If you couldn’t tell from the portion of the letter we just read, a crisis is shaking the Corinthian Church. What Paul has heard is creating such a stir might surprise you, since we sometimes say that it’s one of life’s two great constants, along with taxes. What’s dividing the Corinthians is death.

That may sound a bit odd to us today, since we have grown accustomed to the fact that in Church, as everywhere else, people grow old, at times get sick, and die. But consider that the letters we call First and Second Corinthians are perhaps the very oldest of all the Christian writings we have in the Bible. They may have been written as little fifteen years after Jesus’ death and Resurrection! From what we can tell, many in Corinth believed that Jesus was coming back any day to gather the faithful. But as years went by and still Jesus did not come, beloved members of the Church began to die. Paul wrote to tell the Corinthians that even if they are still “at home” in their bodies, confined to a mortal life, they can be confident: God has prepared for them another home, eternal and in the heavens (2 Cor. 5:1).

More than two-thousand years later, Christians are again experiencing a profound challenge to our beliefs regarding death. But in our day, the crisis we face is very different. A young woman is strangely unable to find her way home from work, and learns she has a lethal brain tumor. She endures the anxiety and pain of surgery, only to discover that the tumor has advanced unabated. Those who love her watch as it relentlessly robs her of her personality, then her memories, then control over her own body, and after excruciating months, her life. Another, a baby, is born without a portion of her brain. Immediately her parents go from joy to shock to grief: they are told that she cannot live more than a few weeks, and may begin to experience pain prior to her eventual and certain death. Still another, a man in his 80s, lies in bed, looking silently out the nursing home window. He has been told that he has a rare form of cancer attacking his internal organs. There is no cure, and its advance, he is told, will be very painful.

Medical situations like these occur every day at Roanoke Memorial, Lewis-Gale and across our nation. If you have never been touched by the shadow cast by such as these, then you are fortunate. Because many of us here have faced such crises, and even talking about it brings the memory of great pain. Heaven forbid, but if we live long enough, we too will confront such a crisis with a friend, or a parent, or a spouse, or even a child. When this crisis comes, it will be the greatest test of our beliefs we have ever faced. We need to know, then, what we believe about death and suffering. More to the point, as those who follow Christ, we need to consider what God’s Will is for how we should care for the very sick, and what is and is not appropriate in our helping them face death.

Confronted with medical cases in which there is no hope of healing, our society has grappled with the crisis posed by needless suffering. Many, and perhaps even we ourselves, have voiced the pain in our hearts, saying things like “I don’t want to live like that, because that’s not living. When my dog was sick I put him down because it was the decent thing to do, and it seems like we ought to do the same for a person.” Most everybody has had such thoughts. But about twenty years ago they were brought to the forefront by a medical doctor named Jack Kevorkian. Dr. Kevorkian made it his mission in life to help others end their lives, often by using simple machines to deliver lethal doses of medicine or poison. He popularized the term “doctor-assisted suicide,” but other words have also been used: “mercy killing,” “the right to die” and “euthanasia.” This last term comes from a Greek word meaning “a good death,” on the belief that when life no longer has meaning or enjoyment, but only suffering, the patient ought to be given the legal and moral authority to end his or her life, or have it done by another on his or her behalf.

Having said what euthanasia is, before we reflect on it as Christians we must note what it is NOT. As our knowledge of medicine and related technologies has increased, we have created an ability like never before to keep people alive by means of machines – machines that help them eat or receive nutrition, machines that help them breathe, or even restart and sustain a faltering heart. The decision to remove some or all of such machines and allow someone to die, while a terribly difficult and painful thing for a family to do, this is not euthanasia. When we decide to stop interrupting the natural processes of death, or when we allow death to occur as the result of a disease or medical condition, it is the illness that takes a person’s life. Not an act of will.

Withholding extraordinary measures that would artificially extend a person’s life, then, is not what we’re talking about today. Of course, those who are proponents of euthanasia, the deliberate taking of someone’s life in order to alleviate suffering, point out that there is little difference between allowing death to occur naturally and hastening what is inevitable. They note that helping a person who wants to avoid agony or living in a vegetative state for years is a humane, even a merciful or loving thing to do. Voters in Oregon agreed, twice, back in the mid-90s, to legalize the practice, and in the Netherlands, physicians legally can employ euthanasia.

But how are we, as believers in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus, to respond to this idea of a “right to die?” I think the Holy Spirit may be telling you how, already. While I never saw Dr. Kevorkian perform an assisted suicide, I have seen a great many people die, and I can tell you that the Church was there. Your bulletin cover shows Jesus touching someone who is critically ill, God’s power to heal flowing through him. Today, many who follow Jesus, and not only pastors by any means, find the place where Jesus was: beside someone who is dying. We pray for healing, and we pray for an end to suffering. We pray for the family, and we show by our presence that we will still be with the family, even when the sick person is gone. This is not an easy thing to do. But I have seen astonishing strength among people of faith, and a will that does not turn away from the suffering of a friend or relative. I think the sick can expect this of the Church: we will be there, because the One we follow is there. So what we are called to offer is compassion, a word that simply means “to suffer with.”

The other thing that the terminally ill and their families should be able to expect from us is understanding. We in the Church should minister to those who face this crisis without judging what they say or how they feel. It is not, it seems to me, our job to correct those who at the worst moments of their lives talk about a right to die. Rather, because we believe that all life belongs to God, we should love unconditionally, and accept that we don’t know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. Understanding.

But most of all, at the very core of the crisis, we who trust in Christ need to see in suffering something beyond what the world sees. Of course we know what is it to hate illness and plead for an end to pain, like everyone with a breaking heart. But we are those who have learned to hold onto hope, even when medicine can offer none, even when our hearts are breaking. We are those who remember that the climax of every one of the four Gospels is how Jesus faced his death, pleading with his Father that the suffering would pass, yes, experiencing the worst of what humanity can endure, yes, but on the Cross, finally overcoming the power of death itself. Jesus dies, his family and his friends grieve, but the Story does not end there. Jesus appears to those who are grieving to seal his promise: that he goes to prepare a place for them, and that he will never abandon them in times of trial or pain, until the day that he comes for them. For us.

But even before that day, there is something else for those who see with eyes of faith. Somehow, a deep and hidden mystery can at times be revealed in the worst of trials. Sometimes even suffering, in its bloody, fleshly ugliness, can reveal a hidden beauty that is beyond all measure. What do I mean? Well, some of you know. But to all I say: the stories I mentioned as we began our consideration of pain and dying were not imaginary examples. The young woman with a brain tumor was Bobbi, an RN with a heart for helping the disabled. She helped found a ministry at our church called Respite Care, where she donated her time by tending to those who were quadriplegic, were blind, or were profoundly mentally handicapped. When her illness made it impossible for her to work any longer, Bobbi still came to Respite Care, only now she lay with her friends, those who loved her and cared for her in quiet ways that I cannot forget.

That baby born unable to live was given the name “Hope” by her parents. They took her home for eleven extraordinary, terrible days, and before she left them, Hope had transformed their lives as no one else ever had. Today, they have three other children, and the whole family tends a little flower patch they call “Hope’s Garden.” This, for them, is a way of remembering, and waiting to be together again.

And finally, the old man confined to his deathbed was Elmer. Elmer called me in about two weeks before he died, and to my astonishment, not to mention that of his family, raised himself up and belted out: “Reverend, I’m going to meet the Man Upstairs soon, and I intend to do it as one of his people. So if you’re ready, I’m ready - to make it official.” Elmer left his wife with a lifetime of good memories, but none of them brings her the joy of Elmer’s baptism into the eternal Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Had these people, Bobbie, Hope, Elmer, ended their lives early or had their lives ended by others, those around them would know less about death, and a lot less about life. I believe that they died with a dignity that is beyond words, surrounded by those who loved them, these witnesses to a good death, a holy death. I believe that at last Hope, Elmer and Bobbi reached out their hands to the pierced hands that bear our burdens, and then they went to the place he has prepared for all who walk by faith and not by sight.

As Paul once said, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory - one that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 4:16-17).

Thanks be to God.

[Note: this message is my own; however, I draw upon Section M of “The Social Principles” of The Discipline of the United Methodist Church, “Caring for Dying Persons,” and also Section N, “Suicide.” I am also indebted to Rev. Adam Hamilton’s book Confronting the Controversies: Biblical Perspectives on Tough Issues (Abingdon Press, 2005), pp. 75-90. In our coming Bible study series we will make use of both these resources.]