Can’t We Talk About Something Else?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
May 27, 2007: Pentecost

Can’t We Talk About Something Else?
Psalm 121
John 14:1-3

It is an interesting collision we have this weekend:
Pentecost and Memorial Day,
the first a date on our liturgical calendar,
and the second a date on our nation’s calendar.

On Pentecost, we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit.
How fifty days after Christ’s death,
the Spirit found the disciples,
that frightened band of brothers,
who were still reeling from the death of their Teacher,
their Master, their Lord.
“Suddenly from heaven there came a sound
like a rush of a violent wind,
and it filled the house where [the apostles] were sitting.”
(Acts 2:2)

The breath of God infused each of the apostles,
and gave them strength they had not felt before,
gave them conviction they had not felt before,
gave them confidence they had not felt before,
The Spirit filled them,
the Spirit Jesus had promised them that last night
when they were gathered in the Upper Room;
The Spirit the risen Jesus had reminded them of
just ten days earlier, right before his ascension,
when his final words to them were,
“you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit
not many days from now.” (Acts 1:5)
In their exhausted and confused state,
they had no idea what the promise would soon mean to them.

With the coming of the Holy Spirit
their fears were replaced by a fiery faith.
The breath of God didn’t take away their fear
as much as it pushed, even shoved it out of the way,
out of the dominant role it had had in their lives
since Christ’s death.
The Spirit filled them with courage:
courage in the face of opposition;
courage in the face of persecution;
courage even in the face of death.

Apocryphal sources tell us that both Peter and Paul
were killed for their faith,
martyrs to their witness, their testimony
that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.
They went to their deaths with courage,
with unshakable, unwavering faith;
They went to their deaths filled with the Holy Spirit.

We don’t really know anything about
the fate of the other apostles.
There are stories,
but nothing in which we have much confidence.
It is likely, though, that most of them died for their faith;
If they died for their faith, we can be confident
that they too faced death with courage,
the Spirit bearing them up,
filling them with strength
in the same way we believe the soldiers
we will remember tomorrow
faced their own deaths,
whether at Bunker Hill,
Bull Run, Bataan, or Basra.

The Holy Spirit is God’s presence with us,
God’s presence in us,
our Sustainer,
the one who teaches us, reminds us,
the one through whom we know the peace of Christ
at all times, and all places,
even in the valley of the shadow of death.

The visage of death is something that looms large for all us.
It is something that I think about,
now that I am north of 50.
Although I may live to be a hundred,
it is more likely that more than half my life is now in the past,
and less than half my life lies before me.
I have one of two choices:
I can do my best to ignore death,
pretend that it doesn’t exist,
until it comes and takes me;
or I can face death,
acknowledge that it is part of life,
a part of my life,
but not something I need fear.

The natural human tendency is to choose the first path;
if we pretend death doesn’t exist,
we can go through life ignoring it.
We can refuse to talk about death;
if someone raises the subject,
we can respond, “can’t we talk about something else?”
“Anything else!”

We avoid confronting death not only by our words,
but also by our actions:
We find countless reasons not to prepare a Will,
not to fill out the simple forms required
for health care proxies, or
or advanced medical directives.

Euphemisms abound so we don’t have to use the word “death”.
The funeral industry talk about one’s “passing”,
as they go about seeing to the person’s “final wishes”.
Cemeteries refer to themselves as “resting places”;
I saw one recently that proclaimed itself as
a place to “celebrate life”.

We use these terms to try to take the sting out of death,
forgetting that we can fall back in God’s everlasting arms
the Holy Spirit bearing us up,
taking away our fear of death.
We forget that we too are filled with the Holy Spirit,
in exactly the same way the apostles were,
filled perhaps not with the dramatic rush of wind
and tongues of flame we read about in the Bible,
but just the same in every other way.

Why, then, are we so afraid of death?
so afraid we won’t even talk about it?
It was Woody Allen who quipped that he wasn’t afraid of dying,
he just didn’t want to be there when it happened.

We have made antiseptic and uncomfortable what is part of life.
Just fifty days ago we read about how
the women came to the tomb
that first Easter Sunday to complete the rituals
that were part of death.
There was no funeral director to handle the “final details”;
family and friends took care of the loved one.
Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus’ body to the tomb,
and the women came that first Sunday morning
to wrap and anoint the body.

Tomorrow on Memorial Day, we will have elaborate ceremonies
at cemeteries throughout this country;
I have participated in more than few.
They are somber, serious affairs, appropriate for
honoring those who are buried in hallowed ground.
Most of us go to cemeteries only when we must;
I think we should go visit cemeteries regularly.
Almost every time I visit Buffalo,
I take a drive through Forest Lawn,
the lovely cemetery in the center of Buffalo.
It was created by the famous landscape designer
Frederick Law Olmstead
to be a place for the living as well as the deceased.
The Ferguson family plot is in one part of the cemetery.
My grandfather and grandmother are there,
along with my father and a cousin
who died a few years ago from cancer.
My mother’s side of the family
are buried in another part of the cemetery,
one of the older sections,
in a plot my great-great grandfather bought in the 1870s
not long after this church was established.
God’s Spirit is a palpable presence with me
every time I drive through the gates of that Cemetery.
God’s Spirit fills me with peace
as I drink in the beauty,
the very liveliness of the place:
the birds singing in the trees,
the squirrels in their frenzied routines,
swans gracefully gliding across the pond.

Even in that place God’s Spirit
reminds me of the hope given to us in Jesus Christ:
That we need not fear death,
that death is not the end,
but simply a transition from this life,
this mortal life,
to the next life, life eternal.

The promise that we heard in our gospel lesson
is the foundation for our hope:
that Christ himself will come for us
and lead us into heaven,
where we will be for all eternity,
in the presence of God,
the presence of light and love.

It is the promise in the Psalm,
that God will keep our lives,
keep our going out and our coming in
from this time on and forevermore.
(Psalm 121:7-8)

It is the Spirit that gives us the courage
to push fear out of the way so we can grasp the promise
and face death,
and in facing death learn to live life more fully,
more completely, more faithfully.

When we “come to terms with death, we will know
how trivial some apparently important things are,
and how supremely important some other things are…”
that we had considered less important.
Our priorities are reordered.
The Rev. Leslie Weatherhead, “On Making a Pact with Death”)

When we face death and think it about,
we remember that the promise made in Jesus Christ,
the promise given us by Jesus Christ,
is nothing less than Paradise.
That is the word our Lord himself used
as he spoke to the thief:
“Truly I tell you,
today you will be with me in Paradise.”
(Luke 23:43)
And the wonderful thing is
we don’t even translate
an obscure Greek word to read “paradise”;
the Greek word itself is “paradiso”.

Now it isn’t likely that this Paradise
is as John described it in his Revelation:
with streets paved with gold.
That was just imagery John used to make a point,
as he did throughout his Revelation.
Whatever it will be, it will be paradise,
for we will be in the presence of God,
the presence of our Lord himself.
And think about it: why in the life to come would we care
whether the streets were paved with gold?

It is Dante, the 13th century Italian poet,
who I think captured best what heaven is:
a place of light and love,
a place where, as each new person enters,
the heavenly choir sing out,
“behold, one more to increase our love.”

Now, none of this takes away the very real feelings of grief
that any of us feels when a loved one dies.
The loss is real,
the grief is real,
the sense of emptiness is real.
The families of the more than 3,800 men and women
who have lost their lives in service to this country
over the past five years
will tomorrow find themselves filled with grief
that is very real.
But is the Spirit who gives life to the words,
“blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.”
(Matthew 5:4)

Following that first Pentecost, the disciples went out
into the world filled with Spirit.
Peter, who had been so timorous before,
would later write,
“blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth
into living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead,
and into an inheritance that is imperishable,
undefiled, and unfading,
kept in heaven for you,…” (1 Peter 1:3-4)
The Spirit gave Peter the ability to understand
our Lord’s words to him,
“Be not afraid”.

The Spirit gives us the same ability:
Be not afraid of anything in this life,
and be not afraid of that moment
when this life comes to a close,
for it is but a transition from this world to Paradise.

Even as we celebrate Memorial Day tomorrow,
with picnics, families, and friends,
we can and should also acknowledge death as part of life,
For the Holy Spirit gives us the courage and the faith
to understand that it was not the grim reaper
who came for those we will remember;
and it will not be the grim reaper who will come for any of us.
It will be Christ himself.

The poet John Donne wrote:
“Death be not proud,
though some have called thee Mighty and Dreadful;
for thou are not so…
One short sleep past,
we awake eternally,
and death shall be no more;
Death: thou shalt die.”
(John Donne, Holy Sonnets, X)
As our Lord has assured us,
“if it were not so,
I would have told you.”

AMEN