WINKING AT DEATH April 8, 2007, Easter Sunday I Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: There are three kinds of people who wink at death. "Almighty God, you transcend our mortal imagining; your truth is beyond our most articulate words, your power overpowers our modest expectations. Startle us this day. Startle us just as you startled those first Easter morning visitors so long ago. Surprise us today with a word beyond any word we could ever have imagined, much less hoped for. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. I don t usually read those reviews of downtown rock music concerts that The New York Times occasionally runs, but a headline in The Arts section a week ago caught my eye. The name of the band was Venus 3. The club was called The Knitting Factory. The three musicians in the photo holding their requisite guitars looked to be in their 50s. All predictable. It was the review s headline that grabbed me. It read, Life s Not So Hard if You Learn to Wink at Death So I read the review, but it didn t clarify those enigmatic words. 1 Most people don t wink at death of course. In fact, a lot of people, perhaps the majority, live in quiet anxiety about it. We ignore it. We shove it out of sight. We fanatasticize it in thrillers and horror films. It s one of those several topics generally deemed impolitic at dinner parties. Last Wednesday morning, one of our Student Ministers, Rick Bold, preached a fine sermon at our weekly chapel service in which he quoted none other than Sigmund Freud to this point. Freud, who believed in nothing more transcendent than psychoanalysis, once found himself struggling to say something to a colleague who had just lost her only daughter to death. This is all the man could muster: I can only sink into a state of resignation when faced with the horror of death. 2 No winking at death from the great doctor. In fact, I can only think of three kinds of people who wink at death. - 1 -
First, there are the young and reckless. When you re sixteen or so, it s normal to assume that you re somehow functionally immortal. This is often the age of stupid risk-taking. It s not just churning hormones; it s because many a young person operates as if mortality simply does not apply to them personally. So sixteen-yearolds wink at death, but not for long. Pretty soon, maybe in your twenties, you start doing the actuarial math in your head, and the eternity of years that once seemed to lie before you is suddenly quantifiable. The second kind of people who wink at death are the ones who, for some reason, don t much care about life. Maybe they ve gone dark and cynical. Maybe they ve experienced life as nothing but hard and boring, days crammed with mindless stupidities and a landscape populated with stupid jerks. These are folks who can wink at death simply because, for them, life is such a gross pain that the reaper is no longer grim. This may be where the rock band reviewed in the Times was coming from with their winking. In a quote in the review, the 50-something lead guitarist suggested looking at life with what he called 500 mils of indifference. The third kind of people who wink at death are people like my grandfather. This is my father s father, Lloyd Lindvall. I have his first name as my middle name. His parents named him Lloyd because, as immigrants fresh off the boat from Sweden, they wanted an English-sounding name for the new country. I last saw him several months before he died. He had been told that the cancer was inoperable; at least it was back then. I was in seminary, but home in the Midwest for the summer. I had a few free days and wanted to drive across Wisconsin to Minnesota to do two things, to see my grandfather and, for some reason not clear to me then, to see the headwaters of the Mississippi River up at Itasca, Minnesota. I had never been there, and the place had figured large in my childhood imagination. Now I think that seeing the headwaters and seeing my grandfather were somehow related. My grandfather was widowed and living with his bachelor brother, Harry, in a small Victorian house in northeast Minneapolis, the same neighborhood both the old men had grown up in. It was a gentle and happy visit. My grandfather was in - 2 -
occasional pain and complained a few times about not sleeping well. We talked about my seminary studies and the old neighborhood. He chuckled a lot, but then he always had been one to laugh. I stayed a couple of nights and then drove on up to Itasca and waded across the headwaters of the Mississippi in my bare feet. I was back at school when he died. I flew home for the funeral. At the service, they played a recorded version his favorite hymn, How Great Thou Art. It was in English, not the original Swedish he might have preferred. I remember the last verse especially, When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart! Then I shall bow in humble adoration, And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou Art! My father had been at his father s bedside when he died. He told me about it after the funeral. My grandfather had winked at death, maybe not with his eye, but he winked at death with his last words. My father said my grandfather s very last words were, For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Just as he died, he quoted the Apostle Paul, For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. My grandfather winked at death when he quoted the same Paul who authored those stunning resurrection words we heard Len read from First Corinthians a moment ago. Winking at death words as well: as we all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. My grandfather winked at death even though he was not young and immortal. My grandfather winked at death even through there was not a cynical and indifferent bone in his ancient body. He winked at death because he had lived one grand life, and he now trusted at the end, trusted with his whole being, that death was not the last word. He winked at death not because he was too young and callow to know better, not because he d sunk to a cynicism that no longer cared. - 3 -
He winked at death because he was a man a deep and quiet Christian faith who was understood with every fiber of his being that the resurrection of Jesus Christ means nothing less than this: Easter, he knew, means that at the end of the day, at the end his day, at the end of all days, the last word is not the death of Good Friday. Easter, he knew, means that at the end of the day, at the end of his day, and all days, the last word believe it or not is life! This faith of ours is utterly realistic about all the bleak Good Friday realities of this world. That realism is part of the meaning of the cross. My grandfather knew them personally and only too well - his long, lonely widowhood, life with his brother Harry who had been gassed in the trenches during World War I and was never quite 100%, that painful cancer that took his life. Every one of us in this room knows our own Good Fridays personally and only too well - the terror of illness, passages through aching grief, sudden unemployment, a mindless divorce, days of loneliness, dark despair that shadows us for no good reason. These things are real, as real as last Friday s cross. But the core affirmation of the Christian faith, that rock on which all is grounded, is that Good Friday is not the last word, the cross is not the sum reality of it all. The audacious trust of Easter morning is that by some mystery beyond mortal imagining, Not only the cross is not the last word, But stomach cancer is not the last word, roadside bombs and Darfur are not the last word, divorce and loneliness and fear are not the last word. None of the only-too-real realities that litter the news and shadow life, none of them are the last word. The core affirmation of the Christian faith, that rock on which all is grounded, is the audacious trust that with God, believe it or not, the last word, the most real reality is the triumphant power of life that is embodied in the Risen Christ on - 4 -
Easter morning. This is who we are as Christians people for whom the core truth, the truest of all things, the very heart of the universe, the hot core of it all, is life abundant, life triumphant, and life eternal! This is why we can stand and cry out, Christ is risen! - in spite of all the Good Friday pain in the world. It s why we can sing the Hallelujah Chorus - in spite of all the un-hallelujah stuff going on in our lives. It s why my grandfather s last words could wink at death - in spite of it all - not because death is not a powerful enemy, but because there is One is who is even more powerful, and He has vanquished even this last enemy. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 1 The New York Times, Thursday, March 29, 2007. 2 The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, by Armand Nicholi - 5 -