Old Notes: Fixation on Death

captured to my phone on Sunday, June 25, 2017 at 11:15 am (finally posted to my blog on Sept. 2018)

Notes from the sermon. Just taking notes, summarizing, a little commentary, no re-writing or polishing.

A "good death"

- peaceful, in your sleep

- with no loose ends

Do we have a fixation with death in the U.S.? Lots of TV shows about solving crimes, plus the news. And yet we work pretty hard to avoid death (and things that represent or make us think of death or remind us of our own mortality.)

We sequester death. We pursue stuff that makes us think of life + shiny stuff, new stuff, the latest stuff. If we're not careful, we can turn that pursuit into its own gospel: avoiding sin, suffering, despair, pain if we just do the right thing.

And then we start working to protect what we have and keep others at bay. The have-nots, the sufferers, the sinful are to be avoided because they are reminders of what we could become. 

But Jesus, unafraid fo death, goes where we won't, says what we won't say, loves people we avoid. In fact, not only isn't he afraid of death, he chooses it.

Reading the Bible as Western Americans... We read "sin" as "wrong personal choice" and yet that's far too limiting. If it was just choice, that's way too easy.  But it's much deeper - so deep that we must die, we must change everything. (Geeky - We need a whole new operating system?)

Family Man - Nicholas Cage - you can't possess your identity, you can only receive it. 

Jesus recieves his identity from God, spending his life revealing God. 

We no longer have to fear death, but it is a wholesale change, a new identity, a new reality, a new way of living in the world. Success and possession are no longer motivators because we are to dead to that process, to move to receiving and relying on God. 

Now that we don't have to be afraid any more, we can be on mission. Now that what we have is a gift from God, there's no fear in giving it away. None of us are good enough, smart enough, rich enough to escape death. 

So what should we do with what we are given? (And we're not just talking about stuff now.)

Of course, it doesn't mean we can now expect a life free of pain. It doesn't mean we stop planning for the future (we still live in a world which requires house payments). It doesn't mean we are all the same - diversity and variety is clearly part of this world.  It doesn't mean we will never sin again. It doesn't mean that we don't struggle daily to try to cling to our old life. 

We keep reading the Bible through our Western individualist mindset, but we need to remember that we are all interconnected. We admit sin together, we mourn together, we suffer together, we lift each other up, we celebrate together.

We (Christians) should be putting therapists out of business because we should be, in community, lifting each other up, supporting each other, loving each other, serving together.