Death is awful, but not permanent

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070918.cfm
Hosea 2:16, 17c-18, 21-22
Matthew 9:18-26

Much of life involves time spent on definitions, clarifications, and articulations. No matter what we’re doing, we feel the need to organize what’s happening to us into rational expectations. We do that mostly with words. Maybe they come out in a song or numbers that chart out in a spreadsheet. Or, maybe we paint. Words, songs, numbers or artwork can all constitute our explanation of how we see the world. 

The outcome of our organization of thoughts translates roughly into a plan. What we expect may not actually take place like we plan. Still, we step into our plans, and even our unplanned lives, with varying measures of hope.

We define things in order to properly communicate what we’re doing, and what we see and believe is going on. All of us struggle to clarify the stuff of life. Our perspectives operate under limitations that often we don’t realize are there. As we get better at predicting what’s really coming at us we become practiced at being flexible. We constantly redefine and re-articulate what we know. That helps us get better at clarification. 

Except for Death. Death does not fit into what we want to learn. The subject of death is likely the most difficult part of life’s discovery, because it snuffs life out.

How we understand death, the truth of death, sets up our spiritual path. Life’s journey through spiritual things eventually requires us to deal with death, though. Everyone must do this. There’s no escape. The finality and brutal shock of death rattles every desire of life that we have. It is black, ruthless, and terrible. It appears to end everything that matters, because that’s mostly what happens. Death causes an exclamation point and a question mark to join at the end of our thoughts.

Evidence to the contrary of the bleakness of death, that there is life after death, seems like wishful thinking. It’s not, but it seems that way. 

Believing that life continues after death means we can plan for that. It’s the most exciting realization. Death’s period — the end of this life’s sentence, as it were — is really just an error in punctuation. The evidence of death’s capability at decimating life seems obvious. And yet, death’s bite, death’s sentence, is not permanent. Death is not a period to a sentence. Our questioning and shock require an explanation. Death attempts to force us to see life as abruptly ended.

Death goes beyond awful. It is an abomination of life. Because that is so, death is not the structure of life. It is the antithesis. Because of death’s horrifying existence we can scream at it. It is not original. It’s not part of the design. Death is an evil intruder. 

If we believe that death has invaded life, then death cannot be the end. Our demise does not come like the period at the end of a sentence. Death is only a comma, a hitch in the giddyup between our immortality. Death nicks life into two phases of our existence; forcing us into two phrases in a much longer sentence. 

Death can really be thought as more like a semicolon; the separation of two major elements of the same sentence. Illnesses, then, are the commas. They are threats of a larger interruption, but just a series of disrupting, distracting commas. 

So, death is a semicolon. 

Proof of life’s immortality is the dash. A dash is a portal from another dimension. Angels live in between dashes, which is where we live when we die. Though that’s a pretty cool segue, I’m not going to talk about angels here. I’m really only talking about us. Angels just help place us somewhere.

I’m not making this up. I’m clarifying the identifying parts of today’s gospel reading from Matthew, and then articulating the discovery I believe that Jesus intends for us to hear from these scriptures. I didn’t really discover this. I’m reading about the discovery articulated by a bunch of other very clever folks. It’s a discovery for me, however.

The realization that death isn’t a period in our life’s sentence comes from the two essential repairs by Jesus in this reading. First, he heals instantly (as in the snap of his fingers) a woman’s 12 year old disease. He didn’t use scientific means or technological advances not present 2,000 years ago. He used a separate power. 

“Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.”
And from that hour the woman was cured.

We might conclude that the woman’s faith was the catalyst, but that’s a stretch. In fact, it was Jesus’ incredible power over a disease ravaging her body that repaired her. There is no such thing in any of our experiences to match this capability. The woman’s determination to call upon that power — believing that Jesus was truly capable to heal her — points out our proper hope for immortality. Jesus interrupted the chronic advance of her hemorrhaging, removed the comma, and proved that death threats hold no sway under his reign.

If this was all that Jesus did we’d still have exciting evidence that the raging destruction of disease can be eliminated. Jesus, though, knows our hopes for survival extend beyond feeling better in order to live another day. Appropriately, he performed the impossible, raising a dead girl from the finality of death. He declared her state as one of sleeping. Then, he “woke” her up. He retrieved her from the portal in between the dashes.

Not only was the deadly disease gone, so was her death.

Our sentence structures reveal windows into life’s place, even outside of our halted space/time existence. We imagine immortality for good reason. We provide substantive hope for others. We open portals to Jesus right here. In our songs, our paintings, and even in our math.

The outcome of our organization of thoughts displays an envisioned plan. Again, though what we expect may not actually take place like we plan, still, we step into our plans, and even our unplanned lives, due to our hope. Even in the face of ridicule.

And they ridiculed him.
When the crowd was put out, he came and took her by the hand,
and the little girl arose.
And news of this spread throughout all that land.

And we spread the news, too. No matter how many periods we use, and commas, illness and death do not end our existence.