May 9, 2017
 
 
 
 
 RECTOR'S PEN
 
 
 
 
 
 
Quick Links:
 
 
 
 
 
 
Led by the Holy Spirit,
St. John's mission is to inspire people to grow into the heart and mind of Christ by engaging together in worshiping, serving, and spiritual formation.

 
 
 
 
 

In the midst of life we are in death

This week’s column reflects on the place of dying in the life of a Christian.


 
 
 
 

In the midst of life we are in death. Odd bits and pieces of scripture or theological writing often rise from deep within my subconscious like trout breaking the calm surface of a river pool. When they don’t re-submerge I take that as a signal that I’m to reflect and write about them.


“In the midst of life we are in death” is a medieval antiphon (a sentence spoken or sung before a psalm in the liturgy) thought to have been written in France around 750 CE. The antiphon spread around the church and was used when people prayed in times of public distress or need. [1] You can even find it in our Book of Common Prayer (p. 492).


In the 15th century a group of German nuns used the antiphon as a chant of resistance to protest reforms that were being thrust upon them by senior officials in the Augustinian monastic order. The nuns flung themselves to the floor face-down, each body in the shape of a cross, and hollered the antiphon at the top of their lungs. Later, their supporters drove the senior officials from the convent and locked the door. The nuns professed to have misplaced the key. The officials knocked down the door with a battering ram, and eventually seized all their goods. In defiance, the nuns broke the legs off their cooking pots before handing them over. [1] [2]


Resistance movements aside, “in the midst of life we are in death” is a sentiment many of us accept—even embrace—intellectually. Living it, however, is another matter. It’s been said that the moment we are born we begin to die, and yet few of us wish to keep that truth in focus. Pushing death to the side as a “someday thing” feels more comfortable than making a room for it in our homes.


People who live with chronic, debilitating, and terminal illnesses—and those who care for them—don’t have the mental luxury of holding death at bay. For these people the antiphon is a daily reality, an ever present companion. They cannot forget that in the midst of life they and those they love are indeed dying.


In my ministry I’ve helped care for families who lost beloved ones after years-long periods of slowly declining health punctuated by moments of true medical crisis. You might say they had many dress rehearsals for death. When death comes as a release from suffering or a diminished life, it is a relief but no less sad. As long as there is breath, there is relationship. With the cessation of breath, that relationship continues but we have to figure out a new way of being with the one we have loved. For most of us there is no map.


The burdens of long-term caring for a chronically ill or incapacitated beloved one have been well documented. Our Caregiver Support Group meets monthly to acknowledge the trials—and the blessings—of this work. One blessing is that, despite the many difficulties, caring for a beloved one is a true privilege. It overflows with gifts, many of them unique to each family and each situation.


One gift I think all share in common is the lived experience of dying and death. Difficult as it is, this lived experience places death as an event in the broader and continuing context of life, and not as an event that ends it. Christians understand that “when our mortal body lies in death, life is changed not ended.” [3] We know that Jesus Christ, by his resurrection, destroyed the finality of death and subordinated it to become simply one more event in the midst of life. Said another way, life begins and is lived, event by event. One of those events is death, and yet life—albeit profoundly changed—continues on after and beyond it.


By living with dying and death in the very midst of life, the sweeter each moment of life becomes. The more firmly we hold the hand of dying and death, the sharper is our focus on the day at hand, the richer our joys, our relationships are more genuine, and the strident voice of the false self clamoring for attention is hushed. Dying and death in the midst of life ground us in what matters and let what does not fall away.


In John 10 (vs.10), Jesus explains that he came so that those who believe in him might have life and have it abundantly and fully. To be abundant is to overflow any bounds that have been set in place. Believing in Jesus Christ ushers us into the kind of life that overflows outside and beyond the bounds of birth and death, a life-flood that will not be constrained or contained. As I write this week, it’s flooding in Idaho’s Wood River Valley—my former home. Water that will not be contained is forming a powerful and unimpeded connection between mountaintop and faraway sea. Christ who will not be contained forms for us a powerful and unimpeded connection between life, death, and what lies beyond. In the midst of life we are dying. So it flows.



[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Busch


[2]https://books.google.com/books?id=_1Y9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=wennigsen+nuns&source=bl&ots=1Vm8MCEV0M&sig=-o6fhU3-DuMSIfwYImxHTq_LT1o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAsdC71uDTAhVG2oMKHWMOCyQQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=wennigsen%20nuns&f=false


[3] The Book of Common Prayer, p.382