Riverwood Presbyterian Church

General Theology

Deaths in our Family

by Jimmy Hopper

I have had our Pastor’s sermon last Sunday on death and resurrection for the Christian very much on my mind. I tend to think about death more (I am almost 70!) but I’m not sure that’s the real reason. Its inevitability is such a part of life and you consciously avoid it for much of your life so at some point, you intellectually almost have to consider it. Anyway, Tim’s great sermon was based on 1st. Thessalonians 4:13 and following and spoke of how the Christian was not to be ignorant of what would happen but was to understand and be comforted and encouraged.

As sometimes happens, I was reading a book about death in its human ramifications and a particular passage spoke to the idea of the non-believer as he looks at the existence of God in the face of human death. The book is A Death in the Family by James Agee. It is a deeply moving novel about a family in Knoxville, TN in which the husband and father of two small children is killed in an automobile accident in 1915. I want to quote a portion of it but I’ll have to set the scene so bear with me.

In this scene, the wife’s family is gathered at her house after the news came. There are several members of the family there but the ones who speak in this scene are as follows: the wife is Mary, known as “Poll” to her father, Joel. Her aunt, Hannah, is there and she is Joel’s sister. Mary and Hannah are devout Catholic Christians. Joel is an agnostic. It is very late, around three AM. As this conversation begins, the Christians in the room have just had a very strong premonition that the husband’s spirit was there for a few minutes. All had the premonition seperately, without telling each other. Even Mary’s mother, who is almost deaf, felt it. They have investigated and now it has passed and they are speaking of the premonition and the supernatural:

Again they were thoughfully silent, and into this silence Joel spoke quietly, “I…don’t….know. I….just….don’t….know. Every bit of gumption I’ve got tells me it’s impossible, but if this kind of thing is so, it isn’t with gumption that you see it is. I….just….don’t….know. If you’re right, and I’m wrong, then chances are you’re right about the whole business, God, and the whole crew. And in that case, I’m just a plain damned fool. But if I can’t trust my common sense—I know it’s nothing much, Poll, but it’s all I’ve got. If I can’t trust that, what in hell can I trust! God, you’n Hannnah would say. Far as I’m concerned, it’s out of the question.”

“Why, Joel?” Hannah asked.

“II doesn’t seem to embarrass your idea of common sense, or Poll’s, and for that matter I’m making no reflections. You’re got plenty of gumption. But how can you reconcile the two, I can’t see.”

“It takes faith, Papa,” Mary said gently.

“That’s the word. That’s the one that makes a mess of everything, for’s I’m concerned. Bounces up like a jack-in-the-box. Solves everything. Well, it doesn’t solve anything for me, for I haven’t got any.Wouldn’t hurt it if I had. Don’t believe in it.. Not for me. I’m not exactly an atheist, you know. Least I don’t suppose I am. Seems as unfounded to me to say there isn’t a God as to say there is. You can’t prove it either way. But that’s it: I’ve got to have proof. All I can say is, I hope you’re wrong but I just don’t know.”

Joel can go to no door in Knoxville and knock and God will come out to meet him, giving him the “proof” that he thinks he needs and in that sense, we are bound by faith. But it is not a faith that is without reason. Paul wrote the words to the Thessalonians knowing, as an eyewitness and knowing hundreds of other eyewitnesses that Jesus had been crucified and was resurrected. Paul, and thousands of others gave up everything; even to dying a terrible death, because they knew the truth. Paul’s writings, and the Gospels, are historical documents, written by men who would have found it much easier to deny and walk around in a fog about the whole matter. The existence of God can’t be proven empirically, but our faith isn’t a jack-in-a-box that we pop up when the questions get hard either. Joel’s “I hope it isn’t true” is one of the saddest statements a man can make.

Which brings me back to the Christian and death. He knows it is all true and as Tim preached so wonderfully and so fervantly last Snday; because it is true, nothing else matters. Death doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter even a little bit, neither the dying nor the state of death, not as much as my Mother would have said, “a hill of beans.” To the Christian, secure and triumphant in the resurrection of our Lord, He is all that matters. Deaths in our family, the family of God, are vastly different from other deaths.