How Do We Make Sense of Death?

I "did" the funeral of a long time church member and friend yesterday. That's a deliberate shorthand. I've also said or heard said "performed", "led", "conducted", not sure if Miss Manners has a proper action term for the process of a Service of the Witness to the Resurrection. That's what a funeral service is called in my Book of Common Worship.

In a Christian funeral service, that is where the rubber meets the road. That is where the promises of the faith are depended upon. As a minister, I am standing on what might metaphorically be called a line. On one side of that is the promise of heaven and eternal life while on the other are the grieving friends and family of a good man.

But it is not a line. It's a fogbank. If the promises of Christ transcended our human natures, these services would be celebrations. Who, according to the order of things in the church, should not be absolutely delighted and praising Jesus at the time of death that their loved one has gone to the place without pain, suffering, illness, hospitals, chemotherapy, collapsed lungs, blood problems, kidney problems, cancer...and the list goes on and on?? We should be thrilled.

Being thrilled someday means very little on the day of tears and grief. The promise of eternal life being fulfilled can take the edge off, it can give hope for the future, but to dwell there in a funeral service is to discount the very grief and loss of those gathered to say good bye.

I don't live in heaven, I live on earth, and this is where I am going to be until it is my turn to die. This is where I have to come to terms with the fact that although my friend was a walking miracle for over a decade and a half, there came a time when he died.

One valuable lesson I have taken away from being a Police Chaplain is from their procedures of Death Notification. You don't say "passed away", "passed on", "with the Lord", or anything else that can give the human ear the ability to slide away from the truth. The person has died or the person has been killed. It is couched in the best way possible, with emotional support and outreach, but truth be told.

I've been told, and I've used this line, that death is neither good nor bad, it just is. No. Death is bad. It can be argued that death can end illness and suffering, so it isn't always bad. No. The illness and suffering can be worse, a higher measure of 'bad', and death can be a release, even a relief, but at best, it is a lesser 'bad'.

At this moment, we are on a continuum, where death is good relative to the pain it ends, but that doesn't mean its good.

There have been moments, among the deaths that I have had the privilege to be witness to and participate in, when I've seen nothing less than heaven leaking in. A person is at such peace, that person has somehow touched the presence of our Father in Heaven and they have the assurance that everything is going to be okay.

That doesn't mean, for me, that death is not a bad thing. What it does mean for me, as a pastor, as a believer, as one struggling to figure out how to live like Jesus wants me to live, what it means for me is that we are seeing God's power at work for a greater good to emerge from that bad time.

And it reminds me to look forward to the day when we will have the greater good without having to first experience the bad.

Prayer-It Really Must Be Complicated to Be Right...Right?

A nine year old girl took me up on the offer to close a meeting in prayer. Then she asked me what she should say. I have always preferred long, involved ritualistic phrases that circle around the point six or seven times and sound like they could be part of some kind of magical incantation.

I told her to say something like, "Lord, see us safely home. Amen."

I began our children's time in church with a deliberate, prolonged silence. I had half the congregation looking around with me when I glanced up in the air, when I looked to the doors to the right and left of the sanctuary, wondering what was going to happen. I had a couple gesture for me to get on with it. I couldn't see the kids faces because I was having too much fun watching the adults.

The punchline was about listening for Jesus when in prayer.

Tonight, we had a prayer service for Al, who died this past week. I think I mentioned him in a previous entry. Not sure what I said exactly, the Spirit was giving me utterance along that path. Had a little trouble finding the end when I go freeform like that.

I was kind of hoping for an inspired grand finale after those little vignettes but I got nothing. That kind of makes sense though. Prayer isn't something in need of a grand finale or a complex opening. Let me take the format of a good Christian Reformed Church sermon to wrap it up, three points and a question...

Point 1: K.I.S.S. or "Keep It Simple Stupid"

Point 2: K.O.L.S. or "Keep On Listening Stupid"

Point 3: Know what you need to pray, but haven't got the words? The Holy Spirit will fill in the vocabulary. The Spirit will even pray when we are too deep in our own shit to pray for ourselves.

So what's the question? Did I really need to break up this mini-sermon with a crude word like s**t? No, will you just do it? Will you just pray? It's how we talk to Jesus.

Amen.

Non-Violence

There is a group within the church hoping to declare the PCUSA "non-violent" at the next General Assembly. Being who I am, I asked something about us being able to be non-violent because we have other people to be violent for us.

I am having trouble with this concept. Ghandi was non-violent, against the violence of the British. Martin Luther King Jr. was non-violent, against the violence of the Southern White Political Establishment. Nelson Mandela was non-violent, against the violence of the white imposed racial separation of apartheid. I am not sure how we hold to non-violence when there is not a great evil-a great evil willing to use violence-to be overcome.

I noticed in the previous examples that non-violence was practiced against white people in every case. I, as a white man, find it ironic that our church, which has a majority of white faces, is seeking to coopt the very strategy that has been used against us time and time again.

OMG! I am judging whites by the color of our skin!! Doesn't feel too good, does it?

We are coming up on the first anniversary of the Navy Seals finally killing Osama Bin Laden. How much violence against our country was prevented by the use of violence against him?

One of my predecessors at the church was a practitioner of non-violence. He went from here to the South to march with MLK Jr. and the others who gave everything, even their very lives, to force change.

WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? He would get violent when the need arose, as when he drove the money changers out of the temple. And at the Sermon on the Mount, he said, "Blessed are the Peacemakers...", a blessing that, for me, belongs squarely on the shoulders of Law Enforcement Officers, Peace Officers, in this country.

I don't have answers. I am still struggling to ask the right questions. Maybe non-violence is the stance that the church ought to take. I still need to know a lot more about what that would look like and how we'd use the non-violence to change a world desperately in need of change.

Peace, how hard it is...

Wasn't Even Thinking About Death

In yesterday's post, it was a reflection about heaven. I really didn't have anyone in mind that prompted that choice of topic. But today, it seems strangely prophetic. A friend of mine and member of my church died this morning. I found it to be a shocker, because word in the church was that he had some good choices coming that were going to make things better.

But, while there is plenty I don't know, I do know that it isn't up to us.

I don't have a lot of the profound or reflective in me this evening. I miss Al. I was given the privilege of being with his family. The thing is, heaven didn't help too much...at least not yet.

I've been around a lot of pastors and fellow Christians who have their eye on the prize. Their theology, their focus, their aim is on the life after this one. But I fear that can undercut the sacred space of this life if we are too focused on what is to come.

Life is poorer here with Al's death. His family and friends are left to pick up the pieces and try to move on. And while I thank the Lord for heaven and eternal life won for us in Christ Jesus, I thank God even more for the gift of Al's presence in my life.

And I know in my heart that I didn't appreciate that gift nearly as much as I do now that it is gone. I hope and pray that heaven will be a place where I get to feel that appreciation for the people God has put in my life without first having to experience their loss.

I don't know much, except that Jesus is walking with me. I know that more profoundly now when I need Him more. I am not feeling so indestructible at the moment. I am glad God made me worthy to receive this gift of faith. Al was a living testimony to it. I hope I can continue to live in the faith in a way that would make him proud of me.

Will Heaven Be Boring?

My greatest fear about eternal life is boredom. I know, it should have something to do with whether or not claiming to be Jesus' Annoying Henchman is a way to get me sent to the eternal tanning salon, but it isn't. Because I am a Calvinist, and I'm okay...I know where I'm going on judgment day...

But my image of heaven has never been thoroughly thought through, more of an impression really, that of a eternal tranquility, a forever 70 degree day when the sun is just perfect and the humidity is low and God has forever banished the pollen to the nether reaches. Boring as watching paint dry...but hopefully in a really comfy hammock in a pristine back yard that never needs mowing.

Today, I was driving back from a conference through Eastern Pennsylvania. My radio choices were a variety of popular music stations or Christian talk. I am a denizen of the tri-state area. Christian talk isn't usually my first choice, being a pastor and all, but I got this one pastor on a station out of Lancaster who was given an interesting question.

"What is your favorite feeling?"

Doing 65 on Route 78 munching on slightly stale trail mix wasn't mine, so I kept listening for a better answer.

The radio preacher's answer was a feeling of 'accomplishment', like finishing the last thing on a 'to do' list (he confessed to a type 'a' personality), but just that sense you get when you've done something well and good.

Now for something completely different, 9/11. I was at a police chaplain's conference where, in this tenth anniversary year of 9/11/01, the presenter showed a brief remembrance of the event. It rips my guts out to this very day.

What does this have to do with heaven? It is not so much about heaven as it is about 'accomplishment'. I listened to guys who spent months at Ground Zero, at the dump site on Staten Island, with the First Responders, with the Union guys who did the recovery and repair, some of whom are feeling the health effects today. And I can only try to experience their sense of accomplishment vicariously, on the edge. I did my bit, but that pales.

The accomplishment of those guys as chaplains, those First Responders, those workers on the sites in NYC, Washington, and Pennsylvania, those leaders of our nation on every level, those people of our nation and around the world, who opened their hearts and minds and accomplished a task of love and grace and caring for God and neighbor, that's the stuff of heaven.

But the real joy of heaven is that we will feel that sense of accomplishment without having to live through the earthbound hell of what real sin can do to us.

We can do for others every day of our lives, we don't need stress and crisis to motivate us, but it gets old after awhile. That is the infection of sin in our attempts to live as Jesus would want us to. Then a real hellstorm comes and, by the grace of God, we rise to the occasion, rise HIGHER than the occasion, and we overcome.

We did it after 9/11, we did it after Hurricane Katrina, we are doing it two years after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But it is a window of time, between 12 and 24 months, before the wave of accomplishment begins to subside.

Now imagine a place where the wave of accomplishment never subsides and we don't need sinful events to trigger a sense of accomplishment in the kind of life we should be living every day. If you can put yourself in that place, I do believe you can taste the edge of heaven.

Spirits in my Conscience

I have been struggling the concept of demon possession. Great, another wacko pastor-type! That is the reaction I most fear when I dare to think about this. But here is the problem.

Tomorrow I preach about Jesus binding, silencing, and casting out demons-then equipping his disciples to do the same. And now, tonight, God has cast the verse from 1 Corinthians 12:3, "Nobody can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." And it connected for me. I understand what Paul is saying. Anyone can mouth the words "Jesus is Lord", to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, to be truly accepting of Jesus in our hearts, to be truly in God's hands, is when those words truly carry meaning in our own lives.

Paul is fairly consistent with this concept of Holy Spirit-possession, when he talks about doing the things he does not want to do and not doing the things he wants to do. I recognize that enough in my own life. Tying back to Holy Spirit-possession, we begin a journey under that power of turning our lives over to God, of being able to live more in the love of Christ than in the life of sin we came out of.

All that is pretty sound, orthodox 'life in Christ' kind of stuff. But what about the flip side of it? Possession by Spirits that aren't so holy? Now this is a very dangerous topic, because addiction was for a very long time attributed in many instances to demon possession. Depression, bipolar disorder, how many other medical conditions have led to people being treated in cruel and vicious ways in the name of liberating them from demons?

And we are free, responsible beings, responsible for our own decisions and choices. But there is something in the middle there, something I cannot scientifically prove, but something I have seen in my own experience (so-called anecdotal evidence) of people exhibiting self-destructive, sinful, or destructive behavior with what I can only describe as addictive tendencies in ways that I cannot explain.

"The devil made me do it" is no excuse, never has been. Using that excuse undercuts the power of the Holy Spirit. But our lives contain conflicts that, I believe, rise above what we can simply see with our eyes and hear with our ears. But it is a power that runs in both directions, for good, and for ill. And as the Holy Spirit is the author of the good, it will always be victorious.

Why "Oliver Twist" Makes A Lot of Sense

I've been listening to Oliver Twist on audio. I think it has a lot to say about our Foster Care system today. Indentured apprenticeship, church-run workhouses, providing for the poor, but not so much that they can have any fun at all... And yet today, we would call Oliver Twist a social commentary.

Yet there was nothing there that runs contrary to Holy Scripture. The bible does not condemn indentured apprenticeships for children as young as 9-though in the bible that would all under the category of "slavery". The bible, in fact, does not condemn child labor either-the father was the head of the household and everyone fell into place...or else. David was 12 (by interpretive extension) when he was in a life threatening occupation of sheep-herding, taking on lions and tigers and bears...oh my... Okay, truth be told, no tiger is recorded in Scripture.

Yes, we founght a war about it in this country, yes, the bloodiest conflict on U.S. soil, yes, slavery is officially banned in this kinder, gentler world. And no, I am not willing to demonstrate in my own life how it might be something to reconsider. But when you take these culturally run structures, when you take the support or condemnation of Holy Scripture, you can make convincing arguments why bad things are good for us.

The thing about slavery is that our choices about whether or not to have slavery were never made by the slaves themselves. People who were not slaves, would never be slaves because of the color of their skin, people of a cultural class who had the capacity to own slaves, they were the ones whose moral compasses pointed them for or against this horrid condition on behalf of those people who were enslaved, or freed from enslavement.

And here we are again, arguing about homosexuality. We who are "free of that condition" are arguing over the fate of those who have "chosen that condition" as it pertains to Scripture and it pertains to the church. And because the interpretation of Holy Scripture is to condemn homosexuality, the conclusion is that people must choose to be homosexual, because God would not condemn his own creation, because God would not condemn homosexuality if that were the "way God made us".

And the trouble on the other side is if support of homosexuality is the theological position of the church, an intentional biblical "set aside" apparently must occur. And we act like we have never done this before.

But if we are just operating on the "plain reading" of Scripture, we have been operating on this "set aside" notion for generations. Slavery, women's inequality, racial inequality, all of these have been successfully argued from the "plain reading" of Scripture. And they have been overturned because there is a more fundamental law running all the way through God's Word.

That is the Law of Love, which transcends cultural and historic circumstances, which transcends legal niceties and moral categories, to go back to that most fundamental relationship of God and us, God's creation. it is what Jesus died for. It is what the Holy Spirit was sent for. It has guided our understanding of God's Word for two millenia. It allows us to live in tension with some very interesting and oddball points of view found in the bible.

And it needs to speak to us again today.