Dying Well

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Passionate Spirituality series #8
Psalm 23 Romans 8:36-39; 14:7-9

It may not surprise you, but I found myself wanting to do anything else this week, except write a meditation on dying well. There was that phone call to make, the email to send, the next cup of coffee to warm up. It was harder than even writing a eulogy for a funeral, because at a funeral I can spend time reflecting on the person’s life, and not simply on the reality that we all will die. But today we are not focusing on that inevitability of death. We are focusing on the possibility of living a full life.

Through Paul’s letter to the Romans, we are reminded that nothing separates us from love. Eugene Peterson’s bible translation The Message speaks of it this way: “I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”

It is likely we each know someone who has faced death, or we know someone who is facing death, with courage and grace. They knew that what would happen would not separate them from God or God’s love. But somehow, and this is where I struggle in my own reconciling with death, they knew or know that it does not separate them from the love of those around them: their children, their spouses and lovers, their parents, their friends. They knew that it would not separate them from their love of beauty, of poetry, of the smell of fresh bread baking. They know that it will not separate them from the songs that they love to sing in church, the love of a good belly laugh, the love of cuddling with a small child, or the love of a passionate kiss with the one they spent much of their lives with.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Live as if you will die tomorrow. Learn as if you will live forever.” You have to admit, Gandhi was a spunky guy. There is also a spunky person out there among you. When we did the survey asking which spiritual practices you’d like us to address during this series, one of you, and I don’t know who, checked “dying well,” but also added at the bottom of the page, “living well.”

I like being in an a spunky congregation where we can begin to understand that death is not all there is to life, it’s not a period at the end of a sentence. It is a semi-colon, separating two different yet similar thoughts. The theologian among us who rightly encouraged living well as part of dying well encourages us, as Gandhi did, to continue learning into death, and loving into the next world.

Amy Plantingo Pauw reflects that “dying well grows out of the Christian community’s attempt to live well before God in the present.” We have all heard stories or known people preparing for death, who feel the urgent need to get things in order, and not just their finances. They want to see the things they never saw, say the things they never said, forgive the person they never forgave. When death is imminent, not just some vague inevitability, we are somehow forced to live passionate lives.

If we were to live as if we will die tomorrow we might seek reconciliation, welcome others into our lives, make decisions based on what our heart tells us, pray to God for our families and the world we will leave behind…we might see God in the world around us, we might cherish children and revel in awe, we might be bowled over with gratitude and rise into the beauty of simplicity. That sounds like a passionate life to me.

Soon after Torin and I arrived here to be pastors, we recognized there were two large “spirits” that we felt powerfully present. One was of your previous pastor Cameron, who now lives with his family in Canada. And the other, as you may guess, was the spirit of Dennis Overman. For those of you who are new our congregation, Dennis and Sue were married for 33 years. He died in 2000 from complications with a heart valve replacement. Dennis’ death came quite quickly, and Sue and this congregation were given little time to prepare. Sue has written a wonderful book on her experience, a compilation of her email correspondence with friends and family up to Dennis’ death and in the year following.

Many of you had the blessed experience of loving Dennis into the next life, and walking with Sue as she grieved, and lived, and learned to love once more. And what is apparent to me, even not knowing him but in Sue’s reflections and through your memories, is that Dennis didn’t just die. Dennis died well. Dennis died a death that can guide our living. Here is Sue’s entry on Saturday December 4, about a month before he died.

Dear Everyone, I had a really great night’s sleep—seven hours. I awoke a little before six and called ICU. They said Dennis was doing great and asked if he always talks my ear off. He had been talking all night long. I got up there soon after seven, and was amazed when I discovered I had been there over two hours. He told me marvelous things. He told me that the fact he was still here was a miracle… He said it is a turning point in our lives and life is going to change. He said … “Will I be saying when I die, ‘I wish I had sat at my desk more and taught more anatomy’ or will I say, I wish I had taken that cruise?’ I won’t be saying that because we will take that cruise.” To be honest, [continued Sue] I had no idea we wanted to take a cruise, but I am happy to go along…I couldn’t believe some of the things he was saying.

I’m sure that even before Dennis was facing the real possibility of death, in many ways he was living a life, as Gandhi said, as if he would die tomorrow. But we know he never took that cruise, they never taught in Finland or Sweden. But he did die well. You all helped him die well. Part of dying well is getting outside of ourselves and realizing death isn’t all about us. It isn’t about separating us. It’s about helping others die in love, and being God’s love for them.

“Those who face death experience the living presence of God through the living presence of the community that cherishes and mourns them,” says Amy Plantingo Pauw. Shortly before Christmas, about two weeks before Dennis died, Sue wrote: “This is just a quick note to tell you we were on the other side this evening. When the church group went caroling they came here first. It is such a beautiful evening that Dennis went outside and sang with them. Then he sent them off to the “old and sick people.”

Dying well means living well. Dying well means loving deeply in this life, loving deeply in our souls this gift of life that God gave us so that however our souls live on, that love with be there…the voice, the poetry, the scent of bread, the tingle of a kiss, the exhaustion from laughter. That love is in our souls, and not separated from us, from God, from God’s love for us, for our love for each other.

Sometimes I struggle, because I don’t know if I would rather have God’s love for the rest of eternity, or the love of Torin, Sebastian, and Alistair; to know more fully Jesus’ love for me or to be able to love the things that I love right now, in the way that I love them right now. I don’t want to be without those things. Can God’s love give me those things in death? Can God assure me that the love that helps me get out of bed every day will be waiting for me after I die? Can God assure me that what helps me love God as I live in this earthly realm won’t be taken away from me in death? This may sound all jumbled up to you, but I bet you understand.