Today was hard. It was painful. Today was filled with tears and hugs and kind supportive strangers. Today, we mourned the death of a loved one.
But today is also a day of laughter and of smiles. It is a day of rejoicing. Today, on Gaudete Sunday, we recall the hope we have in Christ, even as we watch this world pass away before our eyes.
My uncle had become very sick over the course of the last couple of months. It was an unexpected illness that completely turned the lives of family members upside-down. Death came too soon. And yet, as Johann Gerhard wrote, "we deceive ourselves sadly if we think of death only as taking place with the last breath of life here. . .life and death seem to be far distant from each other, when in fact they are as near as possible to each other."
We are dead. We live in a world that is dying and rotting and decaying away. We cannot possibly live in a dead world; our earthly bodies are death and there is nothing we can do to stop the destruction of ourselves and what we see around us.
What a bleak outcome. There is no hope in this dying. I think about those who try to console the grieving and I can't help but wonder how they think they are providing any comfort, for in their minds, what is the other side of death? What peace or assurance is there if there is no definite hope? There can be none.
But our hope is sure. It is not of this dead world; it is hope in Christ, God with us, who came to take on all the sin, the dying, the decaying and withering away. He took it all to the cross, once and for all, that we may live. We are baptized into His death and His resurrection, and have become clothed in His righteousness. My uncle was baptized into His death and His resurrection, and now, he lives.
"We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Romans 6:9-11 ESV)
Death is only the beginning. In Christ, we look forward to that glorious day when we will join together with the saints who have gone before us, including my uncle, in the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom. Gerhard concludes that "the Word of God is an incorruptible seed; death does not destroy that seed, but it is hidden in the hearts of God's people, and in His own good time He will quicken it into new life."
My family may be in the midst of mourning here on earth, but on this the day we rejoice in Christ's coming, we also rejoice that my uncle has been brought through death and into life.
Soli Deo Gloria!
All Johann Gerhard quotes are taken from "The Daily Consideration of Death" in the Sacred Meditations translation by Rev. C. W. Heisler.
