One of the first Woody Allen movies I ever saw was "Love and Death", which is an hilarious romp through Russian literature and themes of life, death and God's place in all of it. When Woody faces a firing squad, he is comforted by the silhouette of an angel that promises that he will be cared for and therefore, he need not fear death. We hear the gunfire and next see Woody following the Grim Reaper in a dance of death. When his love interest sees this vision and asks what happened, Allen replies, "I got screwed!" When I saw that movie so long ago, I did not understand what that line was supposed to mean. Now that I am older, and have seen many more Woody Allen films, I am not a whole lot clearer on the meaning. But I am pretty sure that it has something to do with the fact that, if we place our trust in God at the moment of our death,we think that we should get to escape the whole experience. Face it, none of us likes the thought of our own demise. I teach a course on death and dying, and have done so for many years. As I get older, the topics that we address seem to hit home a bit more than they used to. When I took my first course on death and dying as an undergraduate, it was great fun and most interesting, because it was about something that was so far in my future that I could not imagine it, though the course required that we write our own obituary and funeral service as a part of the final exam. Now I realize that my students must look at me and wonder what I think about the topic, since I am so much closer to demise than they are.
Well, I am not crazy about the idea of my own death. And I know why, it is because I will hate missing all that I will miss. I really do enjoy getting up each morning, and I never take the rising sun for granted. But it will end for me someday, and someday is much closer than it was when I was in college. During countless graveside services at which I have officiated, the words from John 12:24 have always been spoken at the very beginning of the committal:"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Jesus was speaking of physical death, and also of the death of one's own selfish desires. We are approaching Holy Week, when Christians around the world recount the last week of Jesus' life, and ponder again the meaning of love, death, life and resurrection. But at the heart of it all, we have to deal with the dying part of the equation: we are all going to die. And the hardest phrase of all: I am going to die. Talk of resurrection only makes sense when we first can talk of our own death, when we acknowledge that this life will end and our families will gather around our grave and bid us farewell, just as we have done for others throughout our lives. Though Woody Allen was probably thinking of War and Peace when he created the title Love and Death, that phrase sums up nicely the Christian message: facing our own death is bearable because of love. God loved us through sending Christ to live, and die, so that we need not think of death as having the final say. I don't have to like the idea of my own death, and I don't, but I need not approach the reality of that event without the hope of a God who is faithful, in this life, and in life beyond death. The Christian faith is a collection of paradoxes: strength through weakness, greatness through humility, life through death. It is a puzzle, but one worth contemplating, in this life, and beyond.
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