It has been a difficult week for
Russ and Suzanne Crawford and their children at the death of their son
John. It has also been difficult for our
small family at Trinity as we have grieved along with the Crawfords. Part of the problem is that in the face death
all of us are helpless. In the light of
that St. Paul advises that we “Rejoice with those who
rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”[i]
Sometimes our language with its
delicate nuances manages to avoid very simple and profound realities. It was once the fashion to use ‘obsequies’
for ‘funerals’ and today we hear of people ‘passing’ instead of ‘dying.’ The latter I can almost understand along with
the rest of the phrase, “passing on into the great beyond” which was a common
expression during the American Civil War era.
The problem is our attempt to treat death in an antiseptic way avoiding
the sharp pain of loss that accompanies death and dying.
There is a sound psychological
and theological reason why The Book of Common Prayer doesn’t call that final
service either the Obsequies or the Funeral, but rather The Burial of the Dead.
While dealing with death in a
frank and honest way The Book of Common Prayer puts death and dying in the context
of the Resurrection, and the Burial service starts with the words, “I am the
Resurrection and I am the Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life, even though he die.”[ii]
When John Crawford died last
week, he was immediately absent from the body and present with the Lord; fully
conscious, fully aware, fully physical.
That’s the nature of the heavenly realm.
Saint Paul tells us, “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”[iii] The simple reality is that in order to enter
into eternal life one has to die.
In Christ, we die in order to
live. It is a passage ‘into the great
beyond,’ but a passage laden with grief and loss both for the one dying and
those who love him. The fear of death
lies in part in our evaluation of our own lives and in the fear of the
unknown. For Christians that
self-evaluation is resolved by the confession of our sins and by our acceptance
of the Prayer Book faith that Christ Jesus has died and risen again to bring us
into eternal life.
I don’t so much fear being what
they call ‘dead.’ I know that when I die
that I, like John, will be absent from the body and present with the Lord. That is after all an essential confession of
our Christian faith. On the other hand I
have some anxiety about the process of getting there. Launching off in faith on that final journey
has a breath-taking challenge about it and resonates with the words of Andrew
Marvel who wrote:
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying
near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
