So Jesus spoke again, “I assure you that I am the gate of
the sheep. 8 All who came before me were thieves and outlaws,
but the sheep didn’t listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever
enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out and find pasture.
10 The thief enters only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came so
that they could have life—indeed, so that they could live life to the
fullest. 11 “I am the
good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
On your evening news, you may see
an interview with someone, and you only see them on screen for a few seconds
and hear a few sentences from them. This
is called a “sound byte.” The person
certainly said much more than what we see, but it’s been edited down to the
most essential information. Sound bytes
don’t tell the whole story. I understand
the frustration from both sides – the person trying to condense the story
accurately, and the one being interviewed, reading the paper the next day
going, “That’s not what I said, or at least, it’s certainly not what I meant!”
A short, memorable phrase, when lifted out of context, is easily
misunderstood. If you’re just joining us
today, we are in the middle of a series on “Faith that’s
Bigger than a Bumper Sticker.” We are
looking at popular misconceptions of Faith – they are sound bytes that could
also easily fit on a bumper sticker.
Each week we’ve peeled back a different phrase. You may have noticed that many of these
sayings are things that often get said around instances of suffering or
tragedy, particularly at times of death.
Both in experience and observation, though these phrases are offered
with good intentions as words of meaning or comfort, most of the time, they
only add to the pain of those who are already grieving. And so today, on this Memorial Day weekend,
we look at another phrase that gets trotted out in times of death, that “God
must have needed another angel in heaven.”
May we pray.
We’re just trying to help
“God needed another angel in heaven.” Short phrase that says a mouthful. Since August, my wife and I have lost,
between us, three of the remaining five grandparents we had still living. We lost my mom five years ago, and not a day
goes by that I don’t still miss her like crazy.
Many of you have lost those closest to you just recently, and nearly all
of us have someone we miss, whether they went on to the Church Triumphant
recently or long ago.
My wife spent her first year out of seminary working as a chaplain at Duke
Hospital, where she worked in the pediatric unit. In that year, she personally had contact with
30 families whose children died at the hospital. Those were only the families with whom she
had contact; there were countless others.
Should we tell the grieving families, “There, there: God needed another
angel in heaven?” How good or loving is
a God who takes the life of a child?
What higher purpose could that serve?
What end could possibly justify an end so cruel and callous?
There are related to corollaries to the phrase: “Every cloud has a silver lining. It’s always darkest just before the
dawn. Time heals all wounds. God knows what he’s doing. God needed them more than we did.” I’m often within earshot when these phrases
are offered, and I just want to say, “Please don’t. I know you’re trying to be helpful, but it’s
not working. Because if this person died
because God just wanted to add them to his angel collection, then, God sounds
like a real jerk.”
Yes, I’m aware these things are said with the best of intentions, and Death
makes many of us uncomfortable, we don’t know what to say, and get ourselves
into trouble. Often we don’t speak with God in these times, we speak about God. We fill the silence with pontifications that
begin “I think God this,” and “I think God that,” and what comes next is not
true, not helpful, and not healing for the person about to hear it, as we place
things in the mouth and mind of God that God never said nor thought.
Friends, when you don’t know what to say, you don’t actually need to say anything. Turns out you don’t have to say much to let
someone know you care. Often, a hug, a
smile, a call, a card, and a simple, “I’m so sorry” is all that needs to be
said. That’s all you need to do.
God is consistent, not confused
God isn’t a body snatcher, taking people from this life and adding them to
his angel collection. One of the issues
with making God the acting agent in death is that this runs counter to what we do know about God’s nature. We confess in the Nicene Creed that God is
the Lord and giver
of life. Not the taker!
In John 10, Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd, who came that we
might have life, and, indeed, have it to the fullest (John 10:10). The thief comes to kill and destroy, but not
God! God gives life. God doesn’t take it. God is not giving life with one hand and
snatching it away with the other. To
propose such an arrangement implies a very confused, split personality God, who
is inconsistent, can’t make up his mind, who is actually working against himself all the time!
Now yes, people do this, but not God!
We humans are walking inconsistencies – our behavior often works against
what we’ve stated as goals. So, perhaps
we say we’d like to be more generous with our money, or have more in savings,
but we don’t change our spending habits.
We say we want to lose weight, while we continue to eat as we always
have.
Each of us are walking contradictions, saying one thing, and then behaving
in a way that works against what we’ve said we want. Humans have these inconsistencies, but not
God. God doesn’t work against his own
interests. God is Love, steady,
consistent, and unwavering.
We sing, “Great is thy Faithfulness,” not, “Great is thy
Unreliability.” The God who is the giver of life, Jesus who came that we
would have life and have it abundantly – God is not giving life with one hand
and snatching it away with the other. Such
a confused, conflicted and inconsistent deity wouldn’t know the difference
between helping and harming, and anytime we imply that God is willfully
grieving us by taking people away from us, then neither do we.
Death is not part of God’s plan
Death was never part of God’s
plan. God’s plan was for us to enjoy
perpetual fellowship with God and each other.
The Westminster Catechism states that “the chief end of [human]kind is
to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” If
you read the story of Eden, that’s what it’s about. Nowhere is death any part of that plan. But, when sin entered the world, death came
along for the ride. Death is the other
side of the coin of sin; sin is nothing more and nothing less than a condition
of separation from God – the very thing that works against God’s intent of
uninterrupted fellowship with us.
But, since sin entered the world, God has been working diligently to defeat
it. God has been working overtime to
restore our relationship to God so that we can enjoy the communion with God for
which we were originally designed. And
so, death was never part of God’s plan, not part of God’s design, nowhere in
God’s intent for us, and we, as the people of faith need to stop saying that
God is causing and orchestrating death.
God is in the life business. God
is not giving life with one hand and taking it away with the other.
But, though God hasn’t caused death, God can still use it. Though God doesn’t orchestrate death, God
commands death to serve God’s purpose, such that on its other side, we are
restored to the full fellowship with God for which we were intended in the
first place.
You see, death has already been
defeated. In the death and resurrection
of Jesus, God has already declared victory over sin and death, but death hasn’t
gotten the message, yet. It’s akin to
what would happen in wars before modern times – the war of 1812, for
example. The war was officially ended by
the Treaty of Ghent in December, 1814, but it took months for that news to
reach the front. And so, the Battle of
New Orleans, the last major battle of the war, took place in January, a month
after the treaty had been signed. The
combatants were fighting a battle in a war that was already decided; they just
didn’t know it at the time.
That’s how it is for death in this time since the death and resurrection of
Jesus. Death has already lost; it just
doesn’t know it yet. A day has been
promised of a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no more crying
and pain, where death will be no more, but until then, death refuses to accept
its defeat. And so, the result is that
we live in this tenuous time between the times – the “already/not yet” of God’s
kingdom – already here because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, not yet
here in its fullness.
That means that death is still a reality, with all the pain and suffering
it brings with it. It still hurts, we
still grieve, we still shed tears for our pain and our loss, and friends,
that’s ok – even Jesus wept at the grave of his friend, Lazarus.
But, as people of faith, we do not approach death as those without
hope. Frederick Buechner reminds us that
the resurrection is God’s way of letting us know that the worst thing is never
the last thing. God has frustrated death
by taking away its sting. Death does not
get the last word. It’s not final. Because now, even in death, God’s promise of
life prevails.
God doesn’t cause death, but God does redeem it.
So, God doesn’t take people when they die.
But God does receive
them. God
doesn’t take; God receives.
Friends, that’s a big difference.
It’s the difference between God rudely snatching and grabbing people
from this life, and God graciously welcoming and receiving them with open,
loving arms in the life to come. We
don’t have a God who takes us. We do
have a God who receives us and rescues us from death. Christ is victorious, even when we can’t save
each other from death, God still can.
People don’t turn into angels
That clears up one misconception.
But there’s another one here, the idea that people turn into angels when
they die. It’s a popular idea, and I
have no idea where it comes from.
There’s no reason to think that people turn into angels at death. The Christian faith presents a different
picture. We believe that our loved ones
have been graciously received into the nearer presence of God, where they are
glorifying God and enjoying God in a way we can only faintly glimpse in this
life. The book of Romans says that nothing, not even death itself, shall
separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39), and neither shall it
separate us from each other. They aren’t
dead and gone; they are alive with Christ, and wherever Christ can be, so can
they.
But that doesn’t make them angels.
Like angels, perhaps, but people don’t turn into angels. The Scriptures speak of angels in two ways:
one specific, and one more general.
Specifically, angels are a being altogether different than we are. Different Scripture passages describe them in
a variety of ways, but here’s what we do
know: angels are both beautiful and frightening. Sometimes they are wrapped in light so bright
and glorious they shine like the sun, but they are something other than
human. So that’s the specific
description.
Now, onto the general. In Scripture,
angels appear as messengers – they have some message from God to deliver. The word, “angel” comes from the Greek, angelos, and
literally means, “messenger.” And so, in
a general sense, an angel is God’s messenger.
Anyone who provides help, or a message, or conveys God’s presence is, in
this general sense, an angel.
In this way, anybody can be an
angel. So, people don’t die because God
needs angels. The idea that God needs anything from us is questionable
enough to begin with, but really, if God needs
messengers anywhere, does God need them more in heaven, or on earth? Our loved ones who have already died aren’t
the angels, the messengers; we are! We should be less concerned with getting into
heaven when we die, than in getting heaven into us while we live.
People don’t die because God
needs angels. God’s message getting out
isn’t dependent on death. God is the
giver of life, not its taker.
Death is not the end of the story, neither for our loved one, nor for who
they were and what was important to them.
Whatever of them made this life a little better reflection of the
kingdom of God in our midst – make room in your life for that to continue to
live and grow. For those close to you
who have gone on before us, take a few moments to ask yourself, “What is it
about this person that made the world better, more Godly, and how can I make
room for it to grow in me?”
Death need not be the end of the story.
Their legacy can live on through us.
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