Respond to the Seven Deaths with One Love
Good Morning Friends,
On occasion I get an email back from some of the readers of these devotionals asking me to pray for them or a relative who has been diagnosed with a fatal disease. What do you tell someone like that? How do you respond to a person who knows they are going to die? Do you say: “I’m sorry?” Do you ask them to pray for you? It is awkward because it is painful and there is a problem with pain. Here we discover that the process of death and grieving is complex. Maybe Mother Teresa who honored the dying in the streets of Calcutta, as if they were Jesus, was right. “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” So today, even as we continue our celebration of the Risen Christ, we consider how to Respond to
the Seven Deaths with One Love.
Scripture: Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11.25-26 (NRSV)
For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.
Philippians 1:21 (NRSV)
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—
Romans 5:12 (NRSV)
Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire;
and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Revelation 20:11-15 (NRSV)
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin.
Romans 6:1-14 (NRSV)
for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Ephesians 5:14 (NRSV)
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
James 2:26 (NRSV)
Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”
Hebrews 11:12 (NRSV)
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
I Thessalonians 4:13-18 (NRSV)
Message: It is a mystery knowing what to say even when we have the hope of God’s promise. But being confronted by a person who knows the destiny before them, a person who knows they are mortal, who knows they going to die… and they know when – that’s hard. It can make one a mess trying to respond and that is the last thing anyone needs is your and my mess. Friends, the only deathbed conversion in the Bible that comes to mind is of the thief on the cross next to Jesus…in the presence of Jesus. So don’t assume you are supposed to know what to say. Maybe saying “I am sorry” is enough if said with great love and repentance. But if the Holy Spirit moves you to respond more please make it a priority to demonstrate your love for the person who is dying. Respect the authority of both the person and the Holy Spirit and that in doing so realize that you may indeed need to accept the reality that the person is dying. Friends, bring love not a fight. Bring peace not a fight. But if there is a fight, cheer the person on to victory. As I am writing this morning I am cognizant that the Bible mentions seven different deaths:
- There is the physical death noted in Philippians 1:21
- There is the spiritual death in Romans 5:12
- There is the second death, the continual dying you really want to avoid described in Revelation 20:11-15
- There is the positional death when we identify with Christ in His death through our baptism in Romans 6:1-7
- There is temporal death described in Ephesians 5:14,
- There is operation death, the inability to produce in James 2:26
- There is sexual death, the inability to procreate in Hebrews 11:12.
Friends, inside of each one of us there is the deep seated feeling that…death isn’t right! Somehow we intuitively know that death isn’t natural. We weren’t made to die. And the Bible agrees. Scripture teaches us that we were not created to die. Yet still in so many ways we do die. Perhaps we were not made to live out a short life. We were meant to live life to its fullest. But when someone is dying, whatever kind of death it is, the thinking of it can overwhelm with the emotion of fear. The solution is not a theology lesson, the solution is not thinking about the thinking of dying, but love, for that brings Jesus… that castes out fear.
Pray we realize that even if we are faithless, Christ remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself. Pray we spend less time worrying about saying the “right thing” but spend more time listening and loving. Pray we realize that pain can make us annoyed at just about everything. Pray we realize that if we are playing judge, plaintive and defendant all at the same time we do not have much time left to love. Pray we live life as an opportunity to love and be loved.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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