Category Archives: death

Hands

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In the grip of Christ, we have no need.

My dad drew up my hand and placed it next to my grandfather’s, who was in the casket.  He then placed his next to mine, so that all three were in a row, saying, “You see, Sammy, where you get your hands?”  My young eyes noticed the similarities between my grandpa’s hands, my dad’s, and my own.  Each had the same wrinkly skin and stubby strength, passed on from generation to generation.  In that moment, as a little boy, I learned more than just genetics; I learned that everyone you love, will leave you, no matter how strong his hands.

Our safety in life is not found in all the trivial and temporary things that can be stripped away in a second.  Our comfort in life is not found in plans, pleasures, power, or people, for all will vanish.  If we place ourselves into their greasy hands, we will slip right out.  These things will always let you down.  People will always let you down, your possessions will always let you down, pleasures will always let you down.  None of these have hands that are fit to hold the human soul.

So what should you give yourself to and where is your solace found?  Recently, some have said that religion is not the answer.  They are quick to point out that Religion will let us down, too—that religion hurts, drops, kills.  It is graspless.

When your friends fail, when your money disappears, when your reputation is tattered, where is your comfort to be found?  Even more, when your life itself refuses to breathe again, what is your comfort in death?  What will hold you then?

It seems that we need hands that have been both to heaven and earth.  We need hands that hold the power of the cosmos and that hold the palm of the child.  We need hands that have thrust the stars into their orbits and that have thrust the heart into the human.  We need hands that have both the power to heal and the tenderness to hold.

The hands of Jesus Christ are the hands for us.  Not only did they spin the world into motion, but also they touched the oozing sores of a leper and dried the tears of a prostitute.  They wakened the universe with power and they writhed in pain from mortal nails.  His hands were both divine and dead, miraculous and mortal.

The holes in his hands are a portal through which heaven and earth touch.  And that is where he holds us.  That is our solace and comfort.  That is where we will never be shaken, the spot from which we will never be let go.  In the grip of Christ, we have no need.  In the grip of Christ, we can let go of our troubles, our idols, and our self-definitions.

What is truly, deeply, our only comfort?  Even the most non-religious person can see that our comfort is not in what we can hold onto, for our grasp is so weak and the natural course of this life rips everything out of our grip.  My solace and comfort come not from what I can hold onto, but from Whom is holding onto me.

So reads the Heidelberg Catechism, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”  The answer: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”

You belong to Jesus Christ and he will never let go of you.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.[1]

© Samuel Kee, 2012

[1] Colossians 1:15-17, ESV.

How To Help a Suffering Friend

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Resurrectionless words just make the gaps wider.

As WWII began, some of the students of Dietrich Bonhoeffer were called up to fight for the Germans.  Over half of these future pastors and students would be killed in battle, including Theodor Maass.  In a letter to Maass’ family, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“He was a good brother, a quiet, faithful pastor of the Confessing Church, a man who lived from word and sacrament, whom God has also thought worthy to suffer for the Gospel.  I am sure that he was prepared to go.  Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.  They should remain open.  Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Great gaps were being torn into the fabric of families.  Great gaps were being torn in the human heart, as the brutal war ensued.

As one who depends on words, I find Bonhoeffer’s prescription for suffering both staggering and exact.  Bonhoeffer himself was a lover of words, as an academic, professor, pastor, and writer.  Yet not even he would dare presume his words on this hour of anguish.  His words would never due; never would he minimize the size of the gap by throwing mere human words at it.

When those we love are suffering, let them suffer, in other words.  Let the wound bleed itself to where it needs to bleed.  Mere human words are offensive at the point of great affliction.  Wounds should remain open in order that the pure ointment of God might be applied.

The prescription is the resurrection.  That is our only comfort and solution.  Words that fail to point to the God of the resurrection fail to point to any sufficient help at all.  Resurrectionless words just make the gaps wider and longer.

Because of the resurrection, death just makes us better.  In the shadow of the resurrection, death is forced to bow and worship.  Like a seed thrown down to death in the soil, so will the burial of God’s child lead to better life.  Death gives us life.

We learn two things from this.  First, don’t rush upon a wounded soul with your words.  Let the wound remain open.  Acknowledge the pain of the suffering one, hear their story and allow their wound to open a gap in your heart, as well.  Second, with a few cautious and confident words, tell them about the life that stands at the end of every trial.

I know what you may be thinking: I’m being way too reductionistic, for humans and suffering are incredibly complex.  Nonetheless, I also don’t want to reduce healing down to mere mortal solutions.  Humans are so complex, that nothing short of divine power will ultimately be effective.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

Cut Flowers

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Life carries a little of the beauty of the Source, enough to keep us coming back.

The red flowers on our table were a welcoming bright spot against the brown wall.  They were for our neighbor, who needs some encouragement as the New Year begins.  My wife put the cut flowers in a vase until we could deliver them.  They were so beautiful, red petals surrounding a yellow center.

But I could not get over the irony of the cut flowers.  On the one hand, they were so beautiful and exemplary of life, but on the other hand, they were dead.  Yes, they would look pretty for a few days, but soon it would become obvious that they had been cut off from the life source.  The vibrant petals would fall off and the whole thing would shrivel.  It was only a matter of time.

We are surrounded by cut flowers, existing in a world of lifeless life.  Around me I see traces of life and energy, but really they are hollow.  I see beautiful forms and shapes, but they have no substance to them, no everlasting center.  The natural world around me, so ravishing and fierce, is just a shadow.  It will not last.  The accomplishments that drive me and give me a sense of worth are totally empty.  People in my life, whom I love and who love me, also will not last.  Whether people, pleasures, power, accomplishments, or beauty, everything has been cut off from its life source, and it’s now only a matter of time before every last petal falls off.

Nothing lasts.  Try giving your heart away to something of this world, and it will be broken.  Why?  Because everything dies.  Nothing here can stand the weight of a human heart, with all of its profound longings and needs.

Life carries a little of the beauty and energy of the Source, just enough to keep us coming back for more, but never enough to quench our thirst.  The Germans have a word for this intense longing, sehnsucht.  Sehnsucht is an intense form of missing something.  But what?

I love how the frustrated book of Ecclesiastes puts it, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities!  All is vanity” (1:2).  The writer goes on, “What does mankind gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (1:3).  The answer, of course, is nothing.  No matter how hard we strive, we’ll never find anything that lasts or that satisfies.  Everything is vanity or meaningless or empty.

Empty.  That is a good word to summarize the irony of the cut flower.  And it is a good word to bring to another chapter of the Bible, Isaiah 6.  Here we witness the powerful cries of the fiery beings as they encircle the throne of God.  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!”  To repeat a description twice in Hebrew meant that it was not just comparative, but superlative.  To repeat a description three times was to put it totally out of reach.  We’re to understand that God is not just superlative to us, by completely beyond us.  He is holy, holy, holy.

We’re meant to carry our cry “Vanity, vanity, vanity!” to the throne of God in order to hear the answer, “Holy, holy, holy!” for that is the cure for our search, the life-source itself.  To be holy is to have weight and substance.  “Holy” indicates the stuff that will last, everlastingly.  When we arrive at the throne of God, we arrive at the unbroken source of life, our true home, where everyone longs to return.

Until then, we strive with the leftovers here on earth.  We lay in beds of cut flowers, waiting for that day when nothing dies.

Yet the only way to make it to that day, is to make it to God himself.  And to do that, you have to have a Mediator, someone on whose merits you might travel.  Our Man for the job is Jesus Christ, who was driven out from the presence of God, that we might be driven in.  He stripped himself of his merits and left them to us, that we might have something to bring before our King.

He became a cut flower, that we might be grafted in.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

 

Smudge the Sheep

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God's fences were designed to keep us close.

There once was a sheep named Smudge.  He was just a little guy, whose brother was named Smartie.  Smudge was a very curious sheep and insisted on exploring the world outside of the fence.  So, he diligently searched the fence for an opening.  One day, he finally found one at the bottom and managed to squeeze through it.  His newfound freedom was exhilarating.  He peeked back at his brother, Smartie, who stood inside of the fence, and he felt sorry for him.  Smudge was now free to do whatever he wanted.

In all of his frolicking, Smudge soon began to get hungry.  Looking through the wire fence, he saw his brother suckling at their mother, enjoying her warm milk.  Smudge headed toward the fence, but was unable to find a gap.  The gap that he had crawled through before would not let him through from the opposite direction.  Smudge grew hungrier and hungrier as he searched for a way to get through.  Just then, however, a stray dog came growling down the dirt road where Smudge stood.  The dog lunged toward the tiny sheep, obviously seeking to tear it apart.  Smudge ran as fast as he could down the road, until he found a split rail fence whose gaps were just big enough for him to fit through.  Smudge dove through the rails, just as the dog snapped at his hind legs.

Smudge was safe, or so he thought.  Turning around, he was face to face with a large bull, who was not too pleased at the sight of this little intruder.  Once again, Smudge ran; the mighty bull followed him across the pasture.  Smudge managed to escape on the other side, but almost got hit by school bus when he crossed the road outside of the fence.

In all of the excitement and with night falling fast, Smudge got lost.  Making matters worse, a snowstorm whipped through the air, sending a sudden burst of wind and ice upon the lost sheep.  Soon, Smudge was covered with snow, as his body was unable to out-warm the freezing flakes.  It wasn’t long until Smudge collapsed on the ground and the snow piled upon him.

Later that evening, a girl named Penny happened to stumble upon the mound of snow, discovering the half-froze sheep.  With the help of her mother, she brought Smudge inside the warm house, warmed him with a blow-dryer, and helped him to revive.  She fed him warm milk and nursed him back to health.

This is my summary of a children’s story I read last night.  And I can’t help but thinking about how we like to get to the other side of God’s fence.  We look at God’s laws and think, “Life would really be much better on the other side of this fence.”  We believe that God’s rules are way too restrictive and keep us from having fun.

But life—for Smudge or for us—is not better on the other side of the fence.  The fence is not meant to keep us from having fun, but to keep us from being killed.  On the other side of God’s fence, there are forces that are capable of destroying us.

Here’s another way of looking at it: the “fence” of God’s law is not meant to keep us from fun, but it is meant to keep us close to God.  So that the more fences we crawl under, the farther from God we get.  God’s fences were designed by him to keep us close to the source of life.

His laws are less about what we do not get to do and more about whom we get to be with.  Did you get that?

If you’re trying to find a way through the fence right now, turn around and look at God.  He is your source of life and nourishment and protection and joy.  Yes, joy.  Beyond the fence is danger, not in the sense of risk, but in the sense of stupidity.  Why stray to look for outside of the fence what you can only find inside of the fence?

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Why Do We Have to Die?

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Our DNA is set to die.

“Daddy, if Jesus died for us, then why do we still have to die?”  My son, who was four at the time, was still trying to make sense of his grandpa’s recent passing.  He was looking to me for answers.  I was struck by the depth of his question, born from experience, no less.  At this point, dads, don’t rely on mom to answer the tough questions.  When we’re asked to step up to the plate, we must do so with courage.  If you don’t know the answer to your child’s tough questions, then do what ever it takes to figure it out.

I told him the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey.  The Cyclops was a savage beast with one eye and as tall as a tree.  He managed to lure Ulysses and his men into his cave and then roll a stone in front of the entrance, so that they were trapped and could not escape.  But one night, the men managed to blind the Cyclops while he was sleeping.  Then, they were able to escape!

Before we can escape from the cave, the Cyclops must be defeated.  Applying this to my son’s question, the cave represents death and the Cyclops represents sin.  The assumption behind my son’s question is that humans are alive.  Though this is hard to explain to a four-year-old, we must realize that we are not alive.  Though our bodies are alive physically, our souls are dead spiritually.  Scripture affirms this: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” (Ephesians 2:1-2).

This means that we are already dead; we start off in the cave.  The question is virtually unanswerable if we are alive; as my son said, then it makes no sense that we have to die if Christ already died for us.  But what if Scripture is right in saying that we are not alive, but dead?  Then it’s not a matter of figuring out why we still have to die, but how we can escape from the cave.

The real question is: “How can I escape from the cave of death?”  You see, we were born into the cave and have never lived outside of the cave.  Worse still, we’re being guarded by a monstrous Cyclops who keeps his eye on us at all times.  The only way for us to escape from the cave is if someone deals with the Cyclops.

The Cyclops, remember, is sin.  Someone has to deal with our sin, which is the power inside of the cave (“the sting of death is sin” according to 1 Corinthians 15:56 ), before we can escape from the death-cave.

Whether we like it or not, we are born inside of the cave; there’s nothing we can do about that.  Our DNA is set to die, following the course our souls have already blazed.

By understanding this, we can now see what Jesus’ death does for us.  His death on the cross destroys the Cyclops in the cave.  Though Ulysses and his men merely blind the Cyclops and manage to escape through trickery, Jesus finishes the job.  Jesus utterly destroys death, leaving it limp and powerless.  Having destroyed death, we are free to leave the cave.

This means that we do not have to stay in death any longer.  Did I say that we no longer have to die?  No, I did not.  I said that we no longer have to stay in death.  Remember, we were born inside of the cave; we all will die eventually (excluding the miraculous return of Christ).  But Jesus’ death on the cross means that we do not have to stay in death.  Since Jesus defeated sin, we are free to rise to life.  Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our sins, made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

Because God loves us so much, he defeated sin so that we could escape from death.  Because God loves us so much, he made dead people come alive.  Jesus died for us, not to spare us from death, but to save us from death.  Had Jesus not done that, then we would remain forever in death, a torturous existence apart from God.

Now that Jesus has defeated sin, grab hold of him and let him pull you out of death.  The part about the resurrection of Jesus that thrills me the most is the fact that I can hold onto Jesus and let him pull me to life.  Feel the force of the resurrection pulling you back to life, out of the cave, out of the grave.

Jesus died for us so that we could finally live.  Every fiber in your being should ache at the prospect of coming alive at last.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Death and Football

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The party at the end has a way of correcting our sorrows today.

When my wife was in graduate school at Ohio State University, we had season football tickets.  As you can imagine, the games were electric.  Whenever the Buckeyes would do something great on the field, the crowd would thunder.

There was one cheer that was especially spectacular.  In response to whatever was happening on the field, one side of the stadium would yell out, “O…H!” and then the other side of the stadium would echo back, “I…O!”  This cheer would volley back and forth several times before it ran its course.  Even the innocent football-bystanders would be caught up in the enthusiasm, spraying out from the fans like an overly charged champagne bottle.

There was no sitting on the fence.

If you’re anything like me, you have probably wondered what it would be like after you died.  Would it be peaceful?  Silent?  Would there be regret?  Pride?  How about relief?  Or sorrow? 

I used to think that I shouldn’t wonder about death too much, after all, dead people cannot wonder—so what’s the use.  Sometimes I think I’ll be filled with longing or pain, as I miss my former life.  Other times I think I’ll just be lonely; death has its way of narrowing everything down to you, the individual.  Death becomes an individual experience, as we’re stripped from life and, therefore, relationships.

I even think of individually wrapped bodies at the cemetery, resting just a few feet from each other, yet not able to experience each other, season after season, century after century—a sort of ironic neighborhood.

But God disagrees. 

In fact, in God’s playbook, death turns into pandemonium, more like Ohio State vs. Michigan than an eternal solo sleep.  God describes the core of heaven with nuclear language.  It’s absolute celebration.  All of creation is represented, along with all of God’s people, before the throne, which is wrapped with a rainbow and aglow with lightning and thunder, gushing forth liquid life.  One side of creatures around the throne falls down with passion unmatched by football fans, only to be followed by beings on the other side of the throne, echoing their applause.  “O…H!” “I…O!”

Okay, so maybe we won’t be cheering for Ohio State anymore, for we’ll have something even better to celebrate.  All of our lesser joys in this life will be exceeded by joys in the next life.  Our joy will be unstoppable, for we’ll have finally reached the fount of joy, which is God himself. 

In fact, today’s joys are just watered-down versions of the real thing.  Now don’t get me wrong: life here can be pretty good.  Nonetheless, it pales in comparison to life in the heart-pounding presence of God.  God doesn’t just give us joys to borrow, God is joy.  We don’t experience second-hand love, filtered through jaded humans.  God gives us himself for eternity; and God is love.

The party at the end has a way of correcting our sorrows today.  What if you lived today, knowing that you will be celebrating in the end?  Don’t hear me wrongly, such a correction does not minimize your pain; the beautiful thing is that it rescues it.   

As I’ve said in other posts, life does not end in blood, but glory.  There are no dead-ends in Jesus. 

© 2010 by Samuel Kee