Talking About Death

Homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
2 Maccabees 7.1-2, 9-14 Psalm 17 2 Thessalonians 2.16-3.5 Luke 20.27-38

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It’s hard to talk about death. Most of us are pretty good about ignoring conversations that get anywhere close to the possibility of talking about death, either our own or another person’s. Even at funeral home visitations, most people talk about the life of the deceased, not their death. Funerals themselves are often called celebrations of life. And, of course, for us Christians, any talk of death must be accompanied by talk of resurrection, the new and eternal life that Christ won for us. We cannot talk about death without talking about resurrection. But, a lot of the time, we talk about resurrection without really talking about death. Because it’s hard to talk about death, for all of us.

Today’s scriptures give us two different approaches to this kind of talk. The Maccabees brothers in the first reading very openly embrace their impending death, because they see their death as a martyrdom, dying for their faith, a witness to the love of God. As one brother said, “We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.” These brothers saw death as a door to resurrection, and they were not afraid to pass through that door. They could talk about death openly because they had courage and hope – courage to face suffering and the unknown moment of dying, and hope that God would be with them through it all, leading them to eternal life. But the Sadducees in the gospel reading, approached things differently. They didn’t believe in the resurrection and tried to trick Jesus into denying it as well. They were so consumed about trying to get Jesus to talk about the details of eternal life that they really ignored even talking about death. Not believing in the resurrection makes it even harder to talk about death. It is hard to talk about death; but it is a reality we will all face, sooner or later, and it is good to be able to have a conversation every once in a while about how we are approaching our own moment of dying.

Now, this isn’t meant to be morbid, or to lead us to always have death on our minds. But as Christians, we can have this conversation informed by Scripture and our faith, so that we can get to the point of having the same courage and hope as the Maccabees brothers. This week we are especially mindful of the 58 men, women, and children who were killed at a Catholic church in Baghdad last Sunday as they were attending Mass. None of these people entered the church that day expecting it to be the day of their death. But we pray that they had courage and hope in the face of death, a courage and hope informed by their faith. Could we say the same for ourselves, here, today?

At the end of today’s gospel, Jesus says that God “is not God of the dead, but of the living.” Our faith tells us that death is a reality, but that it is not permanent; it is a transition. Our faith tells us that we must live each day as if it were our last here on earth, ready for that moment of death at any time. Our faith tells us that our task here on earth is to help other people do the same thing, to come to know the love of God that will give them peace and comfort at the moment of death, because they have hope in the resurrection.

And so the conversation comes around to this question: are you ready to die? Or, to put it another way, are you ready for eternal life? If we recognize what death is, then we can approach it with courage and hope, because we know that it is not the end. And, who knows, we might even be able to talk about death, even our own death, because we know that it is a glorious moment of transition from one way of living to another. And not even death will separate us from the love of God.