When We See Death
Sermon
Best Funeral Meditations
sermon to college students
Harold C. Warlick, Jr.
Some years ago, I was asked to preach for a week--long series of services in First Baptist Church, Fort Myers, Florida. I pulled together a dozen of what I considered to be my best sermons, threw them in a briefcase, and our family boarded a jet to Florida. The morning of the first service I stood by the organ with the guest musician, my friend William Brown, as he shuffled through his musical selections, trying to mesh their themes with my sermons. Now, unbeknown to me at that time, over 75 percent of the population in that section of Florida is over seventy years of age. The front doors to the sanctuary flung open and the people started piling in. By the time worship started there were over 500 people in the sanctuary, and it appeared to me that fewer than five percent were under seventy years old.
As the organist began the prelude, William Brown walked across the platform to my chair and whispered into my ear, "Man, we are in trouble. We are in trouble!" And he was right. All my sermons were either generalized appeals to "love thy neighbor and recommit your life to a more purposeful future" or a harsh call to involvement in building a better world. His musical selections were in the same vein. But if life is a journey or a pilgrimage, as the preachers and teachers tell us, then that audience was at a point of hearing a word from the conductor calling to collect their tickets. So Brown sang "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen, Nobody Knows But Jesus," and I preached from memory, as best I could, a sermon on the resurrection.
We preachers do not preach on death very often, especially on a college campus. Most of my own sermons are appeals to find scriptural resources for dealing with the harsh realities of daily living, for finding grace sufficient to forgive personal sins, or for generalized appeals to "get with it, you nineteen--year--olds."
Sometimes life causes us to have to change focus and look at death even before a good bit of the sand has dropped in our personal hourglass of life. There is nowhere on any campus to hide from the reality of death. Will Kime, a guest speaker in our auditorium, once asked all students who had experienced the death of a brother or sister or a friend their age to raise their hands. Over half of our students put them up. And in the last two months we have memorialized two students, one in the day and one in the EDP, who died tragically at much too young an age.
This is the time of year, the week before Holy Week, that the Church turns its seasonal calendar to focus on death. The Cross of Christ represents the reality of the ugliness and despair in life. It is a reality from which no one can escape. Much too soon, we will all see death.
Perhaps it is a proper time for us to see death, for most of us have some years left to transform our life's meaning. Alfred Bernhard Nobel became an inventor and chemist in the mid--1800s. In 1863 he patented a mixture of nitroglycerin and gunpowder. Three years later his big invention came when he invented dynamite. His renown as the inventor of dynamite became worldwide. Later in his life he received quite a shock. While reading the morning newspaper he saw on the front page the headline "Alfred Nobel Dead." The sub--headline read "Dynamite King Dies." The article referred to him as "the merchant of death" and "Inventor of Destruction."
Nobel was obviously appalled as he read a description of the impression he had left the world by his invention. As it turned out, an overly eager reporter in France had seized upon news of the death of another Alfred Nobel, of no relation, and flashed it across the telegraph wires, trying to beat his fellow reporters to the punch.
The real Alfred Nobel was completely shaken and unnerved as he stared into death. He realized for the first time that he would be remembered only as a man who spread death and destruction everywhere. Surely, he thought, this was not the aim of a worthy life. He knew he had to transform his purpose and make a contribution to the life of the world. Consequently he dedicated his great fortune to peace among the nations and founded the annual Nobel Peace Prize. Now Alfred Nobel's name is associated with the winners of this prize, like the Red Cross, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Albert Schweitzer.
Death can wake us up to a transformation of our life's meaning. Its awareness can turn useless lives into those which are very, very useful. The ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday, the cross on the altar, and the memorial service next Wednesday when the names of friends of ours who died since last Easter will be in the bulletin, all have their role to play in our awareness. As much as we would like to run from it, we must all see death.
One day in college, my roommate came back to the residence hall completely shaken. He was president--elect of the student body and the university had brought in a consultant to talk with the new Student Government Association officers about leadership. This consultant did not give a speech. He didn't say a word. He just loaded them in a car and drove them a few miles into the woods. There beside the road was a freshly dug grave. He made them all get out of the school van and stand around the empty hole. He said, "I want you to look into that hole, keep it in mind, and think of it as you make plans for the new year. Look backwards from this hole and enjoy life, rejoice in your fellow students, and remember to really live because one day you'll be in a hole just like this one."
They got back in the van and drove back to campus, and no one said a word. He let them out in front of their residence halls, one--by--one. End of retreat, good--bye consultant. It has been almost thirty years and I can still remember how profound an impact that experience had on my roommate. When you envision the rest of your life and work backward to the present it has a profound transformation on your life. This has a keen influence on college students who think death is something that happens to others and is always a million years away.
If the life of the human race from its creation to the present could be captured on motion picture films, all the frames in that film combined would not add up in importance to the one where this Jesus of Nazareth cried, "It is finished," and pitched his head forward in death on the cross. That crucifixion took nearly nine hours. It was a slow death, the muscles degenerating into knobs of agony. There was nothing civilized about it. Paul tells us, "God was in Christ reconciling the world ..." (2 Corinthians 5:19). Think of it. God - hanging like a slab of meat on some spikes. Most of the faithful never showed up. Those who came were for the most part ignorant hecklers who spat and cursed. God in Christ looked down on a scene of madness, cried, "It is finished," and slumped over into eternity. That is a vision that you and I should keep before ourselves. The cross of death has the power to transform life in the present. When one realizes that death has been conquered, the freshly dug grave of our own demise can have the power to make an improvement in the way we manage life today. We have to see death, reflect upon it, and hold ourselves beside it to see the way it can change us. We have to see death in order to know that Christ has overcome it. We have to see ourselves as ultimately cast down but not destroyed in order to reveal to ourselves who we really are.
There was a great fire in Boston in the 1920s that helped to prolong your life and my life. Because of that destruction, that death, you and I live longer lives. The fire swept away a whole block of valuable property. Newspaper man Russell Conwell went over to the ruins for the purpose of making a report to his paper concerning it.1 He had been up the whole night because the fire was a tremendous one and had destroyed millions of dollars worth of property. As he stood at the corner of Franklin and Pearl streets, everything was in ruins. There was nothing but ashes for a whole block. The owner had put a sign on a rough board and stuck it up in the middle of the ashes. It was a quotation from 2 Corinthians: "Cast down but not destroyed." As the owner of the block stood there with the reporter, he had lost everything except the cellar of a store in the corner next to Pearl Street. As the citizens began to rummage curiously through the debris, a man, in great excitement, ran up to the policemen on the scene. Some drugs had been stored in the cellar. And the fire had produced many great changes among them. In fact, the changes were so great this professor ordered the police to guard the cellar while chemists from a nearby university could get over there and examine the great results that had been accomplished by the awful and continuous heat of so many hours' duration. Out of that examination came a far greater wealth than the owner had ever imagined.
Out of the known combinations which heat will make of chemicals and minerals so deposited as they were at the time of this fire, there came an almost complete scientific revolution. Two months after the fire, Popular Science Monthly and Scientific Weekly published a long list of improvements, which that fire revealed, in the management and discoveries of chemistry.2 You and I go to bed tonight with the hope of a longer life because drugs are available to us that emerged from being held for so long and so close to destruction. Our whole physical prospect for life was transformed into something greater.
Take this Easter and hold yourself close to the cross. Don't turn away from the harshness of death. Let it shake you, and look deep into your own heart. If you wear a cross around your neck, play with it. Twirl it in your fingers and see death. Stand close to the reality of death and see it. Look at the cross sitting on the altar and on the pulpit. Look at these stained--glass windows and see death. Only when you see death can you appreciate the victory we have in Christ. Start with the end of your life and work back to today. What is the aim of a worthy life? What improvements and discoveries are to be made by you? Stand close to the destruction and let it pass over you. Your whole outlook will be transformed into something more useful. You cannot have life in you unless you have death in you. The resurrection cannot be real to you unless the cross is real to you. "We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:10, NIV).
When we seek death we can smile and see that "it is finished!" So be it!
____________
1. Russell H. Conwell, Borrowed Axes (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1923), pp. 78--79.
2. Ibid.
Dr. Harold C. Warlick, Jr., is Chair of the Department of Religion and Minister to the University at High Point University, High Point, North Carolina.
Harold C. Warlick, Jr.
Some years ago, I was asked to preach for a week--long series of services in First Baptist Church, Fort Myers, Florida. I pulled together a dozen of what I considered to be my best sermons, threw them in a briefcase, and our family boarded a jet to Florida. The morning of the first service I stood by the organ with the guest musician, my friend William Brown, as he shuffled through his musical selections, trying to mesh their themes with my sermons. Now, unbeknown to me at that time, over 75 percent of the population in that section of Florida is over seventy years of age. The front doors to the sanctuary flung open and the people started piling in. By the time worship started there were over 500 people in the sanctuary, and it appeared to me that fewer than five percent were under seventy years old.
As the organist began the prelude, William Brown walked across the platform to my chair and whispered into my ear, "Man, we are in trouble. We are in trouble!" And he was right. All my sermons were either generalized appeals to "love thy neighbor and recommit your life to a more purposeful future" or a harsh call to involvement in building a better world. His musical selections were in the same vein. But if life is a journey or a pilgrimage, as the preachers and teachers tell us, then that audience was at a point of hearing a word from the conductor calling to collect their tickets. So Brown sang "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen, Nobody Knows But Jesus," and I preached from memory, as best I could, a sermon on the resurrection.
We preachers do not preach on death very often, especially on a college campus. Most of my own sermons are appeals to find scriptural resources for dealing with the harsh realities of daily living, for finding grace sufficient to forgive personal sins, or for generalized appeals to "get with it, you nineteen--year--olds."
Sometimes life causes us to have to change focus and look at death even before a good bit of the sand has dropped in our personal hourglass of life. There is nowhere on any campus to hide from the reality of death. Will Kime, a guest speaker in our auditorium, once asked all students who had experienced the death of a brother or sister or a friend their age to raise their hands. Over half of our students put them up. And in the last two months we have memorialized two students, one in the day and one in the EDP, who died tragically at much too young an age.
This is the time of year, the week before Holy Week, that the Church turns its seasonal calendar to focus on death. The Cross of Christ represents the reality of the ugliness and despair in life. It is a reality from which no one can escape. Much too soon, we will all see death.
Perhaps it is a proper time for us to see death, for most of us have some years left to transform our life's meaning. Alfred Bernhard Nobel became an inventor and chemist in the mid--1800s. In 1863 he patented a mixture of nitroglycerin and gunpowder. Three years later his big invention came when he invented dynamite. His renown as the inventor of dynamite became worldwide. Later in his life he received quite a shock. While reading the morning newspaper he saw on the front page the headline "Alfred Nobel Dead." The sub--headline read "Dynamite King Dies." The article referred to him as "the merchant of death" and "Inventor of Destruction."
Nobel was obviously appalled as he read a description of the impression he had left the world by his invention. As it turned out, an overly eager reporter in France had seized upon news of the death of another Alfred Nobel, of no relation, and flashed it across the telegraph wires, trying to beat his fellow reporters to the punch.
The real Alfred Nobel was completely shaken and unnerved as he stared into death. He realized for the first time that he would be remembered only as a man who spread death and destruction everywhere. Surely, he thought, this was not the aim of a worthy life. He knew he had to transform his purpose and make a contribution to the life of the world. Consequently he dedicated his great fortune to peace among the nations and founded the annual Nobel Peace Prize. Now Alfred Nobel's name is associated with the winners of this prize, like the Red Cross, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Albert Schweitzer.
Death can wake us up to a transformation of our life's meaning. Its awareness can turn useless lives into those which are very, very useful. The ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday, the cross on the altar, and the memorial service next Wednesday when the names of friends of ours who died since last Easter will be in the bulletin, all have their role to play in our awareness. As much as we would like to run from it, we must all see death.
One day in college, my roommate came back to the residence hall completely shaken. He was president--elect of the student body and the university had brought in a consultant to talk with the new Student Government Association officers about leadership. This consultant did not give a speech. He didn't say a word. He just loaded them in a car and drove them a few miles into the woods. There beside the road was a freshly dug grave. He made them all get out of the school van and stand around the empty hole. He said, "I want you to look into that hole, keep it in mind, and think of it as you make plans for the new year. Look backwards from this hole and enjoy life, rejoice in your fellow students, and remember to really live because one day you'll be in a hole just like this one."
They got back in the van and drove back to campus, and no one said a word. He let them out in front of their residence halls, one--by--one. End of retreat, good--bye consultant. It has been almost thirty years and I can still remember how profound an impact that experience had on my roommate. When you envision the rest of your life and work backward to the present it has a profound transformation on your life. This has a keen influence on college students who think death is something that happens to others and is always a million years away.
If the life of the human race from its creation to the present could be captured on motion picture films, all the frames in that film combined would not add up in importance to the one where this Jesus of Nazareth cried, "It is finished," and pitched his head forward in death on the cross. That crucifixion took nearly nine hours. It was a slow death, the muscles degenerating into knobs of agony. There was nothing civilized about it. Paul tells us, "God was in Christ reconciling the world ..." (2 Corinthians 5:19). Think of it. God - hanging like a slab of meat on some spikes. Most of the faithful never showed up. Those who came were for the most part ignorant hecklers who spat and cursed. God in Christ looked down on a scene of madness, cried, "It is finished," and slumped over into eternity. That is a vision that you and I should keep before ourselves. The cross of death has the power to transform life in the present. When one realizes that death has been conquered, the freshly dug grave of our own demise can have the power to make an improvement in the way we manage life today. We have to see death, reflect upon it, and hold ourselves beside it to see the way it can change us. We have to see death in order to know that Christ has overcome it. We have to see ourselves as ultimately cast down but not destroyed in order to reveal to ourselves who we really are.
There was a great fire in Boston in the 1920s that helped to prolong your life and my life. Because of that destruction, that death, you and I live longer lives. The fire swept away a whole block of valuable property. Newspaper man Russell Conwell went over to the ruins for the purpose of making a report to his paper concerning it.1 He had been up the whole night because the fire was a tremendous one and had destroyed millions of dollars worth of property. As he stood at the corner of Franklin and Pearl streets, everything was in ruins. There was nothing but ashes for a whole block. The owner had put a sign on a rough board and stuck it up in the middle of the ashes. It was a quotation from 2 Corinthians: "Cast down but not destroyed." As the owner of the block stood there with the reporter, he had lost everything except the cellar of a store in the corner next to Pearl Street. As the citizens began to rummage curiously through the debris, a man, in great excitement, ran up to the policemen on the scene. Some drugs had been stored in the cellar. And the fire had produced many great changes among them. In fact, the changes were so great this professor ordered the police to guard the cellar while chemists from a nearby university could get over there and examine the great results that had been accomplished by the awful and continuous heat of so many hours' duration. Out of that examination came a far greater wealth than the owner had ever imagined.
Out of the known combinations which heat will make of chemicals and minerals so deposited as they were at the time of this fire, there came an almost complete scientific revolution. Two months after the fire, Popular Science Monthly and Scientific Weekly published a long list of improvements, which that fire revealed, in the management and discoveries of chemistry.2 You and I go to bed tonight with the hope of a longer life because drugs are available to us that emerged from being held for so long and so close to destruction. Our whole physical prospect for life was transformed into something greater.
Take this Easter and hold yourself close to the cross. Don't turn away from the harshness of death. Let it shake you, and look deep into your own heart. If you wear a cross around your neck, play with it. Twirl it in your fingers and see death. Stand close to the reality of death and see it. Look at the cross sitting on the altar and on the pulpit. Look at these stained--glass windows and see death. Only when you see death can you appreciate the victory we have in Christ. Start with the end of your life and work back to today. What is the aim of a worthy life? What improvements and discoveries are to be made by you? Stand close to the destruction and let it pass over you. Your whole outlook will be transformed into something more useful. You cannot have life in you unless you have death in you. The resurrection cannot be real to you unless the cross is real to you. "We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:10, NIV).
When we seek death we can smile and see that "it is finished!" So be it!
____________
1. Russell H. Conwell, Borrowed Axes (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1923), pp. 78--79.
2. Ibid.
Dr. Harold C. Warlick, Jr., is Chair of the Department of Religion and Minister to the University at High Point University, High Point, North Carolina.
