THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEATH

I have just completed reading BONHOEFFER: PASTOR, MARTYR, PROPHET, SPY by Eric Metaxas, an inspiring biography of the Christian theologian who worked against Hitler and the National Socialists. He was 39 years old when he was executed for opposition to the Nazis only two weeks before Hitler died. The camp doctor who observed his execution wrote that “I have hardly seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God – brave and composed.”

As I have only recently suffered a heart attack that could have killed me but was quickly treated by the insertion of two stents, I was impressed by his sermon on death some years before.

“No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up – that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.”

What is our faith? It is faith in Christ who Bonhoeffer wrote so eloquently about in his famous book: THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP. It is about costly grace not cheap grace. It is about Jesus who commanded us to follow him in a life of suffering and obedience. It is faith in Jesus who said at the grave of Lazarus: “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25)