The Wrongfulness of Death

If you know my wife, then you know that she has a way with words. On one occasion when we were driving away from a church that we had just visited I asked my wife what she had thought of the Sermon. "Oooooh," she answered, "he was an angry pastor." I laughed, because I knew exactly what she meant. The Pastor had obviously been whipped into a frenzy about the subject that he was preaching on, and his anger had come across abundantly in his sermon. The problem was that neither of us sensed that this was a righteous indignation, a holy anger if you will, instead he just sounded mad at the congregation. His sermon instead of being what is sometimes called "a real barn burner" had been an angry tirade that had done nothing to embellish the word of God.

I mention this as something of a warning, because I am about to touch on a subject, that I must confess has the capacity to make me very angry. The odd thing is that I only really discovered that as I was writing this sermon. As I studied and thought, and then set those thoughts down on paper, I became aware of the fact that I was tapping into what for me is a really sore subject. I hope then, that if I do become visibly angry today, that my anger would be a godly anger and not merely a venting of my spiritual spleen.

I imagine you're probably wondering what it is about this particular section of 1^st Thessalonians that could possibly whip me up into a fervor, especially considering I am English by birth, and that therefore I have certain built in defenses against getting hot and bothered about anything. I'll go ahead and tell you what makes me angry; death. Death has the capacity to make me furious. And not just death itself, although I'll be frank with you and tell you that I hate death and everything to do with it. No, what has the capacity to make me hopping mad, worse than that - downright weeping with frustration angry, are the unbiblical attitudes and opinions that Christians can so often display when dealing with death.

Let me first give you an example of what I mean, of how what I'm talking about happens in the present day before we turn back to the Thessalonian congregation that Paul was writing to in order to clear up some of the misconceptions they had about death. Here again I'll warn you I'm not going to pull any punches, some of you will recognize the example I'm about to use even though I'm not going to use any names, you may be offended as a result, but I'm using this example not to offend but because in my opinion it was a particularly extreme even an outrageous example of what I'm talking about and because I'll confess to you that it hurt me deeply, probably more deeply than I even realized at first.

 This year a friend of mine died, I didn't know him very well, if I'd known how short his time would be I would have exerted a much greater effort to get to know him so much better, because I admired him. He was one of those Christians in whom you see Christ's comment about an Israelite in whom there is no guile visibly displayed. I'm not that kind of Christian, I'm somewhere between the Pharisee and the wretched publican praying in the temple, so I admire people like this individual deeply. When he was killed, I was shocked. My wife could tell you I was simply dumbfounded on the night I found out. When I attended his funeral and I saw him dead and laid out in a casket, I can't tell you the sorrow and the awful feeling of wrongness that I felt. This was just so wrong.

But as the serviced progressed I began to feel like the odd man out, I actually began to feel a profound sense of distance from my Christian brothers and sisters. Because what I felt was grief, but in many senses the service struck me as an attempt to make what for me was a tragedy into a celebration of the fact that my brother was now with the Lord. But the worst moment of all for me, was when a preacher, and I'm sure he was well meaning stood up and said something along the lines of "When I heard that so and so had died, I thought praise God." And went on to talk about how wonderful it was that they were with their Lord. The Preacher was obviously conscious of the attempt at creating an atmosphere of celebration, and how odd that must have seemed to the non-Christians who might have been present. So he addressed them and basically said you may be wondering why we are happy and not sad today, this must seem pretty odd to you. At that point I just wanted to shout, you know why they may be confused, you know why frankly I'm confused? Because they remember something you seem to have forgotten. Death is wrong! Death is not good. They may be unregenerate, they may be grieving wrongly, without hope, but they haven't forgotten to grieve.

The fact that my brother is now with the Lord mitigates the sorrow we feel at his loss, the fact that he will rise again, makes the pain we feel at his death bearable. But it does not change it into a reason for celebration!

Like me, you may not be able to memorize many Bible verses, but you would do well to remember the shortest verse in the Bible: John 11:35 "Jesus wept". And why did he weep? He wept because his friend Lazarus had died. He shed tears with those who grieved. Even though Lazarus was a believer, even though the Son of God was going to raise him from the dead in just a few minutes, our blessed savior wept, because death is wrong. It is never our friend.

The Bible tells us that death is a result of sin. Far from being the blessed release we often seen it described as, it is in fact the last enemy. A terrible consequence of the fall, death creates a division that was never supposed to happen, the division of soul from body. It brings in the corruption of God's good creation. It separates mother from child, husband from wife, brother from sister, and friend from friend.

 So while we weep with God Himself at the consequences of this cursed destroyer, do we despair? Do we give up hope when we see death inexorably claiming everything that lives? NO! Not at all! For we know as believers that just as Christ died and rose from the dead so too will we someday all be raised from the dead.

This was the counsel of Paul to the Thessalonian church, for they too had fallen into a serious error about the nature of death. They had rightly believed the sure promise of Christ to return, but as time went on and still Christ did not appear, the Thessalonians began to suffer from what Reggie Kidd called an "overheated" eschatology. They were puzzled when believers began to undergo physical death and still Christ had not returned. They began to speculate that perhaps those who had died would miss the day of the Lord and that only those still alive at his Second Coming would be given eternal life in the kingdom. Paul dashes this and other false speculations about the nature of death, just as later in his second letter he will tell them that it is impossible that the day of the Lord's Return has already come and that they have missed it.

Unfortunately Christian's in every century have drawn conclusions about death that have more to do with the speculations of secular society than the testimony of the Bible. And so it is the duty of Pastors in every age to correct these misapprehensions, to direct Christians back to the witness of the Bible, not to add to the confusion. The Greeks of Paul's day considered bodily resurrection to be foolishness because of their disdain for things material. For them the body was the prison of the soul, and they looked forward to the day when they would finally be rid of it. Sadly teachers of the church like the Gnostic Valentinus picked up on this trend and taught that Resurrection for the Christian was an entirely spiritual affair, even Origen fell prey to this tendency and talked about the body in his book On First Things as though it were merely a "time and space" suit. Paul though corrects this tendency showing us clearly here and in places like 1^st Corinthians 15 that the bodily resurrection of Christ was the model for those who die in the faith. He is, as Paul puts it, the "first fruits of those who have fallen asleep". Therefore if we believe the testimony of the Gospel, then we will believe what is foolishness to the Greek, that these corruptible imperfect bodies will someday rise again, but that they will be changed, glorified, made anew and incorruptible like Christ's risen body.

 We will be bodily and not just spiritually resurrected, to live forever in the kingdom. But why is the bodily resurrection so important? Because to preach any other kind of eternal life is to grievous injury to the full extent of the victory of the crucified Christ. Christ triumphed on our behalf of his sheep over death, the last enemy. So when he comes again this last enemy will be forever destroyed. The effects of sin in all creation will be done away with once and for all. For we must never forget that as Paul tells us in Romans 8, all of God's good creation groans and awaits the deliverance from the bondage of corruption that will surely come when Christ returns. We too as Paul says await the redemption of the body, the forever reuniting of body and soul, that will finally set things aright and bring us to a point that is even more glorious than when God formed the first body from the dust of the ground, breathed life into it, and with the rest of creation declared it good.

 We then, as Christians, should never fall into the awful trap of speaking of death with anything less than the contempt, or the righteous anger, with which Jesus and his Apostles spoke of it. We should certainly never call it a friend even when it brings to an end a life wracked with pain.

 At his execution Sir Walther Raleigh tested edge of the headsman's axe with his thumb and remarked to the crowd "a sharp medicine, but a sure cure for all ills." That little witticism was Sir Walther's way of thumbing his nose at his political enemies, it was an act of bravado, but brothers and sisters I am ashamed to admit that I have heard sermons where Sir Walther's flippant observation was the preacher's central thesis! I'm sure as a Christian; Raleigh would have been appalled at that. For of course both sickness and death are results of the fall, and as such death is no cure for the other. The real cure for both is Christ Crucified and risen from the grave. HE will bring a final end to both when he returns.

 So as Christian's you must never laud death, or call it good, don't fall prey to the temptation to point to the body in the casket and solemnly declare, "this is not Aunt Mabel!" When you do that, you become a Gnostic, because that body is Aunt Mabel just as surely as her soul, and someday it's going to rise again because of what Christ did. Say you rather "Aunt Mabel is with the Lord and his Saints today, but she is looking forward to the day when she will rise again in Glory, when this body will be made incorruptible, to dwell forever in the new heaven and the new earth spoken of by John in the Revelation."

I don't often read long quotes in the midst of a sermon, I don't think it's particularly good practice, but I want to set aside my usual practice today to read something to you that I think speaks exceptionally well to the subject we are discussing. I want to read it because it is part of a short article by Presbyterian Pastor John Sartelle that forever changed my own views on the subject of death. Sartelle writes in Tabletalk:

 (Sartelle Quote)

 I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I think that in two paragraphs John Sartelle summarizes Paul's message of consolation to the Thessalonian Church better than I have with a lot more words.

As I said at the beginning this is a subject that makes me angry, I pray though that if I have conveyed some of that anger to you that it came across not as a rant but as a righteous indignation. I want you to Remember Brothers and Sisters, Remember and Preach, the bodily resurrection. Grieve with the grieving. Remind a dying world that someday all men and women will rise again, those who in are Christ, united to Him by faith will be raised incorruptible to a glorious life eternal. Those who are not will be raised corruptible to eternal damnation in hell. Remind them of the need to decide for Christ now, today, that when he returns and trumpet sounds that this will be the day of their bodily redemption, and not their final damnation.

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