Saturday, April 23, E minus 1

In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.

Surely, if we can’t talk about life and death, and life beyond death, here, then where can we speak of it? Death has become the ultimate obscenity, and we are all in denial of our mortality. Health care costs in the final months of life skyrocket, because we prefer medical assault to dignified death, since we have no vision beyond a ‘light at the end of a tunnel’.

What do we expect of church, if not ritual and meaning around life, and death, and life beyond death? We can proclaim, exclaim, celebrate, weep, and even use old words at a ritual moment – but our cognitive dissonance catches up with us since our modern and postmodern worldviews don’t accommodate pre-modern diction and concepts.

Take a moment now, and remember a funeral that mattered to you, and some lives of those you loved, and their deaths. Did you say goodbye? Did the conversation consider afterward, and through your ongoing bereavement? Do you imagine them in the company of others, or ultimately in your company?

Many people think that the church prefers death to life – and should pay attention to the real question of whether there is life before death. But is it really a morbid fixation to wonder occasionally how we will construe and construct meaning from our own dying experiences? Is it really vain speculation to imagine a world beyond this one, fulfilled, including us all?

Will Easter remain a festival of immortality, of blithe spirits passing through this life and death unscathed and untouched- or one of death and resurrection, that moves us with passion and compassion, and changes our perceptions and our choices about this world and this life, in hope of another world and a life beyond death?