Reflection: The Four Last Things - Death
By Fr. Wesley Walker
“And it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” -Hebrews 9:27 (KJV)
"The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things" by Hieronymous Bosch (1500)
During the Advent season, it is common for Christians to reflect on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven. It was common for the sermons during the Advent season to focus on them. As we wait in expectation during Advent, it benefits us to meditate on our mortality, on the fact that Christ “shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead,” and the reality of hell and heaven. As a result, we will be focusing on the four last things in our Reflections the next few weeks as we inch closer to Christmas.
Today, we begin with death. Death has often been called the “Great Equalizer” because it does not discriminate: all of us will die. What we mean by death is that the soul and body are separated. For Christians, the soul is immortal and cannot die, but the physical body can fall into disrepair and ultimately decay away. The great promise of the resurrection is that our souls and bodies will be reunited! The fact that death is a universal for all humankind provides us three points for reflection: (1) death is a reminder that we inhabit a broken and fallen world; (2) death brings urgency to the now; and (3) death is an enemy overcome.
Death is a reminder that we inhabit a broken world because it is the result of sin. We see this very early in the Scriptures. Death is the result of sin. Things were not meant to be this way. It’s why, when we attend the funeral of a Christian, there is a sense of celebration because we know that person is with Christ, but also a sense of mourning, because we feel their loss. We know, in those moments that this is not natural, this is not the way things should be. Eastern Orthodox philosopher and theologian David Bentley Hart beautifully expresses the tension a Christian feels when confronted with the dissonance of death:
“The Christian should see two realities at once, one world within another: one the world as we all know it, in all its beauty and terror, grandeur and dreariness, delight and anguish: and the other world in its first and ultimate truth, not simply ‘nature’ but ‘creation,’ an endless sea of glory radiant with the beauty of God in every part, innocent of all violence. To see in this way is to rejoice and mourn at once, to regard the world as a mirror of infinite beauty but as glimpsed through the veil of death; it is to see creation in chains, but beautiful as in the beginning of days.”
In other words, we see in all things, by virtue of their createdness, a spark of the divine while at the same time recognizing that our vision is fleeting and dim because we live “in the shadow of death.” This peculiar dual vision causes us to yearn for a day when things will be restored and put aright, a day when death will not longer be.
This brings us to a second point of reflection: the reality of impending death brings significance to the now. A good illustration of this point comes from Jesus’ parable in Luke 12:16-21: “The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” If it is true that we will die, then what we do right now matters. Of course, most people, Christian or not, agree with this. However, what becomes significant is that if we maintain a Christian view of death, it gives a distinctively Christian shape to our lives: the now is not primarily about hedonistic pleasure, wealth acquisition, shoring up political power, or other, lesser pursuits. The now is about pursuing the things that matter. As we will see on Sunday, Isaiah urges the people of Israel to “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, Call ye upon him while he is near” (55:6). That we will die one day is a springboard for us to contemplate how we organize our lives in the present.
The beauty of the Gospel is that death is an enemy that has been overcome. St. Paul taunts death in his epistle to the Corinthians, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" So while death is a reminder of our fallen world and our own mortality, it is also a reminder that the grave could not hold our Lord. Just as the Cross is the great symbol of victory, so death becomes an insistence that this is not all there is, that this is not the end.
And so as Christians, we situate ourselves within two overlapping realities. Death is inevitable and we will die. In the same breath, we insist that death has been trampled under foot by our Lord who has conquered death by death. It is important that we engage in the practice of momento mori because it helps bring significance to what we do now. To avoid despair and the risk of nihilism that sees life as an absurdity, we also reflect on the resurrection, knowing that death does not have the final word. And the beauty of the Gospel is that the same God who destroyed death is working to finish the good work he began in us (Phil 1:6).