Good Friday- "Dealing with Death"       
          
 
          An acquaintance recently said that when she dies, she wants to be cremated and her ashes spread into the ocean. The reasons were plain to her: she has spent enough years as a secretary inside offices that she doesn’t want to end up in a filing cabinet, as she calls a mortuary drawer a.k.a- columbarium niche. When it comes to being buried she claims she doesn’t want to wake up all of a sudden and be trapped in a coffin; virtually an impossibility in the U.S. She told the story too, that sometimes persons were buried with a string tied around their finger, tied to a bell above ground- just in case…
          Craig Barnes is a Presbyterian minister who teaches in seminary now. But when he was a pastor in Washington, D.C., he was talking with a couple in pre-marital counseling. They were desperately in love. Plans were coming together beautifully. And then, all of a sudden, the groom-to-be blurted out, "I just have to say that I am so scared of this!" His fiancé got a horrified look on her face, and he tried to explain that what he was afraid of was not marrying her, but losing her. "When my mother died, the grief was so horrible, and I feel like I love you even more. I just don't know how I could deal with it, if something happens to you." Dr. Barnes reminded him that 100 percent of all marriages come to an end, some prematurely through divorce or early death, but all end, eventually, one way or another. The best scenario, he told them, is that they will grow more in love over the course of their lifetime together, and then it will hurt even more when the end comes. Here's his point: You can either go through life fearing that any day you will lose the one you love, in which case you will not be living in faithful love at all but in fearful loss. Your spirit to be self-giving in love will be slowly dying because you won’t want to lose. Or, you can die to the notion that you will be able to hold onto your beloved forever, to keep him or her safe, in which case you are free to seize the day and embrace the love as a gift from the giver of life.
          One of the most difficult issues to deal with in life, is our own death. It can be incredibly difficult to discuss with those we love, our wishes in the case that medical care might keep us alive or allow us to die. One of the biggest stories lately has been the Terry Schiavo story. If there are many lessons to learn from that story, then one lesson is-- that we need to make sure our loved ones know what we would desire in the case that we cannot make healthcare decisions for ourselves. Of course our choices may change at different times of our lives and we need to share and document our changing concerns. By sharing our desires, and the best way is in writing, we relieve the burden from our loved ones.
          Peter, so desperately wants to defend the life of Jesus, that he takes extreme measures. But it is Jesus, who is able to take this tremendous burden off Peter’s shoulders. It is Jesus who says to Peter, "Put back your sword. Do you think for a minute I'm not going to drink this cup the Father gave me?" Jesus is able to take the burden from Peter. Peter has come ill-equipped for the day that Jesus has been talking about all along. Peter has brought a sword to fight with might, when he should have brought his faith to proclaim those three times that night.
If only loved ones were better able to express their desires for the end of life, then much suffering would be relieved, both on the part of that person and their family, but more often this conversation remains a frightening exchange of hidden wishes and ambiguous body language. There is no dignity lost in asking not to die in a hospital bed. Indeed, most of us would probably like to experience the “good death” of drifting off in a painless sleep.
          The most expensive costs of healthcare are spent in the last months of peoples’ lives. “Medicare is the largest funding source for end-of-life care, serving more than 80 percent of people who die in the United States each year. Approximately one–quarter of Medicare’s annual budget is spent on its beneficiaries’ last year of life.
          We must be faithful to God by contemplating for ourselves how many resources can we consume in the last days of our lives; we must share with our loved ones- where is the end point, when is it is finally ok to let go and to let God.
          God has given his life that we might live. God has released us from the huge burden of justifying ourselves in the face of death. God has promised that our death will not be meaningless, but full of God’s promise.

          If you have not shared your healthcare choices in writing, then pick up a packet on how to do this in the lobby, after we conclude with prayer.
Let us stand as we are able, and let us Pray…