Two Sermons about death

24th April 2005, Parish Communion

Jn 14:1-14,  Acts 7:55-60,  1 Peter 2:2-10

 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas said to him “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me. If  you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Jn 14:1-7

 

Introduction

If the Scripture feeds us then our gospel passage today is like a very rich fruit cake; packed with slow-release nutrients, which will give energy when digested, but not to be swallowed whole or gobbled down. You can’t take too much at once; you need to savour it bite by bite. This passage is worth memorising and thinking about a little at a time. I am only going to deal with the first seven verses, looking at their message about dying and their message about living.

 

The message about dying

This passage is often read at funerals, and it is part of the dialogue at the Last Supper. Jesus has predicted his betrayal, Judas has departed and then Jesus speaks of Peter’s denial. The words of comfort and hope are spoken into a context of impending separation, danger, and death. Yet Jesus says - don’t let your hearts be troubled. How can you not be troubled at the time of death? isn’t it a healthy, human reaction? There will always be sadness attached to loss; Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus. Yet our approach to death is very different if we are able to trust God. Pope John Paul has given us a recent example of a good death, but then he was old and prepared. Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking about the possibility of a more violent death in South Africa said death is not the worst thing which can befall a Christian.

We base our trust on an overall framework in which the safest place we can ever be is in God’s hands. Jesus did not explain to the disciples what it would be like, but that he was going to the Father and that when their turn came, he would be with them. We can speculate about the many rooms in the Father’s house; does it mean four-star for the real favourites? does it mean stages we move through, a kind of purgatory? does it allude to people from other faiths? does it mean there will always be room, and the ‘No Vacancies’ sign never comes out? Jesus does not unpack the detail.

When I was five my family left Glasgow to go to India. I don’t remember any apprehension because I knew my father had already gone, three months ahead of us, and as a child that was sufficient. I did not need to know details. The disciples are offered a similar model. We don’t know, but we can relax because there is someone who does. ‘Trust in God, trust also in me.’

But what if you are a five-star worrier? A Chinese proverb says ‘you can’t stop the birds of misfortune flying over your head but you can stop them making nests in your hair’. When Jesus said “do not let your hearts be troubled”, he was suggesting we do have some control over our emotions. (cognitive behaviour therapy?) We can cultivate a habit of trusting ourselves to God. Stephen the first Christian martyr, whose death was recorded in our Acts reading, died able to place himself in God’s hands. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Those words echo the words of Christ on the cross ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit’.

I used to do yoga with some nuns, and at the end there would be a nice relaxing bit when we lay on the floor of the chapel which had under-floor heating. Sister Valeria would say ‘surrender yourself to God, as each night you surrender yourself in sleep and one day you will surrender yourself in death’. As I was only 20 I was very surprised the first time, but I grew to value the habit. The tsunami reminded us how death can take us at any time; let’s choose to trust God over it.

 

Enough about death, what about

The message about living

Developing a habit of trust in God stands us in good stead for living as well as dying. At an infant baptism we say to parents and godparents that their duty is to bring up the children to learn to live by trust in God. We will have to face death at some time, but we know when we leave church, and every day this week we have to face our life, our work, our homes, our families, the election, decisions on what to eat, wear or spend. Sometimes death can seem easier than going on. Jesus said ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’, and most of those who heard him had years to pass on earth after that. How did they live?

I like the idea of the way because it suggests journey and movement onwards. Some early Christians were known as ‘followers of the Way’.  Surely its significance is that we are asked to commit to Christ as a person rather than Christianity as a moral code, or a set of doctrines or ethics.  If we are seeking a way, then it is as if Jesus says he will take us, rather than give us a map.

What can it mean for Jesus to be the truth? the one who truly reveals the Father perhaps. Truth is usually a property attributed to statements, not a person. Yet at this election time, as we look for a leader whom we can trust, truth is very important. We want someone who is consistent and shows integrity of behaviour, rhetoric and understanding.

What does it mean for Jesus to be the life? perhaps we come closest to understanding this when we love deeply. The person we love, our parent, our friend, our partner, our child, gives us energy, gives us meaning, lights up the world. In faith, it is in Christ that we find our life, a life which continues beyond our physical death. Jesus said he came that we might have life in all its fulness; abundant, rich, generous life.

 

Conclusion

 I always notice that on this occasion it is Thomas who says he doesn’t understand at all, and asks Jesus for clarification. After Easter Thomas, feels left out of the resurrection, and doubts, and needs a special encounter with the Lord to believe. There are times in life when I feel very warm to the disciples who were slow and struggled. It’s all right to make small steps of faith. To trust God and to know Jesus as our way, truth and life is the task of our lives.

Evensong, 24th April 2005

Zech 4: 1-10                The fifth Vision – Zerubabbel and the temple

Rev 21: 1-14                A new heaven and a new earth

 

Thinking about our own death and resurrection.

 

1.      I want to talk this evening about our hopes and fears of death, and our hopes and fears of resurrection.

2.      It is a good place for us to talk and think about these last things, and for four reasons in particular.

a.       Firstly, innumerable residents of Chesterton have been commended to God as their maker and redeemer in this building, and by priests of this parish, over the centuries.

b.      Secondly, Our New Testament reading this evening is the magnificent vision of the New Jerusalem, and the end of all things, from the book of the Revelation of St John the Divine.

c.       Thirdly, We meet beneath an ancient fresco doom painting – In fact if you look closely you can see the Heavenly Jerusalem, looking like a medieval city, in the top left hand corner. Our ancestors came to this place to remember their own death and resurrection; to express and build up their hopes of being part of the Heavenly City on the left, and not part of the eternal darkness on the right.

d.      and Fourthly, It happens that I am at the moment in a season of funerals. Tomorrow we shall complete the funeral for Gladys Tobin, and on Tuesday we shall say goodbye to Jean Clemoes, both of the long time members of our congregations at St Andrew's, and both very much missed by Church, Family and Friends.

3.      The words from the book of Revelation which ... read this evening are often read at funerals.  They depict a vision of a new world beyond death, a world in which the separation between God and Human beings has come to and end.    
    "See, the home of God is among mortals.
    He will dwell with them;
    they will be his peoples,
    and God himself will be with them;

4.      It is a vision in which incomplete, the suffering and failure of our lives has come to an end. he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
    Death will be no more;
    mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
    for the first things have passed away.

5.      We all of know that we shall die. We all of us have people close to us who have died. It is a reality, the one solid and unquestionable fact of our existence. How do we dare to affirm and have faith that our death is not eternal, and that God will raise us up?

6.      There is an old lie, as old as Karl Marx, and I suspect much older, possibly as old as Epicurus, that those who believe in the resurrection of the dead do so from cowardice and envy. Unsatisfied with the things of this world, and fearful of the dark, the accusation goes, many ignorant people like us turn away from the hope of making anything worthwhile of this world, and waste their lives in fruitless imaginings about the next.

7.      Our faith in the future has nothing to do with a dissatisfaction with the present life. We are Christians. We think of this earth as a gift from God, and it is good, and we think of our lives as a gift from God. Life is good. We believe in life before death!

8.      Our faith has nothing to do with ourselves and our own liveliness or loveliness. It is possible that we have eternal longings, and intimations of immortality. But we know, well enough, that we do not have the power to stop death, and that we cannot bargain with God, who made us how we are.

9.      Our faith rests solely on the love of God. Somewhere, someone taught us, and somehow in our lives and our prayers we have found it to be true that God loves us. We measure that love in the death of Jesus Christ, and we feel it in the love of family and friends. In the face of the vastness and the apparent meaninglessess of space and time, we have found that our lives make sense if they are live on the understanding that God made us and loves us.

10.  If our lives make sense to us in this way, and we feel ourselves reaching out to understand God’s purposes, then this is how our deaths and bereavements can make sense to us also.

11.  We need to build our lives on the foundation of God’s love. We need to do this for this world. There is nothing else that is really worth living for, or that can really make sense of a life.  But we also need to do it in the hope of another world. Our loving is so incomplete, our knowledge of each other and of God falls so far short, that all our experience of love and of God cries out for the space and the time to bring to completion what is planted and started in us. It is what we have in us that is made of love that can last for eternity in the presence of God.

12.  Dying is hard to do. It is hard work, and increasingly it comes to us when we are tired and frail. We need to prepare for it, and we do this by the daily practice of relying on God, putting our faith in his love, and trying, day by day to convert the time and energy and  relationships that God has given us into love, the fundamental and eternal stuff of God’s creation.