Respect for Life, Coping with Death

I don’t listen often to “A Prairie Home Companion,” with Garrison Keillor on NPR. But whenever I do, he really holds my attention. He is a great story teller. He told the story of the slaughtering of one family’s hog. He placed himself in the story as one of the young children watching this process. It was a family event. The hog was going to provide food and sustenance for a significant period of time for them. It was also a hog they had raised and taken care of on the farm. The father and oldest brother did the deed. The hog died and then they processed the animal. The younger boys watched this and then began to imitate, in a playful way, leaning toward being disrespectful, that which had just happened. When the older family members saw this growing mockery of the hog’s death the boys were stopped and told this is not something of which to make fun. The parents said, “This hog gave its life so that we could eat.” The message was clear. Instead of making fun, this hog’s life and death was something to respect. That story impressed me. It was just a pig that died after all. Yet God had created this animal as well. But that family had taught their children to respect life at every level. They used this vivid illustration to teach the honoring of life created by God.

Living in awe of God’s creation and knowing that it is He that provides for us at every level and that His provision includes community and relationships, we find the respect for the life that God has given to man and to all of creation is more likely to be established.

And with this respect, children are a blessing to the family and not a burden. Yet the urban life style parent can hardly wait to get their children off to school, so I have had said to me many times. In effect children are not typically embraced as the blessing they are but are seen as a burden that imposes on a lifestyle.

The Elderly, as well, are often seen as burdens to have to look in on, more than as one who contributes wisdom and stability to the family community. One of the tasks that I had in the parish ministry was to visit shut-in members. These are people who want connection and who indeed have helpful and wise things to say were one to listen. I received such encouragement in ministry from these visits. They want to be embraced with a dignity and a respect called for in the life that God has created.

In those same homes where two or three generations lived, people also died. The family gathered around the one dying and made sure they knew they were loved by the family and by Jesus. The children watched. When my ministry was in the urban setting and when my children were young, I often brought them with me to many of the functions of ministry. This included the funerals of members. The thinking behind this was that my boys would not be afraid of the issue of death in the context of life in Christ.

The story is told of the Pastor who was called to the home of a member who was near death. The family was gathered around and the pastor wasn’t sure what to do or what to say. He read a Psalm or two and had a prayer but beyond that he was silent. He sat and watched. The member finally did die. The Pastor was wondering to himself if he had done the right things and could he have said more and what that would have been. About that point in time, one of the family members sat down next to the pastor and said, “Preacher, you did just fine.”

The presence of Christ through the ministry of the church is the coping mechanism for those in the community of believers. We know that life is precious, so much so that Jesus died and was raised again so that anyone, by faith in Him, need not fear death but have life everlasting.

If there is an advantage to the rural or urban culture in this regard, I am not certain. What I do know is that the issues of life and death are not so far removed in the rural context. A birth and a death, significant as it is, in the city is a statistic to the larger community.

The challenge in ministry is to teach that the life we have has been given to us by our Creator. We have to find ways to communicate that all life is precious and yet it is under the curse of the law. Still, our Creator loves what He made and so provides a solution to the curse that is upon us. Your life and my life is so precious to Him that He gave His own Son to die so that we could life forever. This value must not be lost.