(69) Life and Death

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Life and Death, originally shared on December 3, 2020. It was the sixty-ninth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We have now begun the Church’s season of Advent, a season of hope and expectation. At the same time, we are experiencing rising death rates from the Coronavirus, just as we are about to start worldwide vaccinations. What is the difference between life and death? That is one of the key questions for unlocking the meaning of Advent.

   Sally’s sister Susan, for whom we have been praying, died last Sunday after a valiant struggle with pancreatic cancer.  Sally was on the phone with Susan and said to Susan’s daughter Donna, who has been staying with her since June, “Tell her we love her, and go get your Bible and read to her from the Psalms, which your mother loved to do.” Donna read until Susan passed away peacefully.   We arrived in Camarillo soon after and Donna’s husband arrived the next day.

   Paul writes, in his letter to the Romans

*Romans 8:35-39

   Death is certainly grounding, it is our future, unless the Lord comes first, but what is that grounding about? It leaves a void, but what void, and why? We come face to face with a great mystery, the mystery, not in the sense of a puzzle to be solved, but of something that cannot be solved.  We see the effect of relationships on us, but how do we know what it is? 

   Being in the presence of death has a largely unpredictable effect on us.

   I did a quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education (or, CPE) between my third and fourth year of seminary, which came after college. CPE is an intense period of training and peer review to prepare future pastors to be somewhat comfortable in hospital setting, to be somewhat deconditioned to the sights and smells of people in pain, and to develop skills as pastoral counselors. It is very intense. If a student is going to drop-out of seminary, CPE is the most common time that happens. If a married student is going to be divorced from his or her spouse, CPE is the most common time that happens.

   One of the typical experiences seminarians are given during CPE is to witness an autopsy, standing shoulder with the medical personnel.

   Prior to the autopsy we were prepared by our group’s pastoral counseling mentor. One of the questions that were asked of each of us was, “Some people witness an autopsy and cant’s handle it. They faint or get sick, but most manage to stick-out the process. Other people are fine, the sublimate their feelings and have nightmares for two weeks. Which do you think you will be?” Each of us gave our answers. I thought I would be fine and then I would have nightmares for a couple of weeks.

   Our group of 6 students and our Pastoral Counselor/Mentor came into the autopsy room. There was a body covered with a sheet, a coroner, and his assistant who ate a lunch that included his peanut butter sandwich through the whole procedure. In my mind, I nicknamed him “Igor”, after the stereotypical assistant in the old horror movies I had seen.

   The corner spoke with us briefly about what was going to happen, and then he removed the sheet.

   The man on my table bore a resemblance to my father, who was having quintuple by-pass open heart surgery that summer. The corner made a deep cut lengthwise down the body cavity, and I got unsteady on my feet. I felt faint. He then removed major organs and passed them around the circle for us to examine. He showed us where the infarction had taken place in the heart (heart attack). I fought to stay on my feet. He pointed out the organs in the body and how they help identify a cause of death. He used some substance that made the body smell like bubble gum. I don’t remember why. I felt queasy. “Igor” ate his peanut butter sandwich. Each of us had had the opposite reaction to that experience than we expected. 3 and 3.

   When it was finished, when we had asked out questions and were about to leave, Igor said “Wait. I have a question for you.”

   We all focused and listened. He said, “What is this on the table?” We waited for clarification.

   “Yesterday this man spoke, he ate and drank, he laughed, he passed waste, he had feelings, and relationships and consciousness and now none of those things are happening. What is the difference between yesterday and today?”

   That’s the kind of question that makes philosophers and theologians.

   I don’t remember what any of us said, but I’ve thought about that question many times over the years.

[***What do you think?   What happens between life and death?

   Share your thoughts in the comment section below and we’ll respond to every one.]

   We have now entered one of, if not the, most dangerous periods in the pandemic. We are that close to distributing a vaccine, yet the death rate and the numbers of deaths are climbing, largely as the result of indifference to the simple things everybody can do to protect everybody else.

   What does it take to convince people to care? That is the key to the difference between life and death. The difference is that state of the human personality.   The human personality is not a spirit or soul in a body; that’s a Greek idea. The Judeo/Christian understanding of a human life is that of a whole personhood, body, mind and spirit, together, interrelated and inseparable from what it means to be human. That’s why what we do with our bodies is so important. That’s why when the ecumenical creeds speak of resurrection they speak of “the resurrection of the body.”

   At the end of T.S. Elliot’s poem, “The Journey of the Magi”, an important element in the current season of Advent in the Church Year, he has one of the wise men saying:

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

   What does he mean, “I should be glad of another death”?

   Here’s a clue from Paul’s letter to church at Rome, the Bible’s book of Romans:

*Romans 6:3-5

   Death is a past tense experience for Christians. We died in Baptism. Therefore, we will rise with Jesus Christ. Baptism, with faith, is the beginning of eternal life. What we see as death is just a change to a more perfect relationship with the one true living God who adopted us at our Baptisms.

   When we were Baptized with water and the Word, we received the streams of Living Water, one of the Bible’s metaphors for the Holy Spirit. We are transformed by the living God, we are a new creation, we are born again.

  Cynics say, “Life is hard, and then you die”. Christians say, “Life can be hard, but we have been redeemed and that gives us joy.

   Life can be hard, but we are called to make it easier for others, and so find our own hardships eased.

   Life can be hard, but we are not alone. Death has already taken place for the Baptized, and we are not alone.

   Paul writes to the church in Corinth, the Corinthians

*1 Corinthians 15:55-58