"The living should take this to heart"

 

A good name is better than fine perfume,
    and the day of death better than the day of birth.
² It is better to go to a house of mourning
    than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
    the living should take this to heart.
³ Frustration is better than laughter,
    because a sad face is good for the heart.
⁴ The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
    but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

Ecclesiastes 7:1-4

We’ve been talking a bit about death recently, my wife and I. Why so? Well, mainly because we have quite suddenly become conscious of our getting old (both in our seventies) with all that that means: new aches and pains, and increasing weakness and inability to do things we never even used to have to think about. You could say a sharp new reality has kicked in.

We’ve even bought what we call our “death book”. It’s a glorified exercise book in which we each jot down various practical matters which we feel the one of us who is left behind would benefit from having to hand, if they don’t already – things as varied as bank account numbers and hymns and songs we feel might be appropriate for our respective funerals. (I heard recently about the emergence of “death cafes”, where people meet to share together something of the experience of preparing for death; all very cheerful, I’m told.)

Each day my wife and I share together a few minutes with the Bible and prayer, taking turns to choose the Bible passage. This is the background against which my wife chose Ecclesiastes 7:1-7 the other day (with, I might say, a slightly wicked smile on her face), and which I thought it might be worth reflecting on.

On the face of it the writer could be dismissed as just a complete misery-guts: “the day of death is better than the day of birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting”. Are we really expected to take such an outrageous saying seriously? Surely not!

Well, let’s recognise first that in the so-called “wisdom” books of the Bible (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Song of Songs) the purpose of the various writers is to stimulate thought – and to do that sometimes by throwing out provocative and controversial opinions to wake people up. We shouldn’t treat the wisdom books the same way we treat the factual, history books (like Kings, Chronicles or the Gospels), or books of reasoned argument (like the letters of the New Testament). In this case it’s as if the writer is saying: “I’ll give you something to think about, so just listen to me…!” After shaking our heads in bewilderment we hopefully might find ourselves saying, “Actually, I think I can see his point…”

Well, if that’s right, what might that point be?

I would sum it up like this: The fact is that life is a serious business, and to refuse to take it seriously is to miss the point of what really matters. Humour is a great gift, and humourless people are a drag on both themselves and those around them. But by the same token the person who is never serious, the person who refuses to get to grips with the general realities of life drives everyone around them to distraction - ”Will you please be serious for a minute!” Wasn’t there a pop-group once who used to declare to the world that “girls just wanna have fun”? Well, that’s all very well; but sorry, it simply isn’t the way things are.

If we need a bit of seriousness, what better place to go to than a funeral? A Christian funeral, of course, may be an event of great peace, hope and even joy – thanks be to God for that! – but it is bound also to be an event with a deep substratum of seriousness: we find ourselves in touch with the deepest realities of our human lives. We find ourselves also confronting questions which it’s very easy to try to avoid most of the time. And a funeral draws us together as a community: it reminds us of the immeasurable value of the people we live around, even if day by day we are tempted to take them for granted.

We are all grateful for the cheerful, funny people in our lives. No problem with that (and even Ecclesiastes recognises it: “when times are good, be happy”, 7:14). But when things are hard do we not instinctively turn to the serious people, the people with a bit of depth to them?

The Bible takes death very seriously. Paul describes it as “the last enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:26) – last, yes, but still an enemy. When Stephen was killed by the mob, we read that “godly men buried him and mourned deeply for him” (no stiff upper lips there) (Acts 8:2). Paul also assures us that after death “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). To state the obvious, the resurrection of Jesus changes everything for those whose trust is in him.

So why not look it fairly and squarely in the face? As Ecclesiastes 7:2 says: “The living should take this to heart” (can’t you almost see the writer wagging his finger?)

An after-thought… If what I have said is right, does it affect how we should think about “assisted dying”?

My impression is that most Christians are very uneasy about this proposed change in the law, and my tendency is to go along with them. But let’s be careful. The world we live in tends to view death as the worst thing that can ever happen to us, and that the prolongation of life is supremely what matters. But surely no Christian can ever accept that.

Go back to Paul: at a time when he sensed that his earthly life was reaching its end he wrote: “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). That’s not just a sentiment for “super-saints”: no, that’s for every man and woman who simply trusts in Jesus crucified and risen.

We have something to teach the world by the way we live. Should we not have something to teach it too by the way we die?

Father, I don’t know when death may come for me, and I’m not looking forward to it. But just as I seek daily to glorify Jesus by my living, please grant me grace also to glorify him by my dying. Amen.