Memento Mori

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 13:14-31.

Media vita in morte sumus. “In the midst of life we are in death.” Like me, you may know this from the burial service in The Book of Common Prayer. It turns out that it goes way back to at least the 1300s where it is found in a Gregorian chant that was used in the New Year's Eve service. It's not a sentiment you hear often these days, probably because we don't usually feel surrounded by death. We have increased human life expectancy, and that mostly by reducing infant and child mortality. Until the middle of the last century, most people knew someone close to them who died young. In ancient times, life expectancy at birth was about 35 years of age. Yes, some folks lived to 70 but that was offset by how many died as a child, which was as much as 50% of those under 5 years of age. Even so, disease, infected injuries and accidents killed many over the age of 15. A scholar pointed out that Edgar Allen Poe was obsessed with death because his mother, step-mother, a neighbor who acted as a mother to him and his wife all died young. What has made the difference today is the rise of public health departments, sanitation, access to clean running water, better nutrition, immunizations, and better health care.

As we have reduced deaths by disease, deaths by external means have taken its place. Like violence. According to Yale historian David Blight, the Civil War, which by current estimates killed ¾ of a million soldiers, “left a culture of death, a culture of mourning, beyond anything Americans had ever experienced or imagined.” No war since has killed as many Americans. Yet, even without war, for those aged 15 through 34, the top 3 causes of death today are unintentional injury, homicide and suicide.

In Jesus' day, death by causes both natural and unnatural was common. That's why people flocked to him: first and foremost, to be healed. And his feats of healing were why they were so keen to hear him. If God was acting through his works, it followed that God was speaking through his words. He was able to put people right both physically and spiritually.

We even know of 3 instances where Jesus restored someone to life: the synagogue leader's daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus. But there was one person he couldn't bring back: his cousin John the Baptizer, who was beheaded by order of Herod. That's what happened immediately before the story in our gospel reading today. We don't know how well they actually knew each other but still it was a blow. And we are told that when he heard about John's execution, Jesus withdrew.

Why did he withdraw? It could have been that Jesus realized that Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, could be a threat to him as well. The Greek word translated “withdraw” here is often used of people responding to danger, such as the wise men not returning to Herod the Great but going back home by another route, or Mary and Joseph fleeing from Herod into Egypt and later avoiding his son, ruler of Judea, on the way back to Nazareth. Because the house of Herod saw killing as their go-to solution for inconvenient people. This Herod's father killed several sons and wives. This Herod's nephew, Herod Agrippa, would one day kill James the apostle and try to do the same to Peter. Jesus knew his fate was not to die at Herod's hand but that was no reason to tempt a murderous tyrant.

I think another reason Jesus withdrew is to deal with the shock and grief. In emptying himself of the prerogatives of divinity, (Philippians 2:5-7) Jesus evidently gave up knowing every single thing that would happen. He is amazed at the lack of faith he found in his own hometown (Mark 6:6) and he is surprised when the centurion shows greater faith than Jesus had seen in Israel. (Matthew 8:10) He tells his disciples that he doesn't know the exact time when the last day will come and he will return; only his Father knew that, at least while Jesus was on earth. (Matthew 24:36) So John's death could have come as a shock to Jesus and he needed time to absorb it.

He also may have needed time to grieve. John was both a cousin and the man who baptized Jesus and announced his coming. Jesus would have felt his loss. Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus, even though he knew he was going to resurrect him. (John 11:35) Jesus also knew that was not going to happen with John and that he was just going to have to deal with that, as we ordinary humans do. As it says in Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses...” (Hebrews 4:15) And I for one feel better knowing that Jesus knows what it is like to lose someone to death and know you will not see them again in this life.

In the documentary series I'll Be Gone in the Dark Patton Oswalt describes how he reacted to finding his wife Michelle had died in her sleep. He said he closed his eyes and tried to will it to be a nightmare. But when he opened his eyes it was just horrible reality. Michelle's sisters describe their reactions to the news. One, listening to her brother-in-law tell her that her baby sister was dead, just could not seem to grasp it at first, making him repeat it over and over. When she in turn called another sister all she could babble was “It's bad, it's bad, it's bad,” before she calmed down enough to say what was bad. And Patton said that finding his wife dead was the second worst thing he endured. The worst was the breaking the news to their 6 year old daughter, Alice.

Some atheists feel that the existence of suffering somehow refutes the existence of God. Which is odd since the Bible does not shy away from the topic. The words for “suffer” and “suffering,” as well as those for “pain” and “mourning” and “weeping,” appear hundreds of times. The entire book of Job is about a godly man who is suffering and wrestling with the fact that bad things do indeed happen to good people.

And of course, at the heart of Christianity is the worst thing that could happen to the best possible person, which is the suffering and death of God's son. It's a terrible death: being whipped and then being marched to a place where you are nailed to a tree and then hang until you die. It's not at all sugarcoated and we see the effect on Jesus' mother and disciples. They are shattered and heartbroken.

They do not take philosophical refuge in thinking he was just a good moral teacher. They had hoped he was the Messiah but not any more. (Luke 24:19-21) Nor do we see any of them expecting Jesus to come back from the dead. Even after the resurrection, after the women see him, the men do not yet believe. When Jesus first appears to the remnants of the Twelve they think he's a ghost. (Luke 24:27) And missing on that occasion is Thomas, who, when Jesus proposed taking that dangerous journey to Judea, said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16) I would not be surprised to find that he was on a drinking binge. Not even the others telling him they had seen Jesus convinced Thomas. Only seeing and touching Jesus a week later changed his mind. (John 20:24-29) So nothing in the accounts lead us to believe that they thought Jesus' death was anything but final.

Because usually death is. While 40% of those having a cardiac arrest outside a hospital and who receive CPR are revived, only 10 to 20% survive long enough to be discharged from the hospital. That rate drops by a factor of 10 for every minute's delay in starting CPR. However, the survival rate more than doubles for those who receive a shock from an AED or Automatic External Defibrillator. Likewise, 27% of children who drowned and receive CPR within minutes survived. Even so that's a small minority of those who die.

And those are cases where a trained person who is on the spot can do something. Most people who die cannot be brought back. I myself was unable to revive a patient using CPR. Eventually we all die. And that is being drilled into us daily as the death toll of this virus rises.

In a way, this brings us back to the state of affairs that has existed through most of human history: that in the midst of life we are in death.

But the reverse is also true. In the presence of death we are still in the midst of life. One thing that helped Patton Oswalt not collapse under the weight of his wife's unexpected death was the fact that he had a daughter to take care of. He had to get Alice up, get her dressed, get her fed and get her to school. He had to pick her up from school, take her home, feed her, bathe her, put her to bed and read to her. He had her needs to think about, which kept him from withdrawing completely from the world into his own despair.

In our gospel we are told that Jesus “withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” Mark says Jesus “had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” (Mark 6:34) Like Oswalt's daughter, they needed to be cared for. And Jesus put aside his grief for the moment and performed the one miracle that is mentioned in all 4 gospels, the feeding of the 5000.

I do hope Jesus got to talk with his disciples about his loss. Oswalt observes that being silent about grief allows it to seek out and fortify its positions in your life. But talking about it, exposing it to light, helps diminish the darkness.

And the presence of those who love you help. Every night Michelle and her daughter Alice would share what was their rose and what was their thorn that day. After Michelle's death, Alice told her father and aunts that her thorn was the loss of her mom but her rose was having them all there.

And Jesus had the Twelve. After the feeding of the 5000, John tells us that the crowd wanted to make him king. And Jesus tells them not to seek after the physical bread he had fed them with but the bread from heaven, the bread of life. And when they asked him what it was, he said it was his body. They had to eat his body and drink his blood. They were repulsed by this teaching and John tells us that Jesus lost a lot of followers. Jesus turns to the Twelve and asks if they also wanted to leave. “Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.'” (John 6:68) That must have been heartening for Jesus to hear.

In one sense, death is the fairest thing there is. Not all will be strong. Not all will be rich. Not all will be good looking. Not all will be popular. Not all will be powerful. But all will die. The only thing that seems unfair about death is when and how. In some cases we can delay it but we cannot escape it.

What we do have some control over is our attitude. Do we let our knowledge of the end of life rob the rest of life of its joys? Do we prematurely surrender to it? Do we pretend it will not happen to us? Do we let it impel us to do as much as we can before it comes, as it seems that Alexander Hamilton did? Do we cherish this gift of life all the more for its temporary nature?

Psalm 90 says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12) In other words, we need to use the time alloted to us wisely. Rather than fritter our time away, we can, as we said last week, listen to God's call, find our purpose and make that our ministry, our way of expressing God's love and grace towards others. And science confirms that having a sense of purpose is a vital part of being healthy and happy and living a long life. We were designed to have a purpose in our lives rather than just existing until we don't.

This week on the NPR show Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed Jim McCloskey. In his 30s he found himself dissatisfied with his life in business. He returned to church and found a call to ministry. He thought he was called to become a pastor but while in seminary, he was assigned to do fieldwork as a prison chaplain. There he met an inmate whom he became convinced was innocent of murder. McCloskey founded Centurion Ministries, one of the first innocence projects. They have managed to get 63 prisoners freed from wrongful convictions for murder. McCloskey never did get ordained but credited that condemned man he proved innocent with helping him find his purpose in life and a way to make the world a better place.

Eventually we will find our death approaching and inevitable. Then will be the time to accept it, knowing that we have served God and those in our life to the best of our abilities and gifts. But we need not go with resignation. We go knowing that Jesus our Lord has gone before us and that he is there to take our hand on the other side. As God took the worst thing that could happen to his son and transformed it into the greatest good for us, so he has transformed death for those of us in Christ into new and eternal life.

C. S. Lewis expressed the afterlife evocatively in his works. Perhaps my favorite passage on the subject is on the last page of the last of his children's books. Aslan reveals to the main characters that they are no longer alive in their world but are now in the new Narnia forever. “And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All of their life in this world and all of their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”