“Big Fish” is one of my favorite movies. I love the scene in the film when Edward, a ten-year-old boy, and his four curious friends hike into a swamp. They are searching for a ramshackle, vine-covered home. They are hoping to get a peek at the house’s occupant—an old woman reputed to be a witch.
As they crouch in the undergrowth—peering at the eerie house—one of the boys tells his companions a story about the witch’s menacing, mystical glass eye.
“They say,” he explains, “if you look right at her awful glass eye, you can see how you’re gonna die.” Horrified and tantalized, the friends dare each other to approach the house and knock at the door. It’s a hard sell. Catch a glimpse of your demise in a witch’s enchanted eye!? Most of them flee in terror.
What would you do?
To glimpse that sight—to watch a film-clip of our final breathing moments—seems threatening. Do we want to know what our final scene will look like? Will I die gracefully? Awkwardly? Tragically? When death comes for me will I be alone? Or surrounded by loved ones? Will I die unexpectedly with countless items left on my to-do list? Or will I die at peace—satisfied with this life?
These are intimidating questions. Can we possibly cope with a peek at the answers?
Perhaps death is best left as a surprise. For if we were to witness our end—our concluding act on earth—it might change how we approach life. Yes, of course, we know that we are all going to die some day, but we don’t live each day with pictures of our final, fated moments propped up next to our computer screens.
Something like that could seriously mess a person up. Right?
Our choices—our day-to-day decisions—depend on us forgetting that we are finite. Don’t they? What do you think? If you were offered the opportunity to see the moment of your own death would you look?
This Sunday at FAPC, we are going to be talking about death: our friends’ deaths, our own death, the death of Jesus, and Jesus’ defeat of death. We are going to be talking about what we do as people of faith when one of our own dies: funerals and memorial services. We are going to talk about the ways in which we hand our loved ones back to God.
Will you come and look?
I hope so. Leading us on this journey is no frightful specter, but Dr. Thomas G. Long, one of America’s finest preachers and religious scholars. He will challenge us to look at death in a different way—a distinctively Christian way. Trust me, my friends, this event is not to be missed.
Dear Pastor Black Jonhston,
Thank you for tackling such a core issue of our faith !
I won’t be able to make it on Sunday, so i look forward to reading your sermon.
My husband’s grandparents died at an old age (98) and in their last years, they were used to calling God aloud to take them. They were yearning to go to his kingdom. While we could attribute their longing to their failing health, i think it was much deeper than that. I think their faith was so strong that they were ready to leave this world with no regrets and with great hope for the future. They were still deeply attached to their family, and whenever I visited from NYC (they lived in Madagascar), they would always cry fearing it would be the last time we would see each other. Still, they would ask aloud daily for God to come.
What their lives told me is that there is a faith that makes you love both being on earth and looking forward to God’s kingdom in the after life. That those two attitudes not only are not mutually exclusive, but actually are intricately related.
Thus, i came to the conviction that it is by thinking regularly of death that one can live life to its fullest. That not only shouldn’t we hide death away from our lives, we should medidate on it regularly. And altough it may seem counter intuitive at first, it is through this path only that we may find serenity.
My catholic priest cousin in Madagascar would always say that death is absent in the western world, we almost never encounter it for real. My own children, age 9, 8 and 6, born in France and in NYC, saw a casket for the first time outside Saint Patrcik’s cathedral, a few weeks ago. I did not like the sense of schock i saw in their eyes, as it was evidence of how far they were from realities and as a consequence, how unprepared they were to face death in their own lives. It showed me how fragile they were, and i felt guilty for it.
I myself have not reached the serenity of my husband’s grandparents in the face of death, but at least i feel that having seen death and comunity grieving playing a huge visible social role in Madagascar while growing up, there is no way for me to escape the realities of death.
More often than my children, i need to face the questions death raises, and as i reflect on it, i live better for doing so.
I am glad that FAPC is offering us specifically this sunday a chance to strenghten ourselves and our loved ones regarding a core fragility in our human lives.
Nadia Ramanantsoa
Nadia,
Thanks for sharing this! I agree that we have an unhealthy distance from death in this culture. The kind of exposure that you are talking about does indeed help us contemplate how we will live.
Bless you,
SBJ
Scott – Big Fish is one of my favorite movies, too. I had a good conversation with a friend at work yesterday about the time he was run over by a car. He said it took him about 2 months to truly realize what people meant when they said that he could have died that day. He is a younger fellow and that 2 months later moment was the time that he realized that even though he was unable to walk ( he his fine now) it was not his time to go. We shared scar and scare stories. We came to the end of the conversation with the idea that we have to get as much out of life as we can because our time could be up at any time. We talked about these books, too.
We asked each other the same question you are asking here. We shared that to relish and appreciate the gift of life is a worth pursuit.
To answer your questions: I think if there was such a thing as an “All-Telling-Eye-Opportunity” I would not look. If I knew how I left this world and it was a bland I would probably vainly dismiss it. If were a glorious one, I would be vain about that too. I probably would respond like Scrooge, and ask if these are shadows of things that will be or that might be? I would not look.
Well said. By the way, I love the phrase “scare-and-scar stories.”
-SBJ
I am just completely envious of your guest preacher. Nice get, as they say.
Was Professor Long’s post-sermon talk recorded and available to listen to online?
It was filmed. I believe a video is being produced.
I read this post and these comments the day of Whitney Houston’s funeral. I loved Whitney’s voice but her songs didn’t always do it for me. Still, I wept as I listened to various people speak and sing for about thirty minutes. The grief rolled through technology and out of the TV screen. So did the passionate and joyous faith of those I saw and heard. They spoke over and over again of their loss and ours, but Whitney’s gain of going home to Jesus. I felt like I’d been to a transformative service when I finally stood up.
I don’t want to know how and when God will take me home. I just want to be a channel for His joy and beauty while I’m here. I should be so blessed, to be that channel.