| "You certainly will
not die"
Humans
relay the whisper, not that they are immortal but by some ruse, that death is
not an issue. Yet frantically, humans also set about ensuring that life can be
sustained in the face of this reality. Exposure
to sickness reminds us that we are vulnerable to death—not from this particular
ailment necessarily but of something comparable, only more intense. This possibility
is resisted with every medical security that can be marshalled. Poverty leading
to destitution is a graphic variation on this as the ability to sustain life is
diminished with diminished resources. For many, this is an ever present reality.
Within
the security of health and resources, people can live with a drowsy equanimity
of a vaguely whispered promise that you
certainly will not die—death is not real, at least not for now. The voice
that whispers this must be in a whisper. If spoken too loudly, it jolts into conscious
awareness that it is a deception. As a whisper, it soothes as it suggests without
needing to convince as it lingers vaguely within human minds. Death
is easily and quietly deferred to a never-never realm of twilight awareness in
an as yet unreal time and place reserved for much later in life. The
issue of death surfaces with some degree of anxiety when people are confronted
with unexpected death by accident, violence or natural disaster. This anxiety
is especially acute if here, death concerns a child, an adolescent or a young
adult. Yet the perennial whisper can soon overtake such acute awareness as people
get on with life and regrettably lose interest along with others, especially the
media. Death cannot be faced for too long and people are quietly thankful that
for the moment, death is not for them, at least not yet. v A
sure word that we will certainly die is too brazen to hear daily. Few could countenance
a prominent reminder on a desk or computer screen—“today you may die”—fortifying
each hour with the thought of an event that will terminate everything enjoyed,
valued and reasonably anticipated in the future. How
many people consciously live each hour as if it could be the last? Such a disposition,
in daily or hourly recognition of death, seems an unreasonable incursion on the
natural thirst for life in its vitality. Yet the most sure but perpetually masked
human reality is that each of us will certainly die. Death
threatens continuity, which we treasure. Continuity is necessary to life as meaningful.
Yet our life story appears to have no adequate ending if death intrudes at an
unknown time. Death
turns our life into an unfinished narrative, even if we think this event is wholly
anticipated. Rudely, death will intrude, for like an intrusion on an engrossing
conversation or activity, death will intrude before we have finished with life.
Life
will always consist of unfinished business, for which we desire more time. While
novelty can be embraced, the thought of complete and irreversible discontinuity
is beyond comprehension and humans gladly hear its opposite whispered. Death
is a closure that denies all closure; it closes the quest for continuity and a
sense of completion to a life story. With the denial of closure on identity, death
also denies a final sense of meaning to life. Biblical
testimony declares that we will certainly die; with death too, there is hideous
decomposition. Death is the antithesis of anything aesthetic. Death reduces life
to dust, mocking the old pagan ruse that the earth’s vitality will surmount the
greatest anxiety of humans. To be formed from the ground is no source of hope,
as prophetic resistance to the idolatry of nature shows. To dust we also return;
it is God who gives the breath of life. The
word of God, not the earth, is our ultimate source of life. Even the earth, however
it is framed spiritually, awaits the life-giving word of redemption to have its
final effect for humanity. The
most unnerving aspect of biblical witness is that humans die in their sin. Our
lives are not only incomplete but they are also incomplete before God. Death and
final accountability are felt invariably to be connected in a just reality. Even
if it dissolves our bodies, death does not dissolve the truth about our lives. Life
is incomplete when death intrudes. Biblical testimony to sin includes our compromises.
We are compromised in word and deed, in motive and relationship, in charity and
veracity—we are compromised in every facet of our humanity. Sin might not register
in the calibration of human law or convention but it registers as the compromise
of humanity created by God. The
word of God reminds us that death is a reality that mocks human pretensions to
securing a place under the sun. We compromise
our humanity and we sin against others in pursuing self-deceptions as we consent
to the original deception that you certainly
will not die. v Death
is an affront to human dignity. Humans have always resisted death, fought its
sources in human life and wherever possible, sought to engender more life before
death. Yet humans are mortgaged to death, however they attempt to hide this debt
in life. In
Christian testimony to the reality of Easter, we are recipients of life that exceeds
the power of death, even as this life affirms our humanity within time. Outside
this possibility, death is the quintessential enemy that has power to strip everything
of value from human life. The
gospel attests to the reality of death and all the compromised factors that can
unravel backwards from its pending horizon. Assertions of human self-standing
deflect the sources of human anxiety and self-compromise, projecting them elsewhere.
The gospel does not endorse the self-deceptions of this particular hubris. The
gospel does not offer more analysis on human existence—which humans are good at
generating—but a realistic word on how death is terminated by life as a gift from
God. Christian testimony to gospel presents the possibility of life in grace that
is able, through transformation of people, tangibly to change the skewed effects
that a horizon of death inducts into human life. The
truth of humanity in Jesus Christ calls into question our compromised quests for
truth according to human estimation or moral rectitude that obscures our self-compromise.
In the grace of forgiveness, the gospel of Jesus Christ represents the possibility
of human dignity for those who know their lives are compromised. In him, we receive
grace within life and also for life in others. New
Testament testimony does not present us merely with exemplary humanity in the
face of our anxious self-compromises. In reversal of our natural movement from
life to death, we are presented with one from God who experiences the anguish
of our compromises in a movement through death to life. This reversal—from death
to life—is now intrinsic to the gift of life-affirming competence for the integrity
of our humanity in Christ (Rom. 8). The
gospel of God articulates an intimate source of life that has scuttled death—in
Christ as risen Lord of our lives. The gospel also gives our story an ending—in
the good news of Jesus Christ as our source of integral identity. This identity
is formed in Christ otherwise than by various ruses of security, self-standing
or anything imagination can conjure from the dust of the earth. Selected
sources: Brunner, Jenson, Jüngel, McGrath. |
