This summer we have had plenty of reminders of the fragility
of life. We have seen young Irish
students die in a balcony collapse in California, there have been the shootings
in North Carolina and Tunisia, and much closer to home we have had the death of
our beloved sister Flora. Many people
ask the question ‘why?’ when death comes to our door, but I also want to look
at the ‘who’ and ‘how’ of death.
1. We are
not told why tragedy strikes some and not others
In Jesus’ day the popular thinking was that if tragedy
struck your home you must have done some specific wrong. Yet
Jesus takes two events from that time and says that they did not happen because
the people were worse sinners than others.
This passage begins with some people telling Jesus about
people from Galilee who Pilate murdered, and then added their blood to the
sacrifices they were offered. They were
the victims of someone else’s brutality—like the victims in Tunisia, North
Carolina. Many people asked, ‘where was
god on 9/11?’
Jesus knows what these people are thinking and asked, ‘Do
you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because
they suffered this way?’ He then answers
his own question, ‘I tells you, no!’
Then he reminds them of the terrible accident where eighteen
people died when the tower in Siloam fell on them. A tragic accident—like the collapsing balcony
in Berkeley! Again Jesus asks, ‘Do you
think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in
Jerusalem?’ ‘No …’
There are times when God punishes those in blatant rebellion
against him and even uses illness to lovingly discipline his children. But the passage that we have before us
reminds us that we can never assume that anyone’s illness or death is due to a
particular sin in their life. My
favourite Bible Commentator, Don Carson, writes:
'Practically speaking … it is almost always wrong, not to
say pastorally insensitive and theologically stupid, to add to the distress of
those who are suffering illness, impending death, or bereavement, by charging
them with either some secret sin they have not confessed or inadequate faith …
The first charge wrongly assumes that there is always a link between a specific
ailment and a specific sin; the second wrongly assumes that it is always God’s
will to heal any ailment, instantly, and he is blocked from doing so only by
inadequate or insufficient faith.'
We are not told why some people live to an old age and
others die in the prime of their life.
We are not told why all of the apostles, except for John, died before
they were old. We are not told why
Elijah was taken in a chariot to heaven while Elisha dies of an illness. Job’s children had committed any specific wrong
to cause them to die in a disaster. There
is something of a frustrating silence when we ask ‘why me?’, ‘why this?’, or
‘why now?’
2. We are told how death entered our world
The Bible might not tell us why some suffer in some ways and
others suffer in different ways, it does tell us how we ended up living in a
world where death affects everyone.
The book of Genesis tells us of the rebellion of the
original humans. Satan tempted them
saying, ‘eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you will be like
God.’ It was an act of treason—an
unwillingness to live under God’s loving rule.
Everything changed with that act of evil. The apostle Paul writes, ‘just as sin came
into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to
all men because all sinned’ (Romans 5:12).
The reality is that even those who survive accidents and avoid illness
eventually die too. I walked by a
funeral home yesterday and was reminded of the story of the unpopular undertaker
who used to sign his letters, ‘yours eventually.’
The great Christian thinker Francis Schaffer died of cancer.
In the latter part of his life, when he realised that he was dying, he said
that it was the Bible’s teaching on the fall that helped him and his family
grasp what was happening from a Christian angle. In an article he said, ‘I
think I can best explain my own reaction to the news that I had cancer by
telling you the response of my four children. Each said the same thing in their
own way. “Dad, we couldn’t have taken it if you hadn’t emphasised the fall so
completely in your teaching.” It is the same for myself,’ wrote Schaffer, ‘I
feel that no Christian can face honestly the troubles and the obscenities of
this life—the sorrows, the tears, the ugliness, the cruelties unless we have a
very firm belief and comprehension of what the fall is all about; and what we
have to realise is that we live in an abnormal world, and not to be surprised
when these things come upon us as they do other people.’
3. We are
told who is the answer to death
No words are more triumphant, in the face of death, than
when Jesus declares, ‘I am the resurrection of the life, they who believe in
me, though they shall die, yet will they live.’
Jesus is the person who is the answer to death.
Death and life are deep words in the New Testament, with a
number of layers of meaning. Death can
refer to the physical death that all people face, the spiritual death of life
lived without outside of a personal relationship with God, and the eternal
death that results from passing from this world without having turned to Christ
in faith—for hell is referred to as the second death! Life is the fact that we live and breathe,
and a description of the blessing of living in a personal relationship with
God, and the eternity of bliss that the Christian looks forward to.
Jesus says, ‘No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you too
will likewise perish.’ Every death we
witness is a reminder that life is fragile and that we must be prepared for life
beyond death.
Conclusion
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only
Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (John
3:16). Through her living faith in
Jesus, Flora knew life in all its fullness, as she enjoyed a love relationship
with God through Jesus. Because of her
faith in Jesus she has being brought from this life into an eternity where
there will be no more cancer of tears.
All this is because Jesus died as a substitute for her guilt on that
cross, satisfying the demands of God’s holy justice, and making a people who
are washed and transformed by the grace of God.
David Watson was a well-known speaker who died of cancer in
1984. He wrote about his struggle with
that illness in a book entitled “Fear no evil.”
In it he says, “The actual moment of dying is still shrouded in mystery,
but as I keep my eyes on Jesus I am not afraid.
Jesus has already been through death for us, and will be with us when we
walk through it ourselves. In those
great words of the Twenty-Third Psalm: Even though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me . . .” ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ (1
Corinthians 15:54).
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