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Church of the Crossroads
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 12, 2006
Neal MacPherson

A CRY FROM THE PIT

Just a little over a month ago, on a Sunday morning, bright and cold, we journeyed with Mother’s ashes from Wolfville to Middleton, both of them towns in Nova Scotia, to the family plot in the graveyard overlooking the Annapolis River, and one of father’s favorite salmon pools, although now there are no more salmon to be found in it.

Since it was a Sunday morning, there was no one from the local funeral home there to help us. The funeral director of Roops Funeral Home had kindly provided a pick and a shovel for our use. When we arrived at the graveyard, they were leaning on the tombstone on which were inscribed on one side the names of our great-great grandparents on the other the names of our father and mother. The only thing missing in the inscription was the date of Mum’s death. That will be added before long.

We used the pick to break through the three to four inches of frost and then the shovel to deepen the hole, in the same place that had been chosen years ago when we committed Dad’s ashes to the ground. The task was made difficult because of the tree roots that blocked the shovel’s path. This time, I noticed how dark and rich the earth was. The shovel turned up some oak leaves that had fallen last fall but were not yet decomposed. After a committal sentence and a prayer, each of us took a handful of ashes and gently deposited them into the newly dug hole. Some, feeling a little awkward about handling the ashes, simply poured them from the plastic bag in which they had been placed. A fine cloud of ash particles rose from the earth. We then took the shovel and filled in the hole. Pink carnations, Mum’s favorite flower, were placed on the grave. After a while, we quietly left, the pick and shovel leaning on the tombstone, just as we had found them.

There was something good about this ritual of burying Mum’s ashes. We were sad, certainly. Tears were shed, but we went about the task with quiet determination. Everyone seemed to know just what to do. From dust we were created and to dust we shall return, as it says in this morning’s readings from Genesis. We are creatures of the earth. Death is life’s principle limitation. We do not live forever. That is probably a good thing, as William Sloane Coffin once reminded us. He said that endless life would be unbearable. For one thing, if we had all the time in the world, church meetings might go on for days at a time, and that would be terrible indeed. The shortness of life causes us to receive life as a precious gift, each moment of which is to be treasured and cherished.

As we filled in Mother’s grave that Sunday not too long ago, we sensed the completion of a life well lived. There was something good and comforting about that, something to be quietly accepted with gratitude.

This, then, is one of the attitudes the faithful bear towards the reality of death. From dust we come; to dust we return. God gives; God takes away – praised be the name of God. Wendell Berry, novelist, essayist, and poet, expresses this accepting approach to death and human mortality in his poem, The Wish to Be Generous. Reads the poem,

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man’s evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.

Elie Wiesel, who was my teacher twenty-five years ago when I was on sabbatical leave in Boston, once said in a class that he couldn’t quite understand the accepting attitude Christians have towards death. The Jew, he said, always fights against death. Elie Wiesel perhaps did not quite understand the Christian approach to death. It is, really, an uneven approach. On the one hand, it is accepting of the reality of death; yet, on the other hand, it resists death, especially death that comes too early, as in the case of our friend Carolyn Brooks-Harris, who has just died at the age of 48 years, or death that comes because of violence or warfare or hunger. This kind of death is resisted by Christians as well as Jews. And not only death that is untimely and unjustified, but death that comes in due time, as in the case of our Mum. Until nearly the end, she resisted death with all the strength she could muster. There is always something left undone, something not yet pondered, something not yet said, and that makes us resist death. Wrote Dylan Thomas,

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because there words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.


Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Even though death may be accepted in the end, Christians ought to resist death, surely, because God has declared life to be good, and because Jesus came that all may have life, and life abundantly. The Gospel we proclaim is a life-giving and life-affirming Gospel. So it is that, although in one sense, death can serve to enhance the living of our lives, death can also be an enemy of the life we value and cherish.

Such death must be resisted by us, in much the same manner as the writer of the Thirtieth Psalm who resisted his own death. In that psalm, one of the most moving of all, the psalmist recalls his cry from the Pit.

To you, O God, I cried,
and to you I made supplication:

“What profit is there is my death, if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?

Hear, O God, and be gracious to me!
O God, be my helper!”

Notice the intimacy with which the Psalmist addresses God. The Psalmist is almost argumentative, reminding God that not only does the human being need God but that God needs the human being! Only the human being can be a witness to God’s faithfulness. Only the human being can voice the praise of God. If the psalmist dies, there will be no witness, no voice of praise.

This psalm presents two remarkable affirmations, as Walter Brueggemann reminds us. First, the Sovereign God is inclined and attentive to those who are facing their own end. God “can be reached, summoned, and mobilized for the sake of life.” (Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 557) Even though God’s sovereignty can be harsh at times, there is a soft underside to God to which an appeal can be made. God is ready to be engaged with and exposed for the sake of the human partner.

Secondly, this 30th psalm reminds us that in order for God to respond, the human being, abandoned and alone, needs to take initiative. The human being needs to cry out, to speak, to complain, to protest. The human being needs to awaken God’s compassion, God’s concern.

And so it is that there are times when death is accepted, especially when death becomes inevitable, as in the words of this morning’s opening hymn:

In you, a kind and gentle death
prepares to hush our final breath,
Singing Praises, alleluia!

Yet, there are also times when we need, in the face of death, to cry out to God, to complain and protest, for the sake of life, not only on behalf of our own lives, but also on behalf of the lives of all who are dying needlessly, and on behalf of the earth itself, threatened with its own death.

For the sake of life we must do so. Basic to our crying out there is within us a trust that God can bring about new life and new possibilities. Only God can do that. Up to the point of death, we need to cry out, but only God can respond. We cannot heal ourselves. In the words of the Psalmist,

O God my God, I cried to you for help,
and you healed me.

O God, you brought up my soul from Sheol,
restored me top life from among those gone
down to the Pit. . .

You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth and
clothed me with joy.

so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.

New life in the midst of death is a gift from the hands of a gracious, life-giving God. New life beyond death, clouded in mystery, is also a gift from God. For us it is impossible. But for God all things are possible.

Knowing this, we cannot help but praise the God who hears our cry and inclines towards us in our distress, who is with us on the journey and at the end, granting us newness of life. And so, with the Psalmist we declare,

Sing praises to God, O you God’s faithful ones,
and give thanks to God’s holy name.

Amen.

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