Dead, dead and dying.

1 Corinthians 15:31-36,44-49

           I have shared in the experience of death in so many ways. I have never killed anyone, at least not in a physical way. I never shot anyone or strangled anyone. I will confess that I may have killed a spirit or two, much to my dismay. It saddens me what I have may have done in my youth. But I have experienced death in the way we are accustomed to death. My grandmother, my parents, friends.  It is a

troubling time even for the faithful.

            Jesus did not wish to die, especially as he did. He prayed that if this cup could pass...

Jesus had numerous friends with whom he broke bread, cried and undoubtedly laughed with as well. As an human being, he knew he was saying good bye in our earthly way to his very own mother, his friends, disciples. It must have been heart wrenching. Most of us have experienced this agony. Even when you know they are at peace, may no longer be suffering and are in the presence of our creator, you miss the human touch, the interaction and the relationship of a loved one who has passed on. I know a man right now who is suffering this loss.  They had been together about 45 years or more. Only allowed to marry recently, they enjoyed a full life and now one is gone. The suffering is immense. Death however is a part of life and is never welcome.

         Yet death is a part of our life all the time. What characterizes the faithful Christian over a non-believer is that death in any form as a Christian is followed by new life. This is a hallmark of our beliefs.

This death, whether it is physical, intellectual or emotional happens to us all the time. Perhaps we don't really think about. When we learn something, expand our horizons to something new about ourselves or others, we are dying to our old self. The concept of self improvement is a form of dying to ones old self. We experience forms of death and dying every day.  Living in an area with 4 distinct seasons gives me an excellent reminder of death and dying and again new life and rising. It is much more difficult of course when a relationship is involved.

              What is problematic for us is that the physical, which is what we experience life through as humans, what we are accustomed to and rely on, is not what our ultimate destiny is. What transcends the physical is the spiritual and that does not have the same limits as our physical world. By embracing the spiritual, we can continue our relationships with those that have gone before us.  In not relying as much on the physical, we can see hope and the possibility of new life in our physical world. It does diminish what we have had, it only moves us forward in love and in the Spirit of God.

              

      

I die every day! That is as certain, brothers and sisters, as my boasting of you—a boast that I make in Christ Jesus our Lord. If with merely human hopes I fought with wild animals at Ephesus, what would I have gained by it? If the dead are not raised,

‘Let us eat and drink,
   for tomorrow we die.’
Do not be deceived:
‘Bad company ruins good morals.’
Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more; for some people have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.