Recently I received a message telling me that a friend I had known for 30 years had gone out for a bike ride, as he often did, had a heart attack and died. He was not old and was in good health.
Such events can shock us into a reappraisal of our expectations and priorities. We don’t normally live with the thought of imminent death hovering over us, and I’m not sure it would be very healthy if we did. However Jesus was prepared to use that shock to teach us (Lk 12:13-21). What he points out is in one sense perfectly obvious – in the modern phrase, without any spiritual significance, “you can’t take it with you”. But that thought can lead in many directions, from trivial self-indulgence to extreme aestheticism.
Jesus notes “one’s life does not consist of possessions” but we seem to struggle with that reality. Paul recognizes the challenge when he tells the Colossians “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth” (Col 3:1-5, 9-11). Paul also is not afraid to talk about death. He puts this admonition exactly in the context of life and death: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God”.
Maybe we would find it easier to achieve the detachment that Jesus and Paul are calling us to if we were able to look at death more readily. There is a strong tradition, particularly in the Medieval church, of reflecting very consciously and directly on death – our own death, the death of others, and the death of Jesus. That comes across very clearly in much of the art of that period, which can seem excessively morbid to our eyes. We may also think that was relevant or appropriate for an age which experienced the Black Death, innumerable other diseases, and child mortality rates of 50%, half of whom died in the first year (now the comparable rates are under 5% and 3%).
Doubtless we experience death much less often in past times, but the reality of a finite life and an unpredictable end has not changed. We don’t need to obsess about this, but equally if we try to ignore it, it is unlikely to go well. The death of a friend will be hard under any circumstances, if it comes unexpectedly, even more so. But just as we may then regret the things we never got to do together, the fact that there will not be another opportunity, so it is for our own death.
However as Christians, we believe that Jesus conquered death, that we have nothing to fear from death. As Paul keeps on saying, we have already died and come back to life, and we will live for ever. But this is not an invitation to disregard how we are living in the present. Saint Augustine said “Care for your body as though you were going to live forever. Care for your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.” Gandhi used words which are perhaps closer for us: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
We should live as though every night might be our last, and when that night comes, it will be just another night in our life.