Death and Victory: for Oma

Mathilde Margarethe Monika (Steinkohl) Bork, my maternal grandmother, died on Sunday, July 19th--her eighty-fourth birthday. After losing her husband of sixty-one years and in near-blindness and ailing health, "Oma" simply gave up her will to live. She died a peaceful, dignified death, surrounded in her last days by her family and loved ones.

I didn't cry.

After receiving the dreaded phone call from my younger brother Jordan, Olivia and I drove over to the hospital to be with my mom and uncle. We prayed for a while as I stroked Oma's hair and kissed her forehead goodbye.

Staring in the face the reality of death, the only thing I could think about was this: Jesus really rose from the grave. To this day I have no explanation why; even the best apologetics cannot stand. But all I know and am convinced of, without any explanation, is that Jesus is truly living and has triumphed over death itself, making a mockery of it. In what is one of the greatest Easter homilies of all time, John Chrysostom wrote thus:

Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hell* when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."
Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.

Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

* * *

This Sunday, which will be our last gathered with the saints at New Song, is Communion Sunday. How fitting! For we will feast when God wipes out death (see Isaiah 25:6-9). Death, which once swallowed men in its insatiable appetite (Isaiah 5:14), is now itself swallowed in Christ's victory! I rejoice that what is fed to us by Jesus in this Meal, his broken body and poured-out blood for our forgiveness and life, is what (or rather who) will bring us into the Wedding Feast of life everlasting, where death is abolished. Right now I feel a craving for this meal as the comforting promise of life beyond death--the promise of my life in Christ.

"I thank You for the body and the blood of Your Son, Jesus Christ, my Lord. I go to His holy Supper as though I were going to my own death, so that I might go to my death as though going to His holy Supper. Surely, my cup overflows with mercy, and I can depart in peace, according to Your Word." ("Devotion at the Approach of Death," from The Lutheran Book of Prayer)

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*Other translations of Chrysostom's sermon render "Hell" as "Hades," which is probably more correct. (Chrysostom spoke Greek.) Hades represented not only the dark realm of the dead separated from the joys of life, but also Death itself as a consuming power. To those who think of this as a Greek abstraction foisted upon Christianity from without, you will note that the ancient Hebrew concepts of Sheol (death as a realm) and Abbadon (death as a destructive power) were very similar.

Loss

A week ago I drove up to Michigan for my grandfather's memorial service. Louis H. Bork died at age 86, leaving behind his wife of 61 years, Mona, along with his three children and three more grandchildren. A few things came to mind recently regarding death and loss.

First, it's easy to want to be consoled by the comforting news that Opa is in heaven now because he trusted in Jesus as his Savior from sin. (I'm not entirely certain he did, however, though I have fairly reasonable confidence.) Someone even said at the funeral that he was running around now, youthful and free. I didn't want to be a killjoy, but the biblical evidence seems to say that even those who die in Christ will not have new bodies until all God's children are gathered home and his kingdom is consummated. Our glorious and renewed bodies will be ours only as part of the final inheritance we will receive as God's sons (Romans 8:18-25). In the meantime even those who die justified will, until the Last Judgment, be only "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8; cf. Philippians 1:21-24). Of course, this is "better by far"!

You see, death--even for those in Christ--isn't such a great "pathway to glory" as we make it out to be. True humanity, true life, is nothing short of being alive in both body and spirit. That's how we were created, and only when all of the material, physical, earthy cosmos is redeemed and glorified will everything be set right again. (See my older post here.)

This brings me to my second thought. I know that I've lost Opa--for now, at least. He's no longer here. But that doesn't just mean that the Bork/Hall family is down a man; it means we've all changed individually. You see, I can only be a grandson if I have a grandfather. I am no longer Louis Bork's grandson. His beloved Mona (my "Oma") is no longer his wife: "till death us do part"--and death has parted them. We are who we are by virtue of relationships; even Jesus wouldn't be a Son without having been "begotten from the Father before all worlds." There's no telling what measure of who I am in my thoughts, knowledge, worldview, abilities, character, and desires was effected by being Opa's grandson. The loss of a loved one is, for the remainder of our sojourn, a loss of ourselves as well.

Nature red in tooth and claw

While running on Saturday morning I came across a squirrel lying on the rain-wet sidewalk a few miles from my apartment. It was on its stomach, with its four legs spread out somewhat on each side. I stopped to look at it. I thought it was already dead, but after a few seconds I saw its head move. The squirrel would intermittently gasp for breath through its red, bloody mouth—it must have fallen from the tall willow oak tree above—and try to muster the strength to crawl back to the tree. It was sometimes able to pick up its head and move a few of its scraggly limbs, but it could never move its emaciated body. I pitied it. I wanted badly to help if off the sidewalk and onto the grass near the tree or just put it out of its misery somehow. (I contemplated stomping on its head.) But I didn’t want to risk rabies, and I thought that my intervention would somehow be messing with the sacred order of nature itself.

Even before the squirrel expired, ants already began crawling upon their next food source. I was so angry at them for molesting this poor creature as it helplessly lied there dying. I found myself praying, asking God to rid it of the ants until it died—Give it is dignity!—and to put its life to a quick end.

How often, in our sanitized world, do we come face-to-face with something in the throes of death? We city dwellers and suburbanites are generations removed from the life of farms, where the seasons of weather and of death were the rule. We herd the elderly into nursing homes and the dying into remote floors of hospitals, trying to maintain a cheery outlook on life. Are we trying to evade death by keeping it out of sight? As I watched the squirrel writhe, its every noble attempt met with futility and grief, it struck me how truly ugly the whole affair was. How hideous is this Conqueror Worm! And if this was but the demise of a wet, scrawny rodent, how much more that of a human! Surely the whole of creation has been groaning in its futility and bondage to decay—the decay brought on by Adam’s sin, the sin that lives inside of me and of which I am both a recipient and active participant.

Oh, how we need the “hope of the glory of God,” the resurrection-hope in which we are saved!

On this mountain [the LORD] will destroy
the shroud that covers all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever. (Isaiah 25:7-8a)

Minneapolis

1 Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices [presumably murders that squelched a rebellion at the Temple]. 2 And Jesus said to them, "Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? 3 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:1-5)

I have friends who live in Minneapolis with their families. I don't know if they or any of their family was involved in yesterday's bridge collapse in which so many died or were severely injured. Situations like this beg the question, Where is God in a disaster like this? Isn't he supposedly in control? What manner of king is this Christ, who claims to be extending his rule and reign over all things in the universe? But that's not the question Jesus himself wants us to hear. He wants us to ask ourselves, "Have you repented? Are you going to embrace me, my reign, and my ways, or are you going to keep living your own way in disbelief?" If so, he warns, just as quickly as a tower collapsed or a highway bridge fell into the Mississippi River, so too will we be crushed under the weight of his fury.

All of the death, disorder, and tragedy in this world is the direct result of humanity's fall into sin. We can blame Adam all we want and shirk our own responsibility, but we forget one thing. We forget that we, too, sin every day as active participants of the rebellion that began that infamous day in Eden. Minneapolis is supposed to be a divine wake-up call, a backwards gift of God's patient mercy that says, "Get serious! Get off the path you're on! If you don't, I will kill you with a death far worse than drowning in a river, for I am a consuming fire."

I'm sure that this won't be the popular message in churches across American this Sunday. Most instead will probably preach some sort of heretical message about how this wasn't from God's hand (even insurance companies get it right by calling it an "act of God"); it was a random event incompatible with a loving God, instead of seeing God's love that slaps us in the face with events like this that call us repentance, and who has offered his very own Son to bear every last ounce of the wrath due to sinners, due to you and me.