What to do with death. . .

There was a time -- about the time our family was little -- when it was considered bad child rearing to mention death.  The nighttime prayer I knew as a child was altered to remove any possibility that if I went to sleep I might not arise.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take became Guide me, Jesus, through the night, wake me with the morning light.  There were other iterations of that prayer that likewise sanitized the bedtime prayer of any hint of the dreaded "d" word.  It was not only in the bedtime prayers that death was banished from children, funerals suddenly became adult gatherings and children were largely absent and shielded from the death of even parents and grandparents.  It was all an attempt to keep the shadow of death from eclipsing the sun of our happiness.

At some point in time, death was transformed.  It became natural.  It also become something other than death.  In the great circle of life, death was not the end or an end but merely a passing onto a better state.  The causes of climate change, preservation, and ecology combined to paint death as the emptying of the jar so that the spirit of the person might fly free.  The death scene devastated audiences, both kids and adults alike, but the film was an enormous hit -- in part because the death became not a death but a kind of victory.   The circular flow of life and death and how "everything you see exists together in a delicate balance," kept the death from being, well, death.  Mufasa was still there in the spiritual world and he rejoined his son for a victory lap at the end -- smiling because all was well.  It was not quite a resurrection and not quite a death either.  It appealed to Christians struggling to figure out what death was for them in light of Christ and it appealed to the spiritual but not religious who just wanted happiness and everything resolved in the end.

Now we have entered another phase.  Death is now a choice.  If you hurt too much or despair for your future or face a diagnosis you cannot live with, death is there in a painless form with a medical stamp of approval and the understanding of a world sure that sometimes life is worse than death.  Imagine that.  Living is worse than dying!  And living is not worth living if you cannot have what you want, be who you want to be, or enjoy what you want to enjoy.  So our medical establishment has stepped up to the plate.  The same drugs that could not guarantee a painless death for the person on death row have become the staple of those who want to peacefully end their lives.  It seems that many do not even care if there is anything after death so long as they get to be in control of their dying as well as their living.  Perhaps the prayer will change again.  Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if life becomes too much for me, just let me die peacefully.  Death is now welcomed by those who think life is not worth the living.

In the end, the resurrection of our Lord and the resurrection of the body and the dead seem not such a big deal.  At least for those who found the whole idea of a tomb without body or bones too much to swallow.  In any case, the lynch pin of the Christian faith has always been that life is real, death is real, Jesus really lived and really died, but He rose never to die again and with a glorious flesh no longer subject to death or any of its temporal ills that might lead to death.  The Pharisees and Sadducees argued over whether there was a resurrection at all and maybe we have ended up right back there.  The scandal of the cross and empty tomb were always to be the places where faith lived or died.  We have finally gotten back there again.