Life and Death

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; 

for this is the end of everyone, and the living will lay it to heart. (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

Funerals invite us to reflect on the meaning of life and death. They do so in different ways, depending on, e.g., whether the death was tragic or brought relief from suffering. Some funerals give us little reason to complain.

Abraham breathed his last and died in good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

And Job died, an old man and full of days.

Some people, struck down by a stroke, live for a few more years beyond the time we might have allotted to them, years in which they are no longer truly "with us". What might be the meaning of such extra years?

Those who are no longer able to communicate with us, who seem to be already "dead to the world", cannot tell us what is going on for them. Do those who seem to be inattentive to the present moment, showing us no sign of recognition, live in memory and hope? Are they in the past and the future more than the present? We do not know but it would be hasty to conclude that there is no attentiveness at all based on the observation that they do not attend to us or that there is no communication at all based on the observation that they do not communicate with us.

What might be the meaning of such extra years to God? Why does he continue to give breath, functioning lungs and a beating heart to someone even though we, who sit at their bedside, no longer get anything much out of this life and cannot be confident that the sick person does?

Is it maybe a sign that human life is precious in God’s sight? He does not discard us, once we are no longer useful to him.(In truth, God does not need our words and actions, even if he makes gracious use of them.)

Sustaining the life of someone who no longer speaks, no longer accomplishes anything, seems wasteful.

And yet we see such "wastefulness" everywhere in creation and take it as a sign of God’s lavish generosity. His giving is not circumscribed by our ideas of what we want and need.

What might such years of silence mean to us who are looking in from the outside? They may remind us of our limits, our helplessness; we feel useless, wondering whether our presence with someone who shows no sign of recognition makes any difference. We may be challenged to show love even when there is no hope of getting anything back for ourselves and not even a sign that the love is appreciated. The bedside can become a place of desolation and with it a place to practice selflessness.

For those of us who live a much fuller life - and by and large enjoy it - surely it is also a safeguard against taking for granted what is ours only by gift and so a stimulus for gratitude. To paraphrase the Selkirk grace:

Some have life but no appetite for it.

Some still hungry for life die.

We have life and appetite for it,

so let us praise God on high.

We have reason to praise God for the breath he gives us every day, for zest for life, for being able to relate to others. But as Christians we have reason to praise God also when our mortal life ebbs away because our life in Christ does not, and when our human relationships fade because God's relationship with us does not.

I am convinced that neither death, nor life … 

will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Life is a Fatal Disease

The title is nicked from Life is a fatal disease: collected poems 1962-1995 by Paula Gunn Allen. 

The idea is much older. Manilius wrote in his Astronomicon IV.16

nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet 

“We are born but to die (lit, die in being born), and our end hangs on to our beginning.” An early English gravestone paraphrased Manilius perfectly: 

As soon, as wee to bee, begunne; we did beginne, to be undone.”[1]

To live is to die. For us to live is to enter the realm of mortality. Like candles; when alive –giving light– they burn down. It is appropriate that Candlemas, the day on which traditionally all the Church's candles for the year were blessed, is celebrated on the Feast Day of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. 

The Gospel reading on this Feast Day,  Luke 2:22-40, hints at the truths we should acknowledge for a good life and a good death:

• we are mortal but are given access to the realm of immortality (the purification motif)
• the mortal must serve the immortal (5x “according to the law” or similar; first-born; cf. Psalm 24:1)
• the mortal is in the hands of the immortal (Simeon: no fear of death; peace)
• the mortal is redeemed in Jesus who brought immortality to light (2 Timothy 1:10)

Simeon, the one who trusts God for his commandments (“righteous and devout”) is the one who trusts God also for his promises (“looking forward”), the one rooted in the revelation is oriented towards God’s work of the future). Simeon can face death in peace because he has seen the conqueror of death.

Life is a fatal disease but in Christ death has been swallowed up in victory because the Immortal took on mortality: "Since the children share flesh and blood, Jesus himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death."  (Hebrews 2:14-15). Cf. Living Corpses.

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[1] This version from George Wither’s Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (1635, see here).