To be a Christian is to be born, to bear, and to be borne.

I'll never forget the first time I became aware of the weight of death. I was in the third grade. My father's mother died. He came home from church one Sunday while I was in my room playing, and he sat down on the edge of my bed with me to share the news. I didn't know my grandmother that well, and yet I started to cry. I knew in my gut that this thing called death, which had just claimed my grandmother, wasn't right. And then my dad started to cry with me. And for a few minutes he held me in his arms and we grieved together.

My grandparents lived in Arizona, and we made arrangements to drive there from North Dakota to attend the funeral. Not a memorial service. Not a celebration of life. A funeral, full casket and all. I don't remember the sermon. I don't remember the readings. I don't remember the memories that were shared by the family. In fact, the one thing that I do remember from that day is rather odd:

The pallbearers.

My grandmother was a pretty thin and frail woman by the time she died. Yet I'll never forget how it took six grown men to lift her casket into the hearse. Although they were not about to drop the casket, it was visibly obvious that they were struggling; putting their free arms out like wings to keep their balance. Four men certainly could not have done it; probably not even five. And while I wasn't there, I can only assume it was the same at the grave. It took the strength of these men, obviously struggling, to bear my dead grandmother to her place of rest.

I know there are a lot of opinions floating around about death, how to talk about it, how to grieve it, and what kind of rites and services should occur when it happens. I suppose there is some flexibility in these things, but in the Church, there is something we must always bear in mind; something which is becoming forgotten:

Death is a heavy, enormous enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26).

For the Christian, there is no saying "Amen" to Forrest Gump's mother, whose wisdom would tell us that dying is just an innocuous part of life. For the Christian, there is none of this foolish talk about how the deceased person's body is just a "vessel". The Christian does not make claims like, "That's not mom, it's just her shell." The Christian puts to rest all of the language that would try to lighten death's weight and ease it's razor-sharp edges, and instead calls a thing what it is.

Death is a heavy, enormous enemy.

But there's something else that the Christian remembers in the face of death: the Church is the community who bears God's children with nothing less than the Word of Christ—both in life and in death.

It begins in baptism, where we are born from above (John 3) into the body of Christ, given the gift of the Holy Spirit and the promise of forgiveness, life, and salvation (Acts 2:38). Infant baptism is especially beautiful in this regard, because the candidate for baptism in no way can bring herself to the font. She must be borne; carried by someone else. She doesn't even get to participate by presenting herself at the font; someone else must bring her. And yet God takes this tiny enemy of his, who can do nothing for herself, much less bring herself to be saved, and He washes her in His salvific promises.

From that moment on, she is part of a community who will bear her and bear with her. They will catechize her in the faith. They will train her up in the knowledge and fear of God. They will weep with her when she weeps. They will rejoice with her when she rejoices. They will absolve her when she repents. They will hear her make the good confession of faith at her confirmation. They will witness her matrimony. They will praise God at the birth, and baptismal rebirth of her children. They will walk with her though unpredictable sorrow. They will sit with her when her questions have no answers. Week in and week out, they will pray with her, confess the faith with her, eat Christ's body and blood with her, be forgiven with her by Christ's powerful Word.

And she will do all of that for and with them.

To be part of the Church is to be born in baptism, to bear one another's joys and burdens, and to be borne by your brothers and sisters in Christ—in life and in death. For the day will come; finally, the body of Christ will even bear their sister through the valley of the shadow of death. And when death delivers its life-sucking blow they will carry their sister even to the grave. And make no mistake about it: that death is a weighty, enormous, horrendous enemy. Even the strongest men in the community will struggle to bear their sister in Christ one last time.

Cradle to grave, baptism to burial, in life and in death, the Church is a community who bears the children of God.

So what? Why does the way we understand death even matter? Well, it matters because how we understand death will affect the way we bear one another up in its midst. If you get sin and death wrong, you also get God's solution to them wrong, and that will become quite evident in the way a community carries one another through that valley.

And so perhaps our rites, services, and the language that we use surrounding death should not attempt to lighten death's weight. Rather, perhaps in all that we do surrounding death, we ought to proclaim just how weighty death is. How it's not simply something that innocently happens to us; how it's not a beautiful release; how it is the result of human sin and enmity with God; and therefore how Christ has dealt with death in his own body on the cross and empty tomb.

Also, because our Lord cared enough to redeem this person, body and soul, with the price of his shed blood, perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to usher our dead hastily away into the annals of memory as if their bodies no longer matter, while we all gather without them for their "memorial" or to "celebrate" their life. (Ironic, isn't it, that the reason to celebrate someone's life has become the occasion of their death?)

Perhaps—even though Scripture is silent on the issue and there's no "right" or "wrong" answer—perhaps we ought not be so quick to get rid of our dead by cremating them with the rationale that we don't want the last memory we have of them to be one where they are dead in a casket; no, we want to "remember them as they really were", so we say (as if anything we do can change the reality that death has actually happened). Perhaps, instead, we could physically bear our sister in Christ one last time; carry her into the presence of Christ, just like we did on the day she was baptized, to proclaim and to hear yet again the life-giving, death-defeating Word of Christ.

Perhaps we could gather for a full-blown funeral, and participate in a liturgy which does not speak about fishing trips and hobbies like sewing or woodworking; a liturgy which doesn't drag out the false superlatives that everyone knows aren't true like, "She always [virtue]" or "She never [vice]"; a liturgy that doesn't point us to this person's supposed good works that made God smile upon them. Rather, perhaps we ought to gather for a liturgy that calls death what it is; which proclaims into the face of real, weighty, sin-wrought death, an even weightier and victorious death-and-resurrection-wrought promise: "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again." And when He does come again, our Christian sister, who today is dead because of her sin, will on that day rise to life, never to die again. Perhaps there's something worthwhile and powerful about having an occupied casket present, to remind us that this person is not just a shell or a vessel that we hurriedly get rid of, but rather this person is our baptized sister in Christ, in a state she was never created to be in. And yet it is this person in this casket who will rise again. This death is not the end of her story, nor the end of ours. And so we proclaim Christ, crucified and risen for sinners—proclamation which packs quite a Gospel punch when we bear our dead Christian sister into our midst one last time.

Yes, death is heavy. But it's not too heavy for our Lord. Because He has defeated this great and terrible enemy—because He has borne your sin all the way into the heart of the earth and out again—you are free to call death what it is, and His bride is free to proclaim the One who will put it one day under His feet. You need not shy away from death. And you need not embrace it as good.

Rather, look to Christ, who bears you up, even in death's dark valley, for He has overcome it for you.

It's a novel idea, I suppose. Enjoy a piece of chocolate, and as a bonus you are encouraged by the positive words printed inside of the shiny foil wrapper. (It's more fun for me, though, to read "Bravely Done" on the underside of a Deschutes bottle cap whose home was formerly perched atop a Black Butte Porter—a brew I pray will be on tap in the New Heavens and New Earth.) Anyway, I was eating one of these delicious Dove chocolates (the dark variety), and I got to thinking about the words printed inside the foil.

I suppose they are rather harmless by themselves; pithy and trite sayings intended to give you a positive perspective on an otherwise ordinary day:
• "Believe in yourself."
• "Live your dreams."
• "Be good to yourself today."
• "Keep moving forward; don't look back."

But what struck me this time, as I placed the last bite of chocolate on my tongue, was how similar these Dove sayings are to many things spoken from pulpits and podiums in the mainline American church.

Listen to many popular "preachers" today and you likely won't be able to go 2 minutes without one of these sayings invading your eardrums. "You have the seeds of greatness on the inside." "There's a champion in you waiting to be discovered." "God's got a big purpose for you, so aim high." "Don't let hard times get you down. Pick yourself up, and tell yourself, 'I'm important. I'm significant. I'm going somewhere.' " "Take hold of all that God has in store for you." Doesn't it seem strange—no, frightening—that there is no qualitative difference between what many "pastors" are preaching from their stages and what a candy company is printing on their wrappers? It struck me as odd that such teachers are unwittingly using Dove candy wrappers as if they are part of Holy Writ. Why is it that so many "pastors" and teachers are taking the liberty of basing entire "sermons" on words that are qualitatively no different than Dove candy wrappers? Maybe I missed the memo, but could someone tell me when these shiny foil candy casings were included in the canon of Scripture?

Oh. They weren't?

Well, that's a relief. Because not only is there the glaring problem that the vast majority of these words contradict Scripture itself; there is also the reality that such words are, at the end of the day, worthless garbage, worthy of the same grave as candy wrappers: the landfill. They don't proclaim any true or lasting hope; just positive, narcissistic thoughts and nice, ego-stroking words that fade almost as quickly as they are heard.

I know. It sounds mean, right? "What's the harm?" some may ask. "Certainly you're not opposed to a little bit of positive thinking. Certainly inspiring words can't hurt. They can brighten a day and bring a smile to our face."

But there's a dirty little secret...

(They aren't true. And they can hurt. Eternally.)

As a pastor, I sit with people in some difficult situations. Terminal cancer. Broken relationships. Sexual confusion. Questions about God's love. Consciences burdened with decades of guilt and recurring sin. With all of these situations, there is conversation that can be had and questions that can be asked so that the law can be properly administered and the healing balm of the Gospel can be applied with care.

And then there's death.

Death's unrelenting presence has this way of shutting us up. It's so powerfully big that it leaves us speechlessly small. Death is not a conversationalist. Death is not swayed by cute, empty, feel-good phrases. Death can see through a pastor's shiny teeth and manicured hair. Death takes the self-esteem, life-lesson bullet points from the sermon, regardless of the eloquence with which they are spoken, and exposes them for the vacuous nonsense that they truly are. Death has this way of shutting us up, and the few words we do speak tremble under his weight.

So, when it comes to the words that we speak in the face of suffering to try and bring true joy and lasting hope, consider the "deathbed test". It works like this: imagine you are sitting at the bedside of a dying person. There's no question that this person will be dead before the week's end, if they even last that long. They are suffering. They are in pain. They have questions about their future. They are worried about their family. Their life is leaving them before your very eyes. And you are there to speak some kind of word that is supposed to bring them comfort. Throw into the mix that they are probably thinking much about their life of sin, and wondering if the cross of Christ is truly as gracious and saving as it sounds. If they are left in that sin, they will spend eternity in hell.

Next, take a saying. Any saying will do. Maybe it's one you heard on the radio. Maybe it's a piece of wisdom you learned from your grandfather. Maybe you read it on a candy wrapper. It could even be a Scripture verse. Take those words and imagine yourself uttering them in that room where death is holding court. If the words that you release into a dying human's ears are actually able to give true and lasting hope in the face of death itself by pointing them outside of themselves to Christ alone, you've probably got a pretty good nugget of truth. It ought to sound something like this:

• "But God showed his own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8)
• "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 6:23)
• "But Christ has indeed been raised from death, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." (1 Cor. 15:20)
• "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Cor. 15:26)
• "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live." (John 11:25)
• "God made him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, in order that we may become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor. 5:21)
• "We were buried with him, therefore, through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised by the glory of the Father, we, too, may live a new life." (Rom. 6:4)
• "All we, like sheep, have gone astray, each to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Is. 53:6)
• "But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." (Titus 3:4-7)

(Notice the lack of narcissistic positivism and the focus on Jesus?)

However, if the words you have chosen to speak cause Death to throw back his head and laugh in diabolical delight at the sheer stupidity they contain (e.g. "Never give up." "Believe in yourself." "Keep moving forward; don't look back." "Tomorrow will be a brighter day." "Think positive thoughts."), well, it's probably a good idea never to utter those words again. Anywhere. Ever. Not the deathbed, not the bus stop, not the dinner table. Really. Leave them for the candy companies.

You see, the thing about Dove chocolate wrappers is that, while they may tell us the self-inflating sentiments that we like to hear, they have a less-than desirable destination: the garbage heap. They eventually land amidst slimy banana peels, last week's moldy leftovers, and baby diapers, the contents of which shall remain undisclosed. The words may last for a moment, maybe a day, and then they are crumpled up into a tiny ball, thrown into a wastebasket, and forgotten even before their chocolatey contents traverse your digestive tract. Even worse than their fleetingness, such greeting card sentiments instruct suffering people to find hope in themselves, or in some vague ideas floating in the sky about happiness, positive thinking, flowers, brighter tomorrows, or some such nonsense about God closing doors and opening windows. Such words are completely impotent in the face of daily suffering, in the valley of the death-shadow, and in the guilt-racked corners of the conscience. Is that the kind of garbage theology we ought to be feeding the lambs of Christ, whether in the pew or on the deathbed? The answer is quite simple: no, it isn't.

What should we be feeding them?

We should be feeding them a word that will first point them to their true natural selves: sinners in need of a Savior. We should be feeding them a word which takes seriously their suffering as a result of that sin. We should be feeding them a word that tells them who their Savior is and what he has done to forgive them by his shed blood on the cross and the empty Easter grave. We should be feeding them a word that is so powerful that it slays the wicked father of lies. We should be feeding them a word—the only word—that can stand up to the great enemy of death; a word that defeats death not with positive thinking and and fluffy phrases, but by bursting its bonds with a vacant tomb. I only know of one place to find words like that: Jesus.

Died.
Risen.
Returning.

Jesus.

Let's leave the garbage theology in the trash where it belongs, and instead proclaim Christ.