HEARD AT CHURCH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about death.

As Palm Sunday draws near, we must think about death.

I believe death is the source of our worst fears. If death is like anything else that happens to us in life, then it cannot be all that bad.

How often fear plays out to be more dreadful than its object.

In his story "Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy" Tim O'Brien writes about the terrible fear that American soldiers carried with them in Vietnam.

It was the fear of death that killed Billy Boy.

The protagonist of the story, Paul Berlin, imagined the following telegram would be sent to Billy Boy's parents:


“SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON BILLY BOY WAS YESTERDAY SCARED TO DEATH IN ACTION IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM, VALIANTLY SUCCUMBING TO A HEART ATTACK SUFFERED WHILE UNDER ENORMOUS STRESS, AND IT IS WITH GREATEST SYMPATHY THAT…”

This same fear torments Paul Berlin and the other soldiers to the end of the story…and beyond.

Fear is the mind killer as another writer has told us.

What a tragedy to perish by ravaging ourselves with the misery of knowing that we are all going to die. Rather we can choose to accept that fate and love all the days we are alive.

Loving all the days we are alive suggests purpose to our lives. Life must lovable, so that we yearn to love it. Let us unite in a grand purpose of eradicating those ills that make it impossible for many among us to share in a blessed existence. 

Reality preaches that we inhabit the same ark floating to the same end. We must never allow the burden of our mortality to diminish our vitality.

   

Yes, personal extinction is our lot; our species will pass away; everything dies; even our immortal ones have died.

The sky gods have passed away.  They have been replaced with a grander view of God that transcends vast and infinite universes.

Indeed, the god, Jesus, will have died over two thousand years ago this Friday, but death is not the end of the story. Extinction is not the final storm.

There was a valley of dry bones once upon a time that was seen by a prophet in a vision during the Babylonian Exile.

In the vision, he heard a question from God:

"Yahweh said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?'

I said, 'Only you know, Lord Yahweh.'"

All the star stuff that originally made the bodies that had decayed into bones knit together again.

The wind of God, the same one that was the breath of life in the beginning for Humanity, blew anew as the prophet beheld the bones living into people.

Ezekiel writes that it was an exceedingly great army. Later, he tells us that the vision was about the resurrection of the nation of Israel. The Babylonian Exile had not destroyed it.

For Christians, the story has meant something different. It points to our faith that death may be our fate, but it is not our end.

Death ends us without upending us. Shall we live again?

The proper answer is ever Ezekiel's answer, "Only God knows."  

The proper hope is that a breath from God may yet blow anew within us. We proclaim that hope on Easter Day.

How do we know?  On the one hand, we know nothing. We are all just interesting star stuff.

On the other hand, we know something. We know that our living again is not in our hands, which did nothing to give us our lives, but in God's hands in whom all life dwells.

It is not our will, but the will of our God who is love. God's love is eternal. It is our hope that love will remember us and make us new.

If there is only a vision, and not life eternal, then that will be okay too. For God has given us to all that has been created even if for just one lifetime.

There's just not a whole lot to fear either way.

Blessings...