June 13, 2010 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

In Life and Death

Cynthia M. Campbell
President, McCormick Theological Seminary

Revelation 21:1–4
1 Kings 17, selected verses

“Then Elijah said, ‘See, your son is alive.’”

1 Kings 17:23 (NRSV)

In life and death we belong to God.
Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit
we trust in the one triune God,
the Holy One of Israel,
whom alone we worship and serve.

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Dedication
Worship Sourcebook

“Have you had a good question today?” That’s how my friend and colleague at McCormick Seminary, Professor Lib Caldwell, often begins a class session. “Have you had a good question today, and what is it?” Human beings seem made to ask questions, from the profound to the mundane. Inquiring minds want to know, Why is there something and not nothing? What should I do with my life? What are we having for dinner? Did I turn the coffee pot off? Why can’t the either the Cubs or the White Sox play something other than mediocre baseball?

One of the purposes of coming to church (at least in the Presbyterian tradition) is to ask and answer questions—the big questions, the ones that haunt us in times of crisis, the ones that bubble up from our hearts in quiet moments, the ones that take hold of us and will not let us go. One of the biggest questions is that of life and death. What does it mean to be alive? What happens when we die? We say a lot about that every week as we say together the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” But what does that mean and how do we know?

Our tradition tells us to look to the Bible, but it also tells us that the answers (and there will be more than one!) are more often to be found in stories than in single, definitive verses. This year, the church’s lectionary has us reading a wonderful set of stories from the Old Testament about the prophet Elijah, one of the greatest figures in the history of Israel. These narratives have the feel of a Zane Grey western about them: a mysterious hero appears out of nowhere, stands up against evil and injustice, and then rides off into the sunset (or, in the case of Elijah, disappears into heaven riding a chariot of fire). Today’s reading from chapter 17 of 1 Kings is the beginning of the story of Elijah, and it has everything to do with the questions of life and death.

The year is approximately 870 B.C. Ahab is king of Israel, and the writer assures us that Ahab has done “more evil in the sight of the Lord than all who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). Among other things, Ahab has married the foreigner, Jezebel, and brought into Israel the worship of Baal, Jezebel’s national deity, who is known as the god of fertility, harvest, and abundance. First Kings 17 is a drama in three acts. In Act I, Elijah appears out of nowhere and announces to King Ahab that there will be a great drought, and we are led to infer that this is due to Ahab’s disloyalty to God. In a land where wheat and olives and grapes are the staples of life, drought is a death sentence.

Having announced impending disaster, Elijah is in danger: he has flaunted the authority of the king, and like the rest of the region, he will soon feel the effects of the drought. So the word of the Lord sends Elijah east of the Jordan (out of Israel) to a deserted region, to a wadi or small stream. For the first of several times in Elijah’s life, God feeds him: “The ravens brought Elijah bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the wadi. But after a while the wadi dried up, because there was no rain in the land” (1 Kings 17:6–7).

Act II: the word of the Lord commands Elijah to go to the region of Sidon on the coast of the Mediterranean (where, coincidentally, Queen Jezebel is from). Here he is to find a widow in the town of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:10–16).

Here is a woman so desperate that she is ready to make herself and her child one last meal out of the meager supplies she has left. Her hospitality saves all of them: Elijah, herself, and the child. And by the power of God, her supplies last for a long time (just as a small amount of bread and fish in the hands of Jesus feed a large crowd of people).

Act III: just when it might seem that things will be alright, another disaster: the death of the child (1 Kings 17:17–24).

Three stories about life and death. With each act, the situation becomes more desperate. First, Elijah is threatened by starvation in the desert and is sustained by a small stream and pretty amazing room service. Next, Elijah is sent to a widow and her child, desperately poor to begin with, but miraculously their supplies of oil and grain don’t run out. Finally, the child dies; this time, Elijah himself receives power to restore the child (this widow’s only son) to life.

Three stories about life and death, and the conclusion is this: there is One alone who can be trusted when the power of death is all around. The people in these stories faced death in ordinary ways: drought, poverty, starvation, disease. What happens is that God acts to bring life out of death. In these small stories, we see a picture of God as the One who stands for life in the face of the reality of death.

Death is one of those questions we all think about eventually. Indeed, one of the things that distinguishes us humans from the rest of life on this planet is that we alone (as far as we can tell) know that we will die; we alone can imagine our own death. Some psychologists say that anxiety about death is the root cause of many other things that haunt our lives and trouble our spirits. Some philosophers argue that most of what we humans create—from having children to building tall buildings to creating works of art, music, and literature—all of these things are in various ways attempts to deny the finality of death. We create and procreate, they say, so that we will not be forgotten. In her new novel, Every Last One, Anna Quindlen’s main character concludes that all our fears are in some way a fear of death.

So what is the witness of faith in the face of death? It seems to me that the Bible leads us to see death in two ways. First, death is simply the way of nature. To exist is to have a beginning and an end. Everything living eventually dies, and if it didn’t, the planet would have become unsustainable long ago. For everything there is a season: a time to be born and a time to die. And yet death is also a symbol for us of something terribly wrong. Death separates us from one another; it breaks bonds of love and companionship with those we hold most dear; we fear that it will separate us from God. Death is often accompanied by pain; for many people, death comes as a result of violence or poverty, hunger or neglect. And these things, the Bible assures us, are not God’s plan. They do not delight our Creator.

The answer to the problem of death in both classic Judaism and Christianity is resurrection: the promise that the God of life will one day make all things new; that God will bind up the broken-hearted, mend what is broken, restore what is damaged, and that life will triumph over death. In their powerful and important book Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews, Harvard scholars Keith Madigan and Jon Levenson argue that when the idea of the general resurrection of the dead appears in Jewish thought some 200 years before the life of Jesus, this idea is not an afterthought or contradiction to the rest of the Old Testament. Rather, they show how stories like this drama from the life of Elijah show God as the One who can defeat death and who promises life. Two ideas, they argue, are held in tension in the Hebrew scriptures: the reality of death and the promise of life. “Especially in the foundational texts in Genesis and Exodus, the survival of [the] people [of Israel] is continually under attack by infertility [Abraham and Sarah are too old to have children] and genocide [the Egyptian Pharaoh orders all the male children of the Israelites to be killed]. And yet,” they continue “just as continually—and often miraculously—new life appears, and God’s promise overcomes the power of death that had seemed invincible” (p. 169).

This promise that life will overcome death is what is demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. By his dying and rising, Paul says, the power of death has been destroyed. We will all continue to live and die, but Jesus is the sign of what God intends for us all. I love the metaphor Paul uses: Jesus is the first fruits; he is the harbinger of life for all, the foretaste, the anticipation, the down payment, the first installment—choose your metaphor. What God did in the life of Elijah—snatching life from the jaws of death not once, not twice, but three times—points ahead to what God promises for us all.

A friend of mine, Tom Are, is pastor of the Village Presbyterian Church in Kansas City. He makes a strong witness to the power of God’s promises in everyday life. Tom would say that his faith in God’s promises of life have been shaped by his brother Gene. Gene was born with a generous heart but a limited mind. Gene will never read a book, but he will never forget Tom’s birthday. More than anything, Gene wants to drive a car. That’s his big goal in life. Gene turned forty-six this year, and he’s still waiting to drive a car. This is how Tom tells about a conversation with Gene:

I say, “Gene, where are you going to go?” “I’m gonna come see you, give a kiss to my niece and nephew with a big hug.” “That’s great, Gene. What are you going to do then?” “I’ll take you, and we’ll go see Daddy. Don’t tell him I’m coming.” “Oh, I promise, Gene, your secret is good with me.” That’s what he wants, just to drive a car. We were eating in Shoney’s Big Boy because he thinks that’s fine dining. We both had ordered the “cholesterol plate.” We were talking about the trips he would take. In a moment that was so unlike him, so real that it seemed unreal, he said, “Brother, do you think I’ll ever drive that car?” “Gene, yes I do.” How can I say such a thing? He will never drive a car—not my car. But it’s not about driving, even for him, I don’t think. It’s not about driving. It is about all that has gone wrong in this world being made right. I said yes because I believe that the love of God is the ultimate power of this world. There is a holy love that will redeem everything that has gone wrong. Those tears that cannot be comforted in this life will be wiped away in the presence of the living God. (From a 16 May 2010 sermon by the Reverend Chandler Stokes, Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan, referencing a 2009 sermon by the Reverend Tom Are)

How in the world do we come to say that—in the face of all that does go wrong, in the face of death itself? We believe, I think, because we let our lives become shaped by stories like those of Elijah, shaped by the story of Jesus. It was just those stories that led John of Patmos to his amazing vision: “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be God’s peoples; and God himself will be with them. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”