If you are susceptible at all to the charms of science fiction I recommend The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. In it, the space traveler, named Genry, comes to a planet where they can actually foretell the future. He is amazed that this ability makes no difference in their lives. He says, “You have a gift that men on every world have craved. You can predict the future. And yet you live like the rest of us — it doesn’t seem to matter.” The native answers in this way. “We perfected and practice Foretelling to exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question. Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is the sure, predictable, inevitable — the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?” Genry answers, “That we shall die.” “Yes. There’s really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer… The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.” It has become unfashionable of late to talk about death. There is even a book called The Denial of Death. Maybe in the past all of us heard too much of “fire and brimstone” which generated a religion of fear. But the right question to answer must include death — the sure, the predictable, the inevitable — in the context of a religion of love. Our scripture readings this Sunday give us an opportunity to ask the question of life and death.
Notice that in the Bible talk of death does not generate fear but “eternal consolation and hope,” as St. Paul puts it. Jesus insists that “God is the God not of the dead but of the living. All are alive for him.” There is a human tendency to look on the other side of death as an experience completely alien to what we are now going through. Like the Sadducees we can get exercised imagining what it will be like. For Jesus all life is life in God no matter which side of the grave you happen to be on. It is by attending to life, not speculating about the other side of death, that we are faithful to God. So, on the one hand we do not have to flee from death, we can look death squarely in the eye. When we have loved ones who are saying good-bye to earthly existence we weep with hope knowing all the while that this is not the final chapter. On the other hand we are not attracted by death either. One of the tragedies of our age is the number of young people who commit suicide. The pain of existence becomes unbearable and they see death as a way to make the hurting stop. We must plant deep in our being and share with one another how good and valuable life is. No matter how deep the ache we are promised that the God who loves us will “console [our] hearts and strengthen them for every good work and word.” By attending to the healing which God accomplishes our pains are eased. To enter more deeply into the life which God wants to give, not fleeing from it, is to find the strength and mercy of God’s love. We die to our hurts not by ending them but by surrendering them into “the love of God and the constancy of Christ.”
Jesus asks us to regard all of life, even that stage of life called death, mindful that God is God of the living. To ask the right question requires a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of soul. Because death is a stage of life we must change our minds; we must clarify what is truly real, what is most important in life. All those things we ordinarily pursue – a good job, good health, good family, good income, good reputation – all those things are not ends in themselves but ways of becoming more alive, a better and fuller human being. We are to do that which will enable us to live as God intends — in peace and fulfillment. We must eliminate ways of thought which separate us from who God made us to be. Only then will death as the final stage of growth in life make sense.
We must also change our hearts. We must change the way we make choices from seeking satisfactions to following values. The seven brothers and their mother in the first reading could endure martyrdom because of the value that they placed on following the law of God. They decided the value of faith made their deaths meaningful. So too a change of heart requires each of us to seek what is truly valuable. Too often we go for the immediate “bang” instead of pursuing values that last. Once we decide to follow the values we aspire to death becomes the final stage of growth.
We must therefore change our souls. Death is not frightening once life is not frightening. When Jesus wanted to explain life and death he remembered specific people — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Only in understanding a concrete individual can the correct perspective is attained. But each person is a mixed bag and there is a risk involved in committing ourselves to them. For Jesus, though, the risk is worth it for all are alive for God. When we can pass over into another’s soul we find the same battered, bruised, bashful beings which we are. All human life is precious since “the Lord keeps faith.” Our changed souls discover the true worth of every human life.
When the great guru was dying all of his disciples were distressed. The master asked, “Don’t you see that death gives loveliness to life?” “No,” they answered. “We’d much rather you never died.” The master said, “Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.”