IN healthy, young days, when nothing ails us, and laughter is scarcely absent from our lips, one can sometimes speaks so light-heartedly of death.
Not just to mock with death; for that does not occur in our circles; but yet to treat of death, as though you thought in yourself: “Well yes, that is still a long way off. So bad and dreadful death will not be. Moreover death has nothing to do with me yet. It is by no means yet my turn!”
But when serious sickness takes hold of you, and distressed and gasping for breath, as the sickness grows worse you lie in bed, and those around you in manner and look betray uneasiness, and the doctor does not conceal the fact, “that you are not altogether out of danger,” then that thought of death at once makes an altogether different impression upon you.
What thus far was little more to you than a sound and a name, what at most sounded as a somber tone in your ear, or wakened in you the transient idea of something shrill and shivery, and which therefore immediately you banished again from your soul and mind, appears then at once before you as a dreadful reality; as a power that steals upon you; yea, as a menacing danger, from which by no manner of struggling you can withdraw yourself.
Perchance you may yet recover. You still pray yourself, and dear ones pray for and with you. Also medical science does what it can.
But still it remains critical. The pulsebeat far too quick. The heat of the blood far too high. The trouble within not arrested but progressing.
O, you still may come out of it. All hope is not yet gone. But it is also possible that it takes a different turn, and that presently the thread of your life is cut off.
And then it goes sometimes painfully fast. Before the week is yet ended, not merely dead, but sometimes already put away in the grave.
In such days, you get to see death in the face. Every time again involuntarily you think of it. Not that superstitiously you represent him to yourself as a skeleton with skull and sickle; but you realize, that about that mysterious death there is something dreadful; that same death, that from righteous Abel on has made every child of man pay the bitter toll, that tore away from the circle of family and friends so much that was dear, and now presses himself upon you, makes close approach to you, lays the hand upon your shoulder, as though to say to you, that you must hasten, for that your hour is at hand.
And when for the first time you perceive this in all its seriousness, a shudder passes through your soul, and a shiver through the body. You feel the chill of the shadow of death already passing over you, and darkness attending his approach.
For though on the field of battle the hero truly at times seeks death, and at the stake martyr after martyr has laughed him in the face; yet battle-field and stake are something so altogether different from a sick-room with all the anguish of broken physical strength.
The hero and the martyr are still in perfect health.
Death has made no approach yet in the body. Death still stands over against them. And for the sake of the banner of their heavenly King, courageously and with despisal of death they rather die than surrender that banner.
But when in weakness and distress you face your end, there is no more strength left in you. Nothing that holds you up or stimulates your ardor. Still a few days perhaps, and so quietly, so forsakenly, so imperceptibly you pass away.
AND then you stand before a riddle, before the question, what then shall it be?
You are going to die, but what is it to die?
What will you then feel, what perceive, what become aware of? That tearing apart of soul and body, will it be distress, or excruciating pain?
You ask, and, alas, no one has an answer; for no one who died has ever told us, how it was to him in his dying.
The whole transition from this life to the other side of eternity is a world of riddles.
For some were indeed seen dying in conditions of terrible distress, when the death-struggle seemed almost endless, while others slept away so gently and calmly, that it was difficult to believe, that that was dying.
But what avails this observation? Who can tell, what, when the utterance of life went from him, went on in the hidden parts of that dying man between soul and body, and in his soul?
Surely, with a shock or paralysis of heart death can enter in so suddenly and so painlessly, that neither our eye nor ear observe any suffering. But is everything said with this? Is what we see the real, actual dying?
And so we go on asking, but no answer comes, and the thought, that now it comes to your turn, continues to harass you. For when it comes, how then will it be with you?
SCRIPTURE speaks respecting death of a sting, as the apostle exclaims: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory” (I Cor. 15, 55).
The image thus of a poisonous monster, that not merely attacks you, but stings with his sting, and poisons by the same. Something like as dragons were represented, and as there are serpents still.
And by that poisonous sting, that horribleness of death is imaged.
Not merely that he takes your life, but in addition to this that poisonous thrust with the sting, that when you are in his power, when you are dead, he may poison your existence on the other side of the grave.
And this must not be passed by lightly, for in this imagery there is truth. Death is unclean; death is poisonous; and he who remains in the power of death, is prey to joyless terror and never ending distress of soul.
Dying itself is not the worst. That only comes afterward, when you have died, and they lay you out in your death garment, and carry you to God’s-acre.
Dying itself is merely going through the gate of death; but then you arrive in the valley of the shadows of death, and then in his fortress; and there dread and terror shall take hold of you. with no other prospect than to wait age upon age, until Christ returns upon the clouds, and then yourself to go into judgment, and then with everything demoniac to be driven out into still greater terror. Into that horror, of which Jesus said: “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
IT all depends therefore upon this: Whether, before death takes hold of you, you can break that sting of death.
If you can do that, you die as a Christian, as a child of God, as one redeemed. Then you die like a S. Paul, who betimes, before it was too late, had broken that sting of death, and now already long in advance, jubilant and laughing death in the face, exclaimed: “O death, where is thy sting? You no longer have it. And therefore you are no more to me the king of terror!”
Thus you realize, if once that sting, that poisonous sting of death is broken, then death has become something altogether different. So long as a wasp has her sting, you flee from her; but when the sting is removed, you play with the wasp as with a fly.
Death without sting, without poisonous sting is a messenger of God, who comes to fetch you away; who in the Name of the Lord divests you of your body; admits you as a liberated soul through the gate of Eternity, to be nearer to your God and your Savior, than ever you were able to be here, and, without sorrow and without sin, to tarry in that spiritual separation, till the light dawns of the eternal morning, and Christ comes upon the clouds, and clothes you with a more glorious body, and deluges you with everlasting glory.
Death with his sting is terrible. Then you are gone. Then in death there are bands of hell and of eternal torment.
But if death has lost his sting, then at once all terror is gone.
Then there are those who have longed for death, because death alone was able to bring them to be eternally with their God.
ONLY make no mistake.
There are a kind of Catechism-Christians, who briefly reason like this: “Christ is risen from the dead. By that Resurrection Christ has broken the sting of death. Thus there is no more sting to death. And I can confidently fall asleep!”
As though there ever could flow any joy from mere reasoning.
No, also after Jesus’ resurrection, death has retained his poisonous sting. Think of the many thousands, who without faith in Jesus, also after Jesus’ resurrection, have become the prey of death.
Even now there die those, to whom in their dying he brings that poisonous sting.
And you say truly, that many thousands have departed, to whom every sting had gone from death, but with all these it was a personal act.
When death came to them, then, indeed, at once that sting became inoperative, which still stung others so poisonously.
And so your reasoning from your Catechism avails you nothing.
With you also the question remains, whether, when death comes to you, your faith in Christ is operative, whereby that sting of death is disarmed.
If so, then do not fear.
Then, then alone, but then also surely, will your end be peace.
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