Current thoughts on the passing of my Dad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My father passed away around 12:15pm on May 28th, 2021. We (his family) were with him as he died. He was 74. After pondering the different waves of emotions and grief (and joy), I think the feeling that has stood out to me the most with such fierce intensity is a sense of the wrongness of death.

A well known phrase I’ve heard all my life (and been told directly) is “Death is just a part of life”. It’s a phrase that I have always heard come from hearts of compassion and love of those genuinely attempting to console a grieving friend or family member. And I’ve always been thankful for such kindness. But it’s a phrase I can’t help wanting to examine.

 

Now in the grand scheme of things - the cosmic plan of redemptive history under the sovereign hand of God, showing his Glory by reconciling sinners to himself - this phrase most certainly is true. Death IS a part of the life that Christ won for us. And what one sows does not come to life unless it dies. (2 Corinthians 15:36)

 

But in another sense, when this phrase is given from strictly a naturalistic worldview, I feel a very different response.

 

When I pull up a video taken from just a few months ago and see my Dad and hear his voice…hearing him laughing with my son…see his smile on a face full of life…and then consider the phrase “Death is just a part of Life”, everything in me wants to respond, “No. No..it’s not!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death feels wrong. It feels like an error. Like a string breaking on a violin amidst a beautiful symphony, or an actor forgetting his lines in a play. The Bible says that when God completed the universe (before sin and death was in it) he looked at it and “saw that it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31). When I now walk up to my parent’s front porch....I see that empty rocking chair as very bad. I feel it’s wrong. The chair SHOULD be filled, and I should be next to him, watching the stars come out on these beautiful summer evenings we've been having recently here in Tennessee...just as we did together so many times. And I believe that an aspect of the humanity of Jesus felt the same.

When Jesus approached the tomb of his friend Lazarus - knowing completely what he was about to do - the Bible records that he still “wept”. (John 11:35). In verse 33 and 38 it describes Jesus being “deeply moved” and I’ve been told (by people far smarter than me) that in the Greek this phrase suggest a kind of agitation and anger - that it would probably be better translated as, “He was indignant.” I remember a former Sunday school teacher of mine once pointing out that the phrase was the same that would describe a horse literally snorting as if about to do battle. And in that moment what Christ is about to do battle with doesn't feel like "a part of life."

I’ve wondered recently how quick we’d be to tell a grieving couple who lost their 6 year old to cancer, or to a  young wife who lost her husband in a car accident that death is just a part of life. I think that most of us would feel a sense of inappropriateness in that setting. We’d feel a vigorous emotion that such a death, “was not supposed to happen.” It would feel as an enemy. But I sometimes feel as if the world seems to want to tell me that an aging father passing away should produce a different response. That it should be "accepted".

But I guess my point in all this is I can’t.

 

 

 

 

 

This death (as well as the death of my grandparents) feels it should not have happened because death itself should not happen - be it a child or a 95 year old with a rich, full life that peacefully passes away in their sleep. Because death in any sense IS an enemy. And it’s an enemy that Christ came to destroy. (1 Corinthians 15:26) And my prayer for myself is that the sense of the wrongness of death would point me to what is equally the wrongness of sin. Because the apostle Paul argues in one of my favorite passages that that the two are connected.

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” -1 Corinthians 15:56-57

I love this passage because it displays in just two small sentences the massive truth of the Gospel. All death is connected to sin. And no amount of religious law keeping, or secular humanitarianism of “just trying to be a good person” will ever defeat it because we don’t have what it takes. Our “goodness” compared to God’s perfect and holy righteousness is like a fading match compared to the trillions and trillions of burning stars throughout the cosmos. But what we see in the incarnation, cross and resurrection is how God GIVES us that very righteousness we need to enjoy him forever. It is a gift. (Ephesians 2:8) And the message of the Bible is revealing that gift and calling us to FREELY take it-without a righteousness of our own.

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” - Isaiah 55:1

"For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith..." Philippians 3:8-9

As far as I can remember, whenever I overheard someone ask my Dad, “How are you?”…he would respond by saying, “Well, the sun came up, and the good Lord let me live another day.” I heard him say this to the nurses even in the very last days that he could communicate. My dad saw that the Lord was good, and that his own life was always in His hands. And I believe he saw the gospel as the gift it is, and that he took it. I can rejoice in that.

His death still feels wrong. And I think it will for the rest of my life. I am filled with sorrow. But I know my sorrow will one day turn to joy. Not just because I believe I will embrace him again one day…but I will embrace the one who made him— the one of whom he reflected in all his kindness, strength, and love as my Dad. The one of whom the summer night stars declare. (Psalm 19)

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
-1 Corinthians 15:55