andygoodliff

Some Thoughts on Dying Well

I remember one member of this church saying to me something like:

I’m not afraid of death,

what I fear is dying.

This is what I want to talk about this morning.

We know the difference Christ makes to death,

he conquerors it,

he removes its sting

he breaks it power.

'There is a hope so sure, a promise so secure,' *

that means the last word is not death, but life.

But what difference does Christ make to dying.

How do we die well?

I want to tell something of the story of John Ames

as we find it the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. **

The novel is one long letter that Ames writes to his young son.

Ames is a widow who marries again unexpectedly late in life

and then finds that he has not only become a husband, but also a father.

The novel begins with Ames discovering his heart is failing,

that is, he is dying.

So he decides to write a letter to his son.

This letter is his attempt to say the things he believes as a father he should teach his son.

As he says, ‘I’m trying to tell you things I might never have thought to tell you if I had bought you up myself …’

This long letter tells his son all about his family, his grandparents and great grandparents,

giving him a sense of history and of place and of example,

but it also speaks other words,

words of the wonder and beauty of ‘this life, this world.’

Ames sees a young couple playing in the rain and he says:

            … it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash … This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

He says of his son and of life:

            ‘I love you for your existence. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.’

And again,

            ‘You have been God’s grace to me, a miracle.’

Of his wife, he says, I think, a most beautiful word:

‘Your mother has always struck me as someone with whom the Lord might have chosen to spend some part of His mortal time.’

He also finds time for humour.

Ames is a pastor and he attends the bedside of one of his congregation.

He writes this:

Lacey Thrush died last night. Isn’t that a name? … She died promptly and decorously, out of consideration for me, I suspect, since she has been concerned about my health. She was conscious half an hour, unconscious half an hour and gone. We said the Lord’s prayer and the Twenty-Third Psalm, then she wanted to hear ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ … She’s given me a lot to live up to, so to speak … At any rate, she didn’t keep me awake past my bedtime, and peacefulness of her sleep contributed mightily to the peacefulness of mine. These old saints bless us every chance they get.

And another time, he decides he wants to do some dancing:

            I decided a little waltzing would be very good, and it was …

And then he adds:

I have thought I might have a book ready at hand to clutch if I began to experience unusual pain, so that it would have an especial recommendation from being found in my hands. That seemed theatrical, on consideration, and it might have the perverse effect of burdening the book with unpleasant associations.

But there is also an honesty about being one close to death. For example:

I have not been writing to you for a day or two. I have passed some fairly difficult nights. Discomfort, a little trouble breathing. I have decided the two options open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) trust the Lord.

And

‘I don’t fault myself for feeling this way. The Lord wept in the Garden on the night He was betrayed.’

Also in this long letter, he records that:

            ‘I have written a letter to her [his wife], with instructions.’

In other words, he’s made sure she will be looked after financially.

Weaving through all of this are reflections on God and heaven, the Bible, prayer and the sacraments – baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

It might be because he is a pastor, but I think it is also that he his dying.

In his dying, he turns even more to God and the gifts of God as a source of faith and hope, comfort and courage.

If Ames sounds a little too pious,

there is the return of Jack Boughton.

Jack Boughton is the adult son of Ames’ best friend.

Boughton is a prodigal son returned.

He left Gilead in disgrace,

and Ames is concerned at his return,

for what it might mean for his friend’s health to have his son return,

but also in the way that Boughton gives attention to Ames’ wife and son,

Ames is both concerned that Boughton will be a bad influence, as well as jealous of this younger man spending time with his younger wife.

For much of the novel Ames is closer to the older brother in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son than anything like the forgiving father.

Ames tells the story of his own father and grandfather falling out.

He writes of his father:

‘The last words he said to his father were very angry words and there could never be any reconciliation.'

This is one of the questions that runs through the novel,

will there be forgiveness and reconciliation for Jack Boughton?

This is not easy. Ames writes:

‘I spent several hours in meditation and prayer over Jack Boughton … My only role is to be gracious.’

But he goes on to say:

‘Jack Boughton is a piece of work.’

And therefore, again with a hint of humour, he says:

‘Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap.’

And then later, he says:

            ‘I don’t forgive him. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

Towards the end of the novel,

they meet and the meeting does not go well,

Then Ames sends Jack a note, and a second meeting takes place,

and there is truth-telling, confession, forgiveness, reconciliation and blessing.

In sharing the story of John Ames of Gilead,

a dying man writing to his young son,

I think we see something of what dying well might look like

and the difference Christ makes.

I say this fully acknowledging that some forms of dying are anything but serene,

they are horrible and painful,

like Jesus’ own dying.

Dying well

means telling stories, our own and others.

One of the chief roles of the dying is to make sure the stories of the past get

passed on, remembered, so that they might continue to be retold.

It means telling stories of how lives have sought to follow Jesus,

            in all their faithfulness and fragility,

            in all their grace and transgressions.

The gift of the dying

            is to testify to their own living

            in the midst of God’s call and blessing, guiding and discipling.

and in this teach the rest of us how to die and to die well.

The gift of the dying

            is to recognise the things that matter,

                        family, friends, church,

                        prayer, bread and wine, God’s word,

                        the beauty of creation,

            and to let go of the things that don’t.

Dying well is about leaving instructions for those we leave behind.

We call this writing a will.

What will happen to our earthly possessions, our savings?

What have we put in place to look after family and church?

Writing a will is to do theology,

            because it is way of showing that God matters

            and in death we want to be a blessing to that which matters to God.

Dying well is about honesty, forgiveness and reconciliation.

This is why it might well be a gift that we don’t die quickly, painlessly and in our sleep,

because it can mean there is no place to say the things that might need to be said.

And that we might die quickly,

perhaps calls us not to leave things unattended,

with words unspoken.

Dying well is about telling people we love them.

In another story, a tragic story of Adam, he dies before his daughter is born,

but he finds time in his final months

to buy her a present for each birthday of the first 18 years of her life,

that she might know of his love for her. ***

It might mean like Ames, we become letter-writers.

Dying well is about finding time to laugh as well as cry.

Dying well is about joy in the midst of sorrow and pain.

Ames gives his son the gift of being able to smile when he remembers his father.

Dying well requires patience, courage, hope, faith, love, humility, generosity.

These are the same virtues for living well.

Christianity is a life-long lesson in learning to live,

and it is a life-long lesson in learning to die.

In that sense it starts now, not just in our final days, weeks or months.

The difference Christ makes to the dying is to say ****

the past is forgiven,

the future is assured,

and the present is a gift,

admittedly sometimes a difficult and painful gift,

but a gift to family, friends, the church and beyond,

of God’s love and friendship,

of the truth that we do not die alone,

and that in Christ life is stronger than death.

May we all learn to die well.

Amen.

 

* Graham Kendrick, 'There is a Hope So Sure' © 2002 MakeWay Music

** Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

*** Richard Lischer, Stations of the Heart: The Parting of a Son (2013)

**** I owe these last lines to Sam Wells, ‘How To Die’ in Be Not Afraid: Facing Fear With Faith (Brazos, 2011)

On World Mental Health Day

 

This is a sermon I preached on Sunday, not actually knowing that today was World Mental Health Day. It owes a lot, as will be obvious to John Colwell (and at the end to Katherine Welby Roberts). The sermon is one of a series on subjects we often don't talk about in church. Other Sundays have addressed debt, dementia, disability, divorce (yes all D's).

 

It is only quite recently we have begun to talk about mental health openly.

Politicians talk about it more now.

The royals talk about it more now.

Celebrities talk about it more now.

A whole industry of books on mindfulness is big business.

The recognition that some people struggle with their mental health

is becoming much more widely accepted.

The stigma and shame that can be associated with it mental illness is slowly

becoming less.

My friend John is a Baptist minister, pastoring two churches and then for fifteen

years was tutor in theology and ethics at Spurgeon’s College, before returning to

the pastorate.

He has suffered from depression all his adult life.

The other side of his depression are periods of mania with feelings of great

energy and enthusiasm.

He is bi-polar.

He says of clinical depression. *

It isn’t just a matter of unimaginable despair and inexplicable weeping

or blank numbness.

There is of course the recurring temptation to suicide.

But beyond the obvious there are physical symptoms:

intense weariness; a digestive system on overdrive;

a distinctive headache in the form of a feeling of weight pressing on your head;

a dryness in the mouth and unquenchable thirst;

and a complete inability to concentrate.

And, for me, there is acute people-phobia. (15)

In 2009 he published Why Have You Forsaken Me? A Personal reflection on the Experience of Desolation.

In his book he describes what living with manic depression is like

and how he has come to live with it

in light of the gospel.

He asks, as we have been asking, what difference does Christ make.

Depression is an illness.

Although like St Paul John has pleaded for his depression to be taken away,

it has not yet been – John is now in his sixties.

He has come to live with it,

to cling to the promise, like St Paul,

‘that God’s grace is sufficient my weakness, and even that

God is glorified in and through my weakness rather than by its removal.’ (33)

One of John’s discoveries,

alongside that of being able to name his depression as an illness,

rather than as a result of spiritual failure or sin,

was to recognise he is not alone.

The witness of scripture and of history,

tell of others who have suffered from depression,

who have felt God-forsaken,

who have even lost faith.

What has helped John live with his depression

have been the psalms of lament,

the witness of the saints – like the great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon,

whose life was marked at times with depression.

And with the psalms and saints,

was his baptism and his on-going participation in the Lord’s Supper.

In baptism and the Lord’s Supper are promises of God’s presence,

even if they cannot be felt.

So he can write,

‘in utter darkness, in the absence of all felt presence, promise remains.’ (41)

One psalm has stood out for John.

Psalm 22.

It’s beginning is the title of his book.

It’s beginning is of course also words that Jesus speaks from the cross.

This astonishing Psalm

records the cries of one who is suffering,

who feels deserted and abandoned.

It is not a Psalm that asks why is this happening to me,

but why have you forsaken me?

The dominant distress for the Psalmist is the absence of God.

For one suffering depression like John,

it is not just the depression itself,

but the feeling of being God forsaken.

The primary question is not why is this happening,

but where are you God?

The Psalm that follows 22, is 23,

and that speaks of walking through the darkest valley,

but this is ok, because God is with me.

For those struggling with depression or other mental illnesses,

it is the feeling of abandonment by God that overwhelms.

The Psalmist in Psalm 22 goes on to recall God’s faithfulness in the past,

but this does not alleviate his situation.

He says,

‘I am a worm, not a human being.’

The Psalmist next recalls God in his own life,

Here is some comfort and at the same time,

it also accentuates his trouble.

For to know God, to have felt the presence of God,

makes the feeling of God’s absence or abandonment all the more dark.

As John writes,

‘if I didn’t believe in God,

if I didn’t believe the gospel story,

if the narrative of my life and the lives of those I love didn’t confirm the gospel story,

then there would be no basis for God-forsakenness …

it is precisely because I have been brought all my life to trust God

that the sense of being shut-off from God is the bleakest and most troubling

aspect of clinical depression.’ (52)

Having known God’s presence,

but feeling only God’s absence,

sends the Psalmist in verses 12-21 back into distress and desperation.

There is then the surprise when the Psalmist

shifts to praise from verse 22 onwards.

Has the situation changed?

John suggests that it has not.

That the Psalmist is still in darkness,

but this does not lead to loss of faith.

This astonishing word of praise and trust

is an expression of faith in God

‘over and against circumstance, understanding, and feeling;

faith declares what feeling doubts and circumstance denies;

faith affirms God’s nature and faithfulness even when God is felt to be absent.’ (57)

The final verses of the Psalm end with a prophetic word,

that God will bring about a new future even if in the present everything seems to

speak against that.

The witness of John and others who struggle with depression

and who are also Christian

is of faith that trusts in God in the darkness.

This kind of faith still leaves room for despair,

but it is despair that practices itself in lament, complaint and renewed appeal.

It is faith that does not give way to distrust,

but one in which says ‘still I will believe.’

Their witness is one that stands against the sham

of the wealth, health and happiness gospel, which is no gospel.

Those who claim that Christian life is one free of suffering,

one only of material blessing and unending good health,

are those whose Bible is reduced to about ten or twelve verses,

all taken out of context!

This is not to say that depression is something we should seek or expect,

but it is to say that for some of us depression will be something we live with,

others of us will face different kinds of suffering,

this is part of being human.

We get ill.

Being Christian does not protect us from suffering,

but it does say that in Christ God knows our suffering,

and has shared our suffering.

Christ has entered the darkness,

felt his prayers met with silence,

knows what it is to feel forsaken.

The Christian gospel proclaims God is most truly known at the cross.

In the suffering, dying and death, darkness and cry of God-forsakenness.

and Jesus says follow me.

To live as one depressed

is to live in the same space, same tradition,

as those who suffer the dark night of the soul,

as those who wrote the psalms of lament,

as Jesus himself.

I don’t suggest that this makes depression any easier to bear,

but it is to be situated in a story

in which Good Friday and Holy Saturday give way to the dawn of Easter morning,

that while the darkness might be torturous and long,

it is not unending.

Faith is faithfulness even despite the darkness.

Faith is the knowledge that when there are no words,

no prayers,

Christ prays for us.

Faith is being surrounded by the church,

who pray for us,

who sit with us,

who do not judge us,

who know not to offer glib and trite phrases.

In preparation for this sermon,

I also came across these words from Katherine Welby-Roberts

who suffers from depression. **

She writes:

What does it mean to find hope within an illness that is doing everything possible to rob you of it?           

I have friends, a nice home, a very supportive family near by, a good church, a good job, a brilliant doctor, and an incredibly wonderful boyfriend, however, previously I have had many of these things and still found myself unable to find a way out of the despair.

So what has changed? For me the change has been an increased understanding of what ‘God loves you’ really means. It goes beyond the point of a strange and distant sense ‘I know, I know, but what difference does it make’ to a point where it has given me the strength to change my mindset and outlook on life.

Now don’t get me wrong, when I am very low I still will see a black veil of nothing hanging in front of me, I will still find that point of hopelessness where there is no way forward. My brain gets full and I cannot possibly understand how to empty it or what the way forward is. However, in between these moments I find life. There is a hope that comes from the understanding that in it all, the highs and lows, the hope and despair there is truly a place where you can find peace.

The bible is my key. Reading the psalms I find that I don’t need to have hope every second of the day. In my hopelessness I just need to acknowledge that God is bigger than my illness and he will come through – eventually. Not always easy, but always possible. I go back to Job in the bible, again an inspiration, a man in despair, who maintained trust and faith, but not in a squeaky clean ‘all is fine’ kind of way. In fact, I don’t know that I have yet encountered a single person from the bible who did have an ‘everything is fine’ kind of life. So why do we feel we need to?

The church is the place where hope can be found, but this is only possible if the church is willing to accept that life is not always rosy. The stigma around mental health illness – of any kind, must be eradicated. The bible is full of people who screw up, who get miserable, angry, who hurt and who weep. Even Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane found life a little too much to bear and pleaded with God.

My hope comes from an understanding that life is not easy or straightforward. It is complex and frightening, but I have a God who will stand with me every step. It is just a shame that so often his people will not.

I have a hopeful depression. I am unafraid of my illness, I know that at times it will be unbearable, but I know in it all I am not alone. I look forward to the time when this hope is shared by the church and all those in it suffering quietly and in fear of what their friends would say.

A prayer by John:

Dear Lord,

sometimes you lead us in green pastures and beside still waters,

sometimes you restore our souls;

but sometimes you hold us in the presence of our enemies,

and sometimes we find ourselves in valleys of darkness.

You say you will be with us, to guide and to comfort,

but we don't always feel your presence,

and we never see your form.

Teach us to trust you when we cannot see and cannot feel;

hold us when we cannot hold onto you.

For the sake of the one who entered our darkness,

and who cried in desolation;

even your beloved Son.

Amen. (24)

 

* John Colwell, Why Have You Forsaken Me? (Paternoster, 2010; Wipf & Stock, 2012) Page numbers in brackets.