gone again. Until the next time. But after enough next times, the effect is gone.
And still others work for money, because with the money comes the chance to buy things, and shopping and a new phone and a new car and new songs from Itunes and those new experiences wake us up from our slow waltz with death and give us, just for a minute or an hour, an object to tango with, a chance to not care that we are alone and we will die, because for that minute or hour we are alive.
And then, when the car is parked, when the date has gone home, when the phone is charging, when the pillow hits the head and we close our eyes, we remember that there is something in our life which will kill us and we begin to suffer and shake and weep as we realize that one day very soon, in just a few years or decades – or maybe tomorrow – we will die and we will die alone.
And so, my Christian friends, if you now understand what your friends and neighbors and family members are going through in their Christ-less world, if you feel their suffering because it is too close to what you feel even if you know Jesus will be waiting there for you on the other side of that line, if your heart is totally broken with sadness for what your friends and neighbors and family members are feeling – then you now know what the answer is for your loved ones, for your acquaintances, for the strangers that you meet.
You must speak to them. You must speak to them and tell them the truth about Jesus Christ and God.
There is only one thing which will rescue a soul from the fear of death. There is only one story which will answer the question of what happens when we die. There is only one bit of good news in this whole, sad, existence.
That news is the good news which is and was brought by Jesus Christ.
That news is that the man Jesus Christ claimed to be God Himself, coming down to earth to tell us of His love, telling us that death was not in the original plan, and that far from this life being God’s punishment for us, that Jesus was to pay the price for all the evil things we’ve done wrong, all the mistakes that we’ve made, and all the people that we’ve hurt. Jesus would die as a sacrifice, a fine, a penalty which would pay all the fines, penalties, and sacrifices once and for all. And so Jesus voluntarily stayed on the cross until he died.
And then, as proof that Jesus was exactly who He said He was, Jesus came back to life. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was seen by over 500 people, and a over a half-dozen of them wrote down what they had seen and this is what we call the New Testament today, a collection of writings by those authors, those eyewitnesses, those men who bravely died themselves proclaiming that Jesus was God because they were so certain that what they wrote about was true!
And they repeatedly wrote that Jesus promised eternal life to those who would follow Him, who would accept Him as their leader, who would choose to be taught by His teachings, and imitate Him in His life.
The Apostle John recorded the words of Jesus: 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Do you feed on Christ? Do you drink in His every word, take every crumb of Him that falls from the Gospels, thank Him for his sacrifice that He made for you every time you take Holy Communion?
And so, my friends, when you sit beside a friend, a neighbor, a family member, a stranger, and they are suffering, there are certain things that you should do.
· First, ask them what is wrong and let them speak without interruption until they run down – five minutes, ten minutes, whatever.
· Next, agree with them that their event was terrible, that their fears are scary, that things look bleak. “Wow, losing your job must be frightening.”
· Third, point out that when you are frightened or scared, or anxious, or depressed, you simply remember three words: “Remember God’s Love.” “Remember God’s Love.”
· Explain the Gospel if you need to. Explain that Jesus was God, that Jesus choose to die on the cross, and that His resurrection was witnessed by over 500 people to proves that He was God. Tell your friend what God and Christ have done for you.
· And pray with that person right then and there. Pray for Jesus to take away their fears, pray for them to know the love of Christ, pray for God to show God’s presence to them. And if appropriate, help your friend pray the Sinner’s prayer – the exact words aren’t critical, but it is a prayer you might want to join me in at this time. It is in your bulletin. In this prayer, we apologize, ask for forgiveness, and ask for the Holy Spirit.
Lord God,
I have done many things wrong in my life and generally made a mess of things. Now I want to make things right with You. Please forgive me for the things I’ve done that were wrong. Please send your Holy Spirit into my heart to guide me to follow your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer and have never been baptized, baptism is the next step. Check in with me or your local pastor to discuss baptism.
The greatest thing about following Christ is that certainty that Jesus is who He said He was and has the power to make His promises come true, particularly the promise that all who follow Him will have eternal life and therefore we have nothing to fear, not even Death.
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