Quitting the Church of Death
Easter is coming up. So what church do you belong to? Do you belong to the Church of Life or do you belong to the Community Church of Death? Is your life a celebration most of the time or is it pretty much a funeral?
It has been nine years since my dad died at age 98. As an ordained minister, I have officiated at more funerals than I ever would have wanted to perform. More than enough to know that when someone is 98 years old, there aren’t a lot of friends or even acquaintances left to mourn. But the day came, and the church was almost packed with people! My mom said: “My, I haven’t seen the church that full for a long time.”
At first, I felt pretty good about that. Some of the people there were my friends who had surprised me by showing up. But then I thought about it for a while and wondered: When did my dad become more popular than Jesus? On that day it was important for people to be in church because my dad was dead. But somehow the church wasn’t as important on Sunday, the day we celebrate the fact that Jesus is alive!
When I was a young pastor I used to think that people had trouble facing the reality of death. Some of us in the caring professions: pastors, doctors, nurses, counselors used to have long discussions about the “denial of death.” We felt that we needed to help folks face death’s reality. We would have heated arguments with funeral directors suggesting that much of what they did disguised the reality of death.
But now that I am an old pastor, I’ve discovered that people don’t have as much trouble accepting death as I thought. If anything, I worry that we might find death TOO easy to accept. I worry that we might become almost fascinated by death. I worry that we have become too comfortable with it. I worry that death might become easier “to live with” than life. I worry that we all might have joined the Church of Death
For instance, I don’t think that we are as uncomfortable with funerals as we like to think we are. We know what to do at funerals. We get dressed up. We send flowers. When we get there, not too much is expected of us. We communicate with quiet little nods and gestures. We listen to Amazing Grace. We “bang the drum slowly play the pipes lowly.” It is comforting and comfortable.
We file by the coffin to say goodbye. I have learned that there really isn’t anything that a funeral director can do to disguise death. You look at someone in their coffin and you think: Yes, that’s death all right. There is no denying it.
Back in 2005, Pope John Paul was still alive. He had warned the world about joining what he called “the Cult of Death”. (I call it “The Community Church of Death”) He pointed out that we use death to solve things: If there is an un-wanted pregnancy, why should death be the first idea? If there is a conflict, why is war the answer? If there is a problem with crime does the death penalty really solve it?
The pope could have added, if you hate yourself, and feel like an outcast, or have been bullied, go shoot up the school. Go shoot your comrades in arms at the base. Go shoot up a church. Go shoot up a synagogue.
You see, we make the mistake of thinking that killers are uncomfortable with death. But killers have made friends with death. They belong to the Community Church of Death. They accept death as natural, for their victims and themselves. That is why murder and suicide seem to go together.
It would be easy for you to think of most Easters or any Sunday worship service as a kind of big funeral — a nice, elaborate one. (Is there such a thing as a “nice” funeral?) There you are at a service at the Community Church of Death. Nothing too unusual here. You know what to do. You know how to handle death. You get all dressed up. There are flowers and sweet music. You see your friends and family. You come and pay your respects to a bunch of dead Bible people and the saints and heroes of the Church. Then you go home or out to eat.
You know what to do with death. You know what to do at funeral. But what will you do with LIFE? What will you do with the resurrection? Now, we could cop out and say that Jesus “lives on” in the hearts of his followers. We could say that Jesus is now a kind of “spirit”. (For some reason — we DO believe in ghosts. That’s one of the major beliefs of the Community Church of Death.)
But do you really believe in life? Or for that matter do you believe in GOD? Do you believe that God raised Jesus everything that was Jesus — his whole body and being from the dead? Do you believe that God created life in the first place and can do it again? Do you believe that Jesus is really more alive right now than the rest of us?
If you believe in LIFE, you see, you have to give up your membership inthe Church of Death and join the Church of the Living Christ. When you believe in life rather than in death then everything changes. Then much of what you used to believe is not necessarily so. For instance, that life is tough and unfair and then we die or that there is no reason to hope or expect things to change. When you believe in life rather than in death, you discover that there is more to life than you thought. You believe that things can change, that you can change. When you believe in life rather than in death, you will want to live life differently, with more courage, more caring, more compassion.
When you believe in life it is no longer just one big funeral. Because life doesn’t end in death — it ends in God and that means that it might not really end at all.
