Over the past three years, the world has confronted its mortality. Covid’s death toll overwhelmed hospitals, filled morgues, converted paddocks into mass graves. The words from Hamilton have felt eerily prophetic: “Death doesn’t discriminate between the sinner and the saint, it takes, and it takes, and it takes”. Suddenly the false hopes of medicine, exercise, and healthy diets were exposed as flimsy band-aids that offer only temporary solutions. Suddenly the desire for pretty things, faster internet, and tastier coffee faded in comparison to the desire for life and love and longevity.
Death’s Wisdom
In this medically comfortable age, we’re often distanced from the reality of death. It’s easy to breeze through life deceived by the immediate sense that this life is permanent. Our individualistic lifestyle often removes us from the sick, elderly and dying. Some go decades without ever attending a funeral. But when we’re spared the pain of death’s cruel dictatorship, we’re bereft of its wisdom (Psalm 90:12).
From the time of Adam, all people have snubbed their maker and been expelled from God’s life-giving presence. In the form of a serpent, Satan slithered in, and seduced humanity into a coup (Genesis 3). Instead of God’s image-bearers reigning in life, sin took up chief post and demoted humanity to slaves (Romans 5:12–14). We might think it’s all Adam and Eve’s fault, but we are just like them, made in their image (Genesis 5:1–5). In Eve’s likeness, we grasp for status, grasp for control, grab the reins (Genesis 3:6). In Adam’s likeness, we blame others—the tiredness, the disorganisation, the miscommunication, the complaints: it’s always someone else’s fault (Genesis 3:11–13). In Cain’s likeness, sin crouches at the door as a roaring lion, desiring to rule over and devour us (Genesis 4:6–7; 1 Peter 5:8).
The Bible teaches us the truth. It’s not Covid that causes death; or car accidents, or cancer, or world wars: it’s sin. Since the time of Adam and Eve, humanity has been subjugated to the evil oppression of death. When we reject God, we reject life. Sin always renders the death toll 100%.
It’s a reality we must all face. Two months ago, I was diagnosed with Grade 1A breast cancer. Since then, I’ve had successful surgery and a very positive prognosis. Initially, this was unsettling. But as someone raised in a small country town, from a large extended family, I’ve barely gone a year when death hasn’t come knocking. Moreover, if you know your Bible, death isn’t surprising. We don’t know when death will visit but we know it’s inevitable. Wisdom is preparing well for inevitabilities.
When Covid hit, we scrambled for safety, hid in our houses, turned to our screens for a daily dose of hope and helplessness. Our fear of death enslaves us (Hebrews 2:15). We try to gain dominance over death, but our efforts are futile. Scientists might discover anti-aging agents, vaccinations, and revolutionary transplants, but we’d be fools to believe that humanity can topple this dictator. Death dominates.
While I’m incredibly thankful for modern medicine removing my cancer and (presumably, if the Lord wills) prolonging my life, my greatest problem remains: my heart is corrupted with the corrosive forces of evil. Sin does far greater damage than cancer ever will and has a far more dire and permanent prognosis. I’m willing to chop off toxic tissue to remove the cancer, but am I willing to chop off the pride and selfishness and spite that poisons my heart?
Death’s End
This Easter weekend ten years ago, my husband’s wife passed away from pancreatic cancer. I never met Bronwyn, but I’m told she was a caring and uncomplaining woman. Her friends and family glow with memories of her laughter, her intelligence, her resilience.
Death is such a cursed beast. It stabs us in the gut, rips those we love from our grasp and leaves us with lonely, aching, weeping wounds. If only we could revive them, resuscitate them, reach into the abyss, and bring them back.
I’ve now been married to her husband for over six years. I’ve lived in her house, cooked in her kitchen, collected her mail. Where she should be, I am—studying with her children, celebrating their birthdays, applauding their graduations, holding her grandchild. It seems so painfully unfair. Someone else should be enjoying this life I live. Yet graciously, they’ve welcomed me in, embraced me, called me family.
At Easter, we also remember another. His strong, powerful body was slowly suffocated like a criminal, pinned down and pulled down by the evil and injustice of our sin. He stood in my place. But he did so willingly. He walked down into the darkness of death to shield me, protect me, save me from the wrath of God.
In our medically comfortable age, death is less expected, and marrying a widower is less common. But I’m really thankful for the perspective this has given me. I’m regularly reminded that death is inevitable. One day, unless the Lord returns first, I’ll stand by my husband’s grave, or he by mine, and the love that brings such happiness now will weep with sorrow. But our situation also reminds me that death is not the end. Dying on Resurrection Sunday, March 31st, 2013, Bronwyn followed the risen Lord Jesus to a sublime and superior existence. In the words of Billy Graham, she is more alive now than ever before. She lives in a better home, enjoys the perfect family, delights in the satisfying bliss of the eternal marriage.
So while we remember, we also rejoice. Jesus has gone ahead, walked through the darkest abyss and defeated death’s evil dictatorship forever. He now sits in his rightful place, reigning in the light of the eternal side. From there he calls to us, still in this aching age, on this side that is passing away; he reaches for us, urges us to come, take up our cross, follow him and live.
An earlier version of this article was published in the Australian Church Record.
