Icon of the Resurrection
Humanity lives in a death denying society. When one
walks into a funeral home it almost seems like every effort is given to show
that the presence of death is not even present within the room. I was recently
at a viewing and it felt like a celebration with food and drinks being offered.
Society is confused about death and that it has forgotten what to do with it.
Where does Christianity fit into the equation regarding death? There can be no
doubt that within the Christian message lies the essence of our faith that
announces Christ’s victory over death, and Christianity has its source in that
victory. Many Christian clergy today preach on death as either being the valley
of suffering and vanity or as liberation. However, as a true minister of Christ
the minister should feel that something is missing from this “equation”. If
someone is preaching that Christianity is life affirming-and does this without
referring to the death of Christ; one must come to realize that death should
not represent the end but indeed the very reality of this world and the age to
come. To conform to the present reality and comforting people about death does
greater damage because it falsifies the true essence of the Christian message. Christianity
declares that Christ died for the life of the world. The institution narrative
in the St. Basil Liturgy of the Coptic rite proclaims this when it says “He instituted for us this great Mystery of
godliness, for, being determined to give Himself up to death for the life of
the world”.
Unfortunately, throughout our modern times people
conform to the comfort of the individual. It’s about preaching comfortably and
not challenging the individual. This has very profound implications because as
Fr. Alexander would say “the world does not want religion and religion does not
want Christianity” page 96. This frustration will continue as long as
Christians continue to understand Christianity as a “religion” whose purpose is
to help, as long as they keep the “utilitarian” self-consciousness typical of
the old religion (page 97). Religions main function was to help people die.
Religion has always been an attempt to explain death and by explaining it
reconciling man with it. Christianity because it is a “religion” had to accept
this and in doing so had to justify death. The doctrines of the immorality of
the soul, or death as liberation, or death as punishment are in fact not
Christian doctrines. There integration then tainted rather clarify Christian
theology and piety. These theories worked to the people because Christianity
exists around a death centered society. Secularism then becomes a phenomenon
within the Christian world, a phenomenon impossible without Christianity. It
would be a mistake if one were to think of secularism as simply an absence of
religion. Secularism then becomes a religion in as far as how one can
understand the world. Secularism is an explanation of death in terms of life. The
only thing we know is this world and this life that we have. Life then becomes
how to make it as happy and rich as possible. Life then ends with death. If
death is natural then one must accept it as something natural. As long as one
exists then no one should think about death as it does not exist the secularist
would come to think. The funeral home alluded to earlier becomes then the home
of the secularist. It is indeed the symbol of the secularist religion because
it expresses the quietness of death as something natural and the denial of
deaths presence in life. Secularism then becomes the greatest “help” to man and
in this many people abandon the old religion and seek out comfort within the
secularist world. Christianity sees itself as being the place where help can be
given to all. However, the heart of the matter is reached. Help is not the
criterion but rather truth is. The truth of Christianity is not to “help” people
by reconciling then with death, but to show the Truth about life and death in
order that people may be saved by this Truth. If the purpose of Christianity is
to take away the fear of death then there would be no need for Christianity
because other religions have done it better than Christianity.
Christianity then is the revelation of death and
death is revealed because it is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. If
Christ is Life death is what Christianity proclaims it to be which is the enemy
that will be destroyed and not a mystery that needs to be explained. By
explaining death it is given a status making it “normal”. Christianity however
proclaims death as being “abnormal” meaning truly horrible. As Lazarus died
Jesus wept and as time grew closer to his own passions he was in deep prayer in
the garden. In Christ however, the fullness of life is revealed, and death
becomes the very fall from life making it the enemy. It is in this world that
we are given to be a sacrament of the divine presence given as communion with
God, and it is only through this world, by transforming them into communion
with God that man was to be (page 100). Death then cannot be understood as
being an end with this understanding in mind. Death cannot glorify God and it
is a separation from God. Death then become the source of life when Christ own
death trampled down death have bestowed eternal life.
Before death happens there is dying which is the
growth of death in us by physical decay. The problem today with Christians is
that they accept two approaches that cause more confusion to the mind. The
consideration of disease rather than health to be a normal state of man is one
aspect. Health care then must be supplied as a religious duty. The idea of
health and medicine then becomes an act of God. The other side of the coin goes
back to the funeral home in that medicine and modern medicine preserves the
life of the individual because it is needed to preserve life. However, if the
individual were to die he or she does so in a quite manner. This causes
confusion because many Christians accept both factors as being true. The
problem is solved of a secular hospital by establishing a chaplaincy. What then
becomes of this approach? Of course we must discover the unchanging, yet always
contemporary, sacramental vision of man’s life. The church sees healing as a
sacrament. There is a misunderstanding with this view where Christianity
understood itself as another religion. This then turned the sacrament of the
oil as the sacrament of death being one of the “last rites” someone goes
through almost equivalent to a rite. A sacrament, as previously written on, is
always and must be a passage and a transformation. It is naturally a passage
into the kingdom of God the life restored and redeemed by Christ. Healing then
is understood as being sacramental because it not a restoration of physical
health but the entrance of man into the life of the kingdom. In Christ
suffering is not removed, but rather is transformed into victory. This is the
only true healing a Christian can come encounter. Through Christ own suffering
we must have good cheer because Christ overcame the world. The defeat of man
and his very dying has become now a way of Life.
The beginning of this victory is understood in Christ’s
own death. As Father Alexander says “The whole life of the Church is in a way
the sacrament of Our death, because all of it is the proclamation of the Lord’s
death, the confession of His resurrection. Page 104”. It is only in the life of
Christ, the joy and peace in his communion, can the proclamation of his death
have meaning through his resurrection.
By way of conclusion Father Alexander says “The
Church is the entrance into the risen life of Christ; it is communion in life
eternal, "joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.” And it is the expectation of
the "day without evening” of the Kingdom; not of any "other world,”
but of the fulfillment of all things and all life in Christ. In Him death
itself has become an act of life, for He has filled it with Himself, with His
love and light. In Him "all things are yours; whether . . . the world, or
life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are
Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21—23). Page 106”.
A few quotes from chapter six:
For it falsifies the Christian
message to present and to preach Christianity as essentially
life-affirming—without referring this affirmation to the death of Christ and
therefore to the very fact of death; to pass over in silence the fact that for
Christianity death is not only the end, but indeed the very reality of this
world. Page 96.
For
this was, indeed, one of the main functions of religions: to help, and
especially to help people to die. For this reason religion has always been an
attempt to explain death, and by explaining it, to reconcile man with it. What
pains Plato took in his Phaedo to make death desirable and even good, and how
often he has since been echoed in the history of human belief when confronted
with the prospect of release from this world of change and suffering! Page 97.
The
purpose of Christianity is not to help people by reconciling them with death,
but to reveal the Truth about life and death in order that people may be saved
by this Truth. Salvation, however, is not only not identical with help, but is,
in fact, opposed to it. Christianity quarrels with religion and secularism not
because they offer "insufficient help,” but precisely because they
"suffice,” because they "satisfy” the needs of men. Page 99.
To
accept God’s world as a cosmic cemetery which is to be abolished and replaced
by an "other world” which looks like a cemetery ("eternal rest” ) and
to call this religion, to live in a cosmic cemetery and to "dispose” every
day of thousands of corpses and to get excited about a "just society” and
to be happy!—this is the fall of man. Page 100.
A
sacrament therefore is not a "miracle” by which God breaks, so to speak,
the "laws of nature,” but the manifestation of the ultimate Truth about
the world and life, man and nature, the Truth which is Christ. Page 102.
Father Alexander Schmemann posing for a picture in Paris in 1946.
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