No. 23 As long as we are talking about the �end times��We say that we have died with Christ in baptism�but that doesn�t stop us from physically dying. We still die of old age, disease, and accidents. What does death mean for us Christians? >>PROFESSOR ROLAND ZIEGLER: Yeah, it seems to be a strange situation. On the one hand, okay, you are in the new life. You participate in the life of the resurrection. But if you look at the fate of the Christians, it's not really that different from an unbeliever. Both have to go down to the pit. And that's it. Well, that's not quite it. But visibly there really is not much of a difference. The Christian might have more of a comfort. And he might not despair when he goes to death. But that could also be just a consequence of an illusion. So what we see here is the reality we receive in baptism is something that is apprehended by faith. And in a way is only accessible through faith. It is not something we experience directly. But when we talk about that, what is death? And maybe when we talk about death, can we then see that there is a difference between the Christian and the non-Christian? Well, especially the medical community. They sometimes have a hard time to define what is death. What is death? When is somebody dead? Well, you know, you might think: Well, dead is dead. Isn't that obvious? It's not quite obvious, for example, when you think about when is it allowed to take out organs of a dead person? Is it when the brain waves go flat? Is it when the heartbeat stops? That was an old definition. Now since there are implanted hearts, it's a little bit difficult if that would be the legal definition. Well, you don't have a natural heartbeat anymore. So therefore, you're dead. That would be a nice situation for somebody so he's no longer liable for anything. It is the end of life functions generally speaking. Heart, breathing, the brain functions. But really that somebody is dead becomes uncontroverted, obvious, only if there's the decomposition of the body. I remember one guy talking about first aid. And he said: Do not assume that anybody is dead if the head is not severed from the body. Otherwise you have no way to know if this person is dead. Even if it looks like totally mangled or whatever, you do not know. Okay. That would be an obvious example. But we can say physiologically life function stops. The body decomposes. But that's not all of course that there is about death. Being dead is that this person now is cut off from the future. That this person has no future. And that this person can no longer relate to anybody else. That's why sometimes you think if you have a person that has serious dementia or is senile or has Alzheimer's, it seems as if this person is dead. Even though this person is breathing, you no longer see the person. Because this person can no longer relate to you what makes a person a person. Personhood seems to be destroyed. But ultimately, of course, once your body functions cease to exist, then there is really no relation. You still can relate to an Alzheimer's patient. At least you can relate to this person. You can still hold his or her hand. You can still talk to this person. And also if a person is unconscious, you talk to a person. And there are quite amazing stories what people actually hear even though they are unconscious. But once there is no breath anymore, once the body ceases to function, then there's no way to relate to this person on this side of eternity. Theologically when we talk about death, we presuppose physiological death. But death is more than just something that happens to man as an animal. If you would see death simply as a biological thing, then death can be seen as something natural. And for a lot of people that's what death is. Okay. You're just like any other higher evolved mammal. You are born. You live for a while. And then you run your course and get a cold and arrestive corpse and then that's it. But from Scripture we know that death is not natural to man. But rather that death is the wages of sin. That death and sin are connected. And you could make a case maybe that man in a certain way knows that death is not natural for him. Because unlike animals, he has to persuade himself that death is natural. There is a certain uneasiness about death. Death is a problem for man. It's not like lying down to sleep and that's it. It's a problem. We don't have a problem sleeping. But we have a problem with death. Scripture when it talks about death can use death for several different things. It can talk about spiritual death. I mean Paul for example speaks about you being dead in your sins. Now, these people were perfectly breathing specimens of mankind. But they were nevertheless dead in their sins. That is before they became Christians, they were spiritually dead. There is also temporal death or physical death, what we talked about up to this moment. And Scripture also talks about eternal death. That is final separation from God and damnation. So all of these different ways of talking about death are really interrelated. They form different facets of one reality. And ultimately, all of them are the result of a separation from God who is the source of life, who is life himself. Once you are separated from God, which happens through a sin, you are dead and decomposing. It happens slowly. And the spiritual death then manifests itself in the physical death and then in the eternal death. But death is your fate if you are separated from God. And that's why sin and death do belong together. That's why, also, temporal death is really only an image of the ultimate reality that is eternal death. If you think temporal death is bad and probably everybody does, it's just a shadow of the reality of eternal death. Eternal separation from God. Being cut off from him who is life. As Christians we are raised from spiritual death. And we will be raised at the end of times. And will not suffer the fate of eternal death. But in between, there is still physical death. And that's the problem you asked about. Okay. If we are now alive and if we will be raised, why then is there still this transition? And doesn't that make our talk about being alive now and participating in the resurrection of Christ just wishful thinking? Let's stop here a little bit and look again at what the resurrection of Christ means for the individual. Through his resurrection, Christ has destroyed the power of death and has brought forth life eternal, life incorruptible. He has now the keys of hell in his life forever. And as the one who has this life that is beyond death and has overcome death, he gives us a share in his life, too. This is mediated to us through baptism. But also through the Word. So again, we have the life of the resurrection already in faith. Now, maybe you think that's a cheap way to get out. Well, we have it in faith. So does that mean we don't have it really? No. It's like the righteousness the of Christ. We have the righteousness of Christ. How do we have that? Well, through imputation by faith. Roman Catholics hearing that said: Oh, it's just some kind of a game. Let's pretend. Let's pretend we are righteous. And Lutherans said: No. You don't understand. What God says is real. Because his Word creates reality. So when he says you're righteousness on account of Christ, it's really you're righteous. It's not a let's pretend righteousness. So when we have Christ's life of the resurrection given to us through baptism in faith, we really do have it. And that means that Christ, having made us alive, he takes away the sin and the consequence of sin. He raises us from the spiritual death. We do die and are raised with him. And through his resurrection we will be raised on Judgement Day. But the Christian still dies. Yes, the Christian still has to undergo the decay and the disintegration of his body. And in that sense he still suffers from the consequences of sin. We are not freed from all of the consequences of sin in this life. In the 18th Century there was an extreme pietistic sect grouping around a noble woman, ***Ava Von Butler. And they said: Oh, we participate in the life of the resurrection. Therefore, we are freed from the curse of original sin. So okay, we don't have to toil anymore in the fields. There are no thistles anymore. There is no sweat of the brow anymore. But our Heavenly Father just kind of let's the barbequed pigeons fly in our mouths. And the women will no longer give birth in pain. You know that's of course rather difficult to make such a statement because that can be rather easily refuted by experience. So this group around Mrs. Von Butler did not really make it for a long time. So you see we still suffer the consequences of sin. We still have to work. We still -- and sometimes we have to whip out the thistles in our fields. Yes, there is still pain there. And there is still death there. But the difference is that the sting of death is taken away. And for our work, it's not just a meaningless treadmill anymore. It is filled with something new. When we look at physical death now, it is no longer the sign that there is no future for you. That your relationship with others is cut off. That this is the end of your bodily existence. And maybe the best you can hope for is that you might live as an immortal disembodied soul or like the old Greeks thought, that you are just a shadow in Hades and have some kind of shadowy existence. Death no longer has these implications, physical death. Rather, physical death, though it is still painful and though it is still a farewell for some time, is really the entrance into a new life. It is also the farewell to the valley of tears and to temptations. But it is no longer cutting off our existence. It is now a transition. And again that's what is meant when the sting of death is taken out of it. In old books I read this phrase: Christians never meet for the last time. It might sound a little hokey. Christians never meet for the last time. Because they will all meet in eternity. But there is a truth to that. And that's one of the things about dieing. That no, it's not -- we say this is the end of it. This is the end of the relationship to my family. To my friends. Now this is over. But rather, it's an interruption. You know as an exeat, it's like the difference of dieing to moving to America. Yes, there's quite a distance. But you know, I'm not separated forever from my family in Germany. It's a separation for a time. And so in a way death now becomes a separation for some time. It's still hurtful. And our bodies will have the fate of any other body. But this is not the final word about these, our bodies. These bodies also have a future. They have the future of the life of the resurrection. The fear of death certainly is an affliction of faith. Because the reality of death seems to be final. And that's why we need to hear that no, death of course appears to us. And it wants to appear to us as the final word. The end. And all that we have heard about Christ bringing life eternal and you participating in the life eternal, that's all just wishful thinking. That's an affliction that we have to go through. And we can go through it when we are comforted and strengthened by the Word of the promise. It is by faith that we overcome this affliction by death. Death is this gaping mouth that tries to devour us. But really Christ ripped this mouth open. And death can no longer hold us. And that's what we see through faith. That this reality really can't hold us. So yes, we still do die. But our death truly is different from the death of an unbeliever. For the unbeliever, physical death is simply the foreshadow of eternal death. It is awful. It is destruction. It is the judgement of God. For the Christian, it is bidding farewell to this world. It is a transition. But death cannot hold us as it could not hold Christ. So Christians do not have to be afraid of death. Certainly not. And that should be also part of the Christian funeral. Because the Christian funeral ultimately is the point where the rubber hits the road and our belief about the resurrection. I mean, we don't have to deny that this is a sad occasion. We don't have to be some kind of crypto-Christian science cult. Oh, death is not real. It is real. And bidding farewell is painful. When I cross the Atlantic, my mother is not happy. And I can't tell her: Well, what's your problem? Of course she's not happy because she's separated from me. On the other hand, our sadness cannot be the last thing in our funeral services. In a service of Christian burial, we have to identify what death is. And we have to preach that death is a consequence of sin. That without the fall of Adam and Eve, we would not die. We have to put into the consciousness of people the reality of death against this tendency of denial of death. And we have to tell them that: Yes, it is the wages of sin. That's why for example Psalm 90 is often used in funeral services. At least in Germany. But we also proclaim the resurrection of Christ as a source of our hope. That has to be the strongest note. That's the Gospel in that situation. The law must be set, too, against a shallow and superficial denial of the reality of death. But oftentimes, the reality of death is so strong that people don't need to hear it. It's only when you say: Oh, well, after all, this person had lived his or her full course of life. And after all, you know, death was a salvation for this person or it took him out of this suffering. That we have to say: Well, yes. But still, death is not natural to us. In every service of Christian burial, there should be also a remembrance of our own death and an admonition to be prepared. Death is something that always happens to other people. And most of the time we try to block it out. That's natural. It's nasty. Okay. We don't want to be morbid. And it could really sour our experience of life if you think about the fact that: Hmmm, well, it's limited. It's not to scare people into believing. I don't know if that ever worked. It's just to remind them of the reality of their life. It is a remembering of our own mortality. It is like we say on Ash Wednesday: Remember that we are taken from dust and to dust thou shall return. In the German funeral agenda, there is a prayer in the service that says: We remember he of the person that you will call next from us and pray that this person will be ready to meet you. I proposed that to John ***Pless when they were working on the new agenda. And he said: Well, that probably won't make it. I haven't seen the new agenda. But I don't think it's morbid. I think it's realistic. In the old litany there is also the phrase that God may protect us from an evil, fast death. The Christians in centuries before us wanted to die prepared. Different from us. We want to go in our sleep. No, they wanted to be prepared. So that they can make up where they have to make up with people. That they can settle their estates. And then they can readily meet their maker. And there is something to that. And of course the most important thing that you are ready to meet your maker is that you know he is your maker and your redeemer and your sanctifier. So in a funeral service, we proclaim the full counsel of God. We proclaim the fall and its consequences. And we proclaim what God has done to save us from sin and from death. And therefore, every funeral service in a way is a mixture. It's a mixture of sadness. And it's a mixture of joy. That this person now has gone out of this valley of tears and waits for us on the other side but is still with Christ. And that's our comfort. That this person is still with Christ. His savior. And still participates in the life eternal, in the life of the risen Christ.