As a new priest, I’m getting the opportunity to reflect often upon those who have died, because it is customarily the most junior priest who celebrates the Πρόθεσις or Προσκομιδή. This is a liturgy of preparation before the Divine Liturgy, during which the priest prepares the bread and wine to be offered for the Eucharist. The priest places particles on the diskos for the Theotokos and all the saints – who have died – and also particles for those among the living and among the dead for whom he wishes to pray. So it is, among many other things, an opportunity to remember death and those who have died.
Death also often comes to mind in this season of dying leaves and shortening days with sunsets coming earlier each evening.
On Tuesday, I attended the funeral of my grandfather-in-law. So lately, I remember him among the departed during the Πρόθεσις. He had a long and full life, 92 years, four children, seven grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. But there are others who were not so old. One was a classmate in his twenties. Another was a teenage girl. We know not the hour. Many of us – probably most of us – have been close to someone who has died. So we can sympathize with the mourners in today's Gospel.
The 12-year-old daughter of Jairus was young, but she was dying and, while Jesus was occupied with the healing of another woman, she did die. A man from Jairus's house came and said, "Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore." The mourners gathered swiftly. Already by the time that Jesus reached the house, there were many there weeping and bewailing her.
Death can have this kind of effect on us. I remember getting the news that a friend of mine had died by text message over a year ago and I immediately fell to the ground. Sometimes there's an automatic physical response like that to grief. Sometimes there's not. There's no right or wrong way to feel when we hear that someone has died.
Death is a mystery. We think we know something about it but today our Lord shows us that even what we think we know we don't know, actually. One thing we think we know is that there's no point intervening anymore after a person has died. As the man said, "Your daughter is dead – do not trouble the teacher anymore." As if being dead meant that the Lord wasn't going to have something to say or do about it. I mean, that kinda makes sense to us. It's how we operate. Even if we don't admit it, we have a real tendency to think of death as the period at the end of the sentence – that beyond which there is nothing more to say – or that beyond which point there’s nothing we can do. That's how the mourners feel.
They know that the girl is dead. These people know what death looks like – they were not so insulated from death as we are – and the gospel doesn't say that the people think the girl is dead but that they know she is dead. But then Jesus comes and says that the girl is not dead, but only sleeping. So they laugh at him. Doesn’t Jesus know the difference between sleep and death?
Well, Jesus knows the way things really are, well beyond the understanding available to those of a worldly mind. Remember, he is the God who calls the things that are not as though they are – who calls into existence the things that did not exist – who gives life to the dead (Rom 4:17). So, when Jesus says the dead are sleeping, he need only wake them up. And when someone has died and there remains no more hope, we can hope against hope because we have such a God as this – a God for whom death is equivalent to sleep (Rom 4:18).
So the Lord does just this. He takes the girl by the hand and wakes her up, calling to her, "Child, arise!” This girl was not sleeping in the usual sense. It’s not that her relatives foolishly mistook sleep for death, but that she really did die and that the Lord was prepared to call her death sleep – to call a thing that was not as though it was and thus to make it so.
Remember that he is the word of God through whom all things are made. We know the girl is dead because the gospel says that when Jesus called her to arise, her spirit returned to her and she got up at once. Now, death is the unnatural separation of the spirit from the body. James says, “The body without the spirit is dead” (2:26). So, if her spirit had left her, such that it could return when Jesus calls, she had indeed died.
Death is a mystery – but something of it has been revealed to us. Our Lord has not left us entirely in the dark about death. Remember, Jesus Christ himself has experienced death and risen up from it. He knows about death in his omniscience as God and he knows about death experientially as a human in the only way that a human could know about such a thing – he himself has died. Also, the Holy Spirit reveals to us some facets of the mystery of death through the divinely-inspired scripture, all of which is God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16).
It is clear to us from scripture and the witness of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, that death is not annihilation. Atheists will say that what we are after death is just the same as what we are before conception – nothing. But the Lord through the scripture makes it clear that we are everlasting creatures. We begin but we do not end, regardless of whatever we may think, say, or do.
Much of what scripture reveals to us about death is that it can be compared to sleep, rather than annhilation. Already in the Old Testament, it was revealed to Daniel that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (12:2). And listen to what Paul says to the Thessalonians, as we read at every funeral:
“We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep” (1Th 4:13-15).
Paul will often use the terms death and sleep interchangeably, as does Jesus when referring to the death of his friend Lazarus. Death can be compared to sleep mostly because every time we go to sleep we wake up again. And in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it becomes clear that we can say the same thing about death: we die, but we wake up again.
Yet, this metaphor of death as sleep can be misunderstood and taken too far. For example, death is not unconsciousness in the way that sleep is. It is not annihilation, and it is not unconsciousness either. The week before last, we heard the story of the rich man and Lazarus, who die and have two very different experiences, which make it clear that those who have died are not experiencing unconsciousness but are aware of what's going on – among the living as well as among the dead – and are able to communicate. Notice that Abraham speaks about Moses and the Prophets – people who were born and lived and died long after Abraham had died – making it clear that Abraham has been aware of goings-on among the living all along since his death.
Speaking of Moses, the consciousness of those who have died is apparent also from the fact that, at the Transfiguration of Christ, Moses is seen talking with Jesus (Luke 9). Now, the unconscious would not be able to carry on such a meaningful conversation about what Jesus was to do in Jerusalem. So, the dead are not asleep in the sense of being unconscious, but asleep in the sense of waiting to wake up.
We are going to die, but having died we will one day hear, as did the daughter of Jairus, “Child, arise!”
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