GLEANINGS from the Daily Office – Taunting Death

GLEANINGS (from the Daily Office) – Taunting  Death – Year One, Proper 24, Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 1 Corinthians 15:51-58

“O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”

Taunting  death is an awesome thing. Our faith inspires it. Whatever lies beyond this life is greater than anything we can imagine. It may not meet expectations (we conjure up much in this regard) but it will exceed them. Kiss off death! You do not have the last word.

But this truth is not embraced to the exclusion of grief. The taunting comes as we ourselves experience the promise, as we move from perishable to imperishable. “Then shall come to pass . . .”

Meanwhile, death stings. We need not face loss with a stiff upper lip. We are not abandoning our confidence in God and his promises when we acknowledge our broken heart, when we cannot stop the tears from flowing. Jesus wept. Are we not being remade in his image? Let no one and no custom rob us of our freedom to be real.

And we are in this together. Another’s loss is ours. Vicariously we grieve with others. And this is as it should be for the great Poet was right.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

–Frodo: “I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”–