Friday, April 24, 2020
Death-ready

1 Corinthians 15:55
“O Death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?”

Someone messaged me this week and said that “although death represents the logical – temporal – culmination of the journey we’re on, very few people truly make the appropriate spiritual or philosophical arrangements to deal with its arrival.” This is true even for people of faith. But with Covid-19’s uninterrupted march across the planet from east to west, death is everywhere, and many are forced to confront it at once.

One of my cousins died twelve years ago, he died relatively young too, he was 57. His sister is still mad at him for dying on us like that. As we all tried to cope with the suddenness of it all she blamed him, and holding it against him gave her a mechanism to cope with the loss of her beloved brother.

Coping with such loss is never easy but her blaming him reminded me of an old Guyanese calypso by the Mighty Kaieteur, many of you reading this might not ever have heard of. It’s a story of a drunk walking in the cemetery to visit the grave of a friend who had died, a drinking buddy. After announcing his visit and indicating that he didn’t come alone but brought the rum, he challenged his dead friend with tough questions.

“Why did you answer when Mr death called you? / Why didn’t you hide round the bend? / Why didn’t you smart him the way you do smart me? / Long ropes do have an end.”

Listening to that decades-old calypso now, it is quite evangelical in its scope and reach. He explores the fact that he could not comprehend his friend’s pain as he died, he reflects on how much money he is saving since they weren’t drinking together and then the muses that, the grave he was lying on was the ultimate destiny for all of our bodies someday. It is here that he gets religious and starts talking about changing his life. He asks his friend to “make right” with God and put in a good word for him. He leaves the graveyard, seemingly having had his last drink, and recognising that death is coming for him too declares that there is peace in his soul. (If you have an appetite for old Guyanese calypso listen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIuLnW8ZXP4)

Often it takes death to clarify life. Knowing that death is certain determines how we live. Knowing that death is certain either gives us a sense of posterity and causes us to live to leave a legacy, or causes reckless abandon – eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow we die.

Jesus told the story of a man who lost sight of the inevitability of death and misplaced his focus. The man was blinded by a bountiful harvest and took the wrong road. “And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’” Luke 12:19,20.

Last week my son asked me about my certainty about heaven, hell and meeting God. We talked a bit about it and then I shared with him the words of an old piece by Andraé Crouch – If heaven never was promised to me. Here’s the chorus, “But if heaven never was promised to me, / Neither God’s promise to live eternally. / It’s been worth just having the Lord in my life. / Living in a world of darkness, / You came along and brought me the light.

Jesus told another story about someone who discovered too late that heaven, hell, and meeting God are real. “So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’” Luke 16:22-24

The question that the apostle asked in our key verse is a very strange one. Read in its context, we begin to realise that to defeat death is not to stay alive. Not so long ago an Australian scientist, 104, died after travelling to Switzerland for assisted suicide, he said that he was tired of living. To defeat death is to have the hope of life.

“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”” 1 Corinthians 15:53,54.

The Guyanese poet, Martin Carter, starts out his ‘Death of a Comrade’ with these words, “Death must not find us thinking that we die.” Of course, Carter was speaking in a vastly different context but a truth is a truth.

We defeat death through Jesus’ victory, “which is Christ in us, the hope of glory.” Colossians 1:27

Think on these things:

1. Have you ever had, or do you have now, a fear of death?
2. How has the death of family members or others close to you affected how you live?
3. What do you say to someone who is mourning the loss a loved one?

Prayer focus:

Let us pray today that in times of death, especially the times we’re living through now, we would be able to “comfort those in mourning with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3,4.

In His Grace
Pastor Alex

Notes:

1. This devotional was first published on Friday, July 6, 2018, with the title “Defeated Death” is was edited and updated for meditation during the present Covid-19 pandemic.
2. Photo: Me standing at the head of the casket in the cemetery as my mother’s body was buried in 2005