Facing Death

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  With these words we began the Lenten season on Ash Wednesday.  They are hard words to hear.  As Christians, we are unashamedly pro life.  We believe that human life is a gift from God and should be cherished and treated with dignity and respect.  We should never fail to fight to preserve the sanctity of human life.  However, we cannot use a pro life culture as an excuse to avoid the reality of death.  In the United States we are free to talk about all sorts of things publicly, but the topic of death remains a taboo among Christians and non-Christians alike.  Have you ever noticed how we can't even say the word? We have a hard time saying something like, "Jack died last night." Instead, we say things like, "Jack passed away," or "He is no longer with us."  Even when I worked in a hospital as a chaplain, the medical staff would refer to people as "expiring" rather than "dying."  

Nowhere is the taboo of death more evident today than at funerals.  In fact, we rarely even have funerals any more.  Instead, when a loved one or friend has "passed away," we attend a "celebration of life."  I had the opportunity to go to one of these a number years ago at a large church in Colorado Springs. A young man who had done a lot of work on our church building when we first moved in had died tragically in a climbing accident. The "celebration" was like nothing I had ever seen before.  Since the young man enjoyed going barefoot, people in attendance were encouraged to do the same (I insisted on wearing a suit and clerical collar with my shoes on). A slide show of his life played on the giant screens throughout the service and various people spoke and told stories about their time together.  There was even a woman on the stage who painted a picture.  Finally, the pastor got up to speak.  My guess is that he hadn't done many funerals, because he literally didn't know what to say.  He told those gathered together that he had no answers, that he couldn't explain what had happened or why it had occurred.   And that was it.  Game over.

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