July 8, 2007

T. Richard Snyder

I was shocked recently to learn of my death. A newsletter from the Presbyterian Church in Cold Spring, NY which Carole and I had attended for a number of years, announced the recent passing of Dick Snyder and spoke of the grief of his wife Carole (spelled with an e). Needless to say, I was confused. Did they know something I didn't know? The mystery was cleared up when a friend called Carole to express his condolences and realized that it was another Dick Snyder to whom they were referring. How many persons of the same name, with a spouse of the same name, could you expect to find in a church of under 200 members? Well, I'm still here, but it got my attention and set me to thinking.

I approach the subject of death with great trepidation for several reasons. First, I live with a person whose master's degree is in gerontology and whose thesis was on death and dying. Having the temerity to take this on will no doubt strain the limits of her tolerance of my sometimes insufferable claims to expertise on topics about which I obviously know very little. Still, I plunge headlong over the cliff.

But even more importantly, many of you carry the grief of a lost loved one and no sermon can begin to touch the depths of this great mystery. Any words risk trivialization.

We hear much these days about death with dignity. I'd like to explore that with you this morning.

But, before addressing the question of death with dignity, let me preface my remarks with some comments about the mystery that surrounds death.

It is in the depths of life's experience-both positive and negative-- that we encounter mystery that brings forth wisdom. And nowhere is the mystery richer and deeper than in the experience of death.

The challenge for those of us living in a rationalistic, scientific, and technological culture is to enter fully into the mystery of life and death. While we cannot avoid seeking answers--or at least clues--to the mystery that encompasses us, there are two opposite, yet somehow quite similar, fallacies today.

The first is the fallacy of the rational reductionists who have attacked mystery and faith. There are many, such as Sam Harris, who believe that science and reason are all that we need to understand life and death. The charge is that those who turn to faith are dealing with magic, with fantasy, with make-believe. Whatever mysteries remain will be explained eventually by science. Faith is only for primitive and immature people.

It is an old argument offered since the beginning of the enlightenment and it has been found wanting. The wonder of a birth, of love given and received, of a sunset or sunrise, of unexpected healing, of death-each of these is too deep for such reductionism. Their mystery fills us with awe, humbles us in the face of our finitude, and leaves us with questions that cannot be fully answered. I reject the reductionists' diminishment of the human spirit. While science has led to greatly increased knowledge about the workings of the human body and psyche there is no cause for hubris, for that knowledge did not prevent the 20th century from becoming the bloodiest in all of history. I do not find that we "enlightened" rational westerners have as rich or deep an understanding of life as do the Native Americans or many others whom we so quickly label "primitive" What we have gained in knowledge we seem to have lost in wisdom.

On the other hand, I find fundamentalist absolutism equally fallacious. We cannot understand mystery-all we can do is stand under it and give ourselves up to its richness and depth.

In our desire for explanations we have often constructed theologies that are no match for our grief. The most appropriate answer to the mystery of death is not an answer in the traditional sense. It is not an explanation. Rather it is a reply-the reply of love. For love is as great a mystery as death. Our ultimate hope is in the transforming power of love that can never be explained anymore than can death. The power of love-like the power of death-is a mystery that can only be experienced but never explained. Indeed, it is precisely the presence of love at the time of death that provides us with the assurance we seek. Surrounded by love, we can soak ourselves in the mystery of life, of God, of the universe.

There are no words adequate for such mystery. But there is a language. Someone said, "tears are the language of the soul." The Apostle Paul affirmed this profound truth when he said, "the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought. But that very spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."

There are no words, only sighs and tears and hugs. This is the language of death of love. Our grief is overwhelmingly real. But we do not grieve as those who have no hope, for in the midst of our grief is the mystery of love. The love of God surrounds us through the hands that reach out, the arms that uphold, the eyes filled with tears, the sighs too deep for words.

Since we still use words, we turn to images and metaphors that seek to convey meaning and hope. Metaphor, not dogma, is the language of mystery. And the metaphors are myriad. Almost every culture throughout the ages has metaphors that seek to provide meaning and comfort in the face of death. It is amazing how almost universal are the various images of an after life: walking the golden streets of heaven, being re-incarnated, becoming one with the universal spirit, being transmigrated into another species, being reborn as the continuation of a previous life, resting on the bosom of Abraham, re-uniting with loved ones, and rising to meet Jesus at the Rapture.

The fallacy of fundamentalism is that it takes one set of images and metaphors and claims them as absolute dogma for all people at all times. I choose to live with the mystery.

It is in the recognition of the mystery of death that I offer up some thoughts on what has been called by some, death with dignity.

The phrase Death with Dignity has largely become synonymous with assisted suicide. But I believe it encompasses far more than that. Death with Dignity affirms the inherent worth, beauty and agency of the dying person as well as the community's role in affirming that dignity.

Far too often, dignity is the valuing one is granted in response to worthy acts. But the basic claim of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is that our dignity comes from the soul, from the very fact that we are created in God's image. Our dignity is rooted in the mystery of our humanity and not in the calculation of our achievements or contributions.

If we base dignity upon earned worthiness, then infants, the incapacitated, and the dying will be judged to have less dignity. Many a dying person is reduced to dependency, has lost control of bodily functions, and is unable to offer anything the world traditionally values. Like the infant, they may be limited to smiling, touching, embracing. No more lofty words. No more heroic deeds. No more publicly recognized achievements. But if we believe in inherent dignity, their dignity is as full as anyone's.

This subject is so complex that a single sermon cannot do more than begin the dialogue. With that recognition, I'd like to lift up just two essential elements of death with dignity. The first is human agency-the capacity to choose. The second is the embrace of a community.

Human agency is our capacity to make choices and to affect the world around us. It is opposed to fatalism that leaves matters in the hands of fate, or God, or some other external determinism. In the process of dying, we are often stripped of our agency. With enormous advances in medical technology and medication today many are being kept alive whether they wish to be or not. It is a testimony to the human spirit that some people are able to resist giving up control over their life at the time of death. I am constantly amazed at the capacity of some dying persons apparently to choose when to die.

The phrase Death with Dignity has been generally associated with the movement in support of suicide or assisted suicide. In 1997, Oregon passed the Death with Dignity act that allows a terminally ill person to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. Polls have shown that between 60 and 70 percent of the nation's population is in favor of such a law. Vermont has been considering similar legislation. I personally favor this freedom to choose and hope that every state will pass a similar law. Those who oppose this act on religious grounds often rely upon the biblical claim that our life is in God's hands and we do not have the right to intervene. It is interesting to note that our society, including many persons of faith, has generally affirmed the right of responsible persons to actively intervene in the beginning of life (whether to prohibit conception by contraception or abortion or to foster conception through such means as in vitro fertilization). I believe that the same right to intervene, with the Oregon-like safeguards, should be granted in the ending of one's life.

Most, of course, will not choose euthanasia. My mother's death involved another kind of dignity. She chose to fight death and drain the last drop from the cup of life. Words from Dylan Thomas' beautiful poem express it best. "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Night. Rage, rage against the dying of the Light." Throughout her life she was a woman of intense willpower and it did not desert her in death. She chose her time of dying. For some days she lay silently in a coma. When all the family had finally gathered, she awakened from the coma, sat up in bed and looked around at each of us and said, "I love you all very much." With that, she relapsed into a coma and never spoke another word. She died the next day.

Death with dignity may mean choosing to die or fighting to the end. The important thing about dignity in death is that, as much as possible, that the dying person maintains their human agency.

One of the most important steps each of us can take to insure that our choices are honored is to enact a living will and to speak openly with our family, friends, pastor and doctors about our choice.

But Death with Dignity is about more than choice. It also means for me that we die in the embrace of a loving community. Far too many die without the dignity such an embrace provides. In his book, How We Die, Dr. Sherwin Nuland says that in the United States today over eighty percent of all persons die in hospitals, isolated in sterile environments, removed from family and friends.

As recently as 1950, only fifty percent died in hospitals. The problem he says is that most people who die in hospitals die alone. Phillip Aries has called the phenomenon of modern death, "invisible death." "Although it is not always admitted," he says, " the hospital has offered families a place where they can hide the unseemly invalid whom neither the world nor they can endure. The hospital has become the place of solitary death."

But it need not be this way. The Hebrew and Christian scriptures are replete with stories and images about dying in the embrace of a loving family, community and one's God. The death account of the patriarch Jacob tells of his being surrounded by his family and treasured items that link him to the larger community. The 23rd Psalm speaks of God's loving embrace as we pass through the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus died in the presence of a few friends, and then he relaxed into death with the cry, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. And, in the words of our text from Romans this morning, the apostle Paul speaks of dying in the Lord, which for him meant surrounded by the community of shared faith.

But we need not go back to ancient scriptures or other cultures to discover what it means to die in the embrace of the community. That same loving care has embraced many in this congregation. The loving embrace of the community involves far more than a moving funeral and words of consolation. It involves the community's presence throughout the dying process.

This is far different from the lonely professionalized death about which Nuland speaks. People die in hospitals under the care of professionals, which care is often dictated by insurance professionals. They are then taken to the funeral home where professionals prepare the body for burial or cremation. Too often the community and the family are reduced to spectators.

It is not so much the case in this wonderful area of Maine, where the professionals are also often our friends and where everything and everyone is up close and personal. But it is a tendency against which we must be ever vigilant.

I believe that every faith community should be a hospice-a place within which every dying member is embraced and surrounded by love. There is, of course, a role for professional hospice care but that should not take the place of the faith community or we have once again passed off responsibility to the professionals.

Do not misunderstand. I am grateful for the professionals and the technicians. But they should be servants of the dying, not controllers of the dying. The community should not give up its fundamental responsibility to be the primary locus for death. Only that which the family and community cannot do should be given up to the professionals, and then it should still be under the family and community's control.

Lamentably, the organized church itself has often become professionalized in its role with the dying. I believe that death is a sacrament, a deep, essential expression of the mystery of life in which we encounter the holy. But it is not a sacrament to be controlled by professional clergy. Prayer, laying-on of hands, anointing the body, and the various rituals of memorial and burial should not reside in the hands of professional clergy alone. The expressions of the sacrament of dying are fundamental to the entire congregation. This is what the priesthood of all believers is meant to be. One of the great strengths of this congregation is that so many of you have taken upon yourselves the ministry of caring during the season of death.

If the church is to become a hospice in the fullest sense of the word, then we need to be a place that welcomes conversation about death and dying-that provides help with living wills, that is willing to wrestle openly with questions about suicide and assisted suicide. And in some circumstances it will be necessary to share in the financial burdens of those facing death. There are no simple formulas but together we can explore how to embrace the dying and those who are left behind. In so doing, we may begin to understand what St. Paul meant when he said "whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."

And, here is the most difficult thing. The only way we can embrace the dying is if each of us first embraces our own death. It is a lesson I am still learning.

I close with a story. A neighbor of ours back in Garrison, NY, died following a prolonged battle with lung cancer which he had contracted from his work as a wood sculptor. At the same time that his own body was growing weak and the cancer was working its destruction, their little dog of 15 was also at death's door. The dog had gotten progressively worse. Its hair was falling out in patches. It smelled. It was incontinent. It could not hear and could barely see. As it limped from spot to spot, it quivered with chills. I could not stand the smell, the mange, the helplessness.

But as the dog's death approached, our friend took to carrying him tucked inside his sweater. That smelly, ugly dog. I could not imagine getting that close.

Perhaps he was able to embrace the dying dog because he had embraced his own death. Perhaps I could not because I had not yet embraced mine.

Two things I am sure about. The first is that our capacity to exercise choice includes death. The second is that no one should die alone, apart from the embrace of a loving community.

Amen.