Please Say I Died

I am very, very tired of the dreadful euphemisms our culture has coined to keep from facing death. This sappy lingo has even invaded the church. I hear it there often. And that makes me very uneasy.

You know what I mean: “he passed away,” they say, or “passed on,” or even simply, “he passed.” Passed what, I wonder. My house? The bar? A car going in the same direction? Counterfeit money? The time? A kidney stone? Or maybe just gas?

I suppose the verbal muddle of “passing away” would be harmless if it weren’t so dishonest. “Passing” language tries to pretty up a reality we just don’t want to talk about. “She passed”... say, into the next room, and maybe she’ll be coming back soon. All very smooth and controlled.

But it is also (pardon the expression) dead wrong. Fact is, at the end comes not passing, but death. And death is total. Unmitigated. Unmalleable. Inescapable. Absolute. It is not transformation into a wispy, ethereal spirit world. It is the very opposite of being, knowing, doing, feeling, having and holding in every way we now know. And that is stark -- clearly too stark for many people.

But I am troubled not only by the awful avoidance involved in these uninspiring circumlocutions. Ultimately death-evading talk fails to do justice to my faith. I believe in resurrection. I believe in the power of God to raise up and recreate and make new. I find this compelling promise about resurrection in the Bible: “Since we have become one with [Christ] by dying as he did, in the same way we shall be one with him by being raised to life as he was.” (Romans 6:5 - TEV)

Suppose we fix the holy story to support our ways of dealing with death.  What would we say? Possibly, “Jesus passed away on Good Friday.” Or liturgically, “Christ has passed away. Christ has passed on. Christ will pass this way again.” And we would have Bible verses like, “O passing away, where is your sting?” You get the idea.

Here’s my point: resurrection is about dis-continuity, not continuity. Resurrection does not consist in any inherent worthiness on my part to go on living in some transformed way in another mode called heaven. It consists in God’s unfailing love. It consists in God’s unflagging power. It consists in the unimaginable moment offered to us in the promises of God, and exemplified for us in the astonishing model of Jesus Christ.

So “passing” just won’t do. It wouldn’t do for Jesus. And it will not do for me. In order to be raised like Christ, first I have to die.

So please, please, when I am no more, please say I died!