When Death Comes Too Soon

During Lent this year, death hovered near. My friend Bill, a beloved pastor in the community, underwent chemo for an unexpected brain tumor. The spouse of someone I provide spiritual care for was suddenly hospitalized. And well-known Christian writer, Rachel Held Evans was placed in a medically induced coma after the flu took a dangerous turn. On Holy Saturday I mentioned each of them in a tweet and pleaded, “This Holy Saturday I am crying out for life!”

All three of them died this week. Tomorrow I am attending two memorial services.

Bill was only 56 years old and blessed the lives of so many, including refugees. He persuaded his congregation to turn the parsonage into a home for transitioning immigrants. Bill died just weeks after the birth of a grandchild who will grow up without him. Rachel was 37 and had a profound impact through her writing and speaking, challenging the evangelical world to follow Christ more fully. She leaves behind a three old son and a little girl not even a year old.

It always startles me when good people die young. It goes against my gut sense of justice that God should and surely will look out for the faithful. Yet, even Jesus and his disciples died unfairly. The gospel does not offer the protection that I so wish it did.

I first began to reckon with this truth several years ago when I encountered another unexpected death. At the time I was ending a stable career, packing my bags, and moving across the country to pursue a new vocational dream, namely, a Th.M. degree at Duke Divinity School with hopes of going on for a Ph.D. in Old Testament. But amid my hopeful beginning, David died. I didn’t know David, but his death hit me hard. His dreams mirrored my own dreams, having just completed his Ph.D. in Old Testament at Duke. 

The summer after he graduated, David was preparing for the mission field to teach at a university in Brazil when he died of a heart attack at age 38. The funeral was held at a local church in Durham, North Carolina. I watched as his wife and four young children (ages 4-11) walked down the aisle past me to the front pew. The little ones placed flowers on their father’s casket. I had never attended a stranger’s funeral before, but I felt connected to David in our shared dreams. The abrupt ending to his aspirations served as a sobering reminder that there was nothing certain about my own.

At the time of David’s death, I wrote in my journal:

The uncertainty of life scares me. I cannot control my circumstances or anyone else’s. It is a haunting vulnerability. Yet, that fear forces me to evaluate what I really believe. Do I truly believe there is a God? Do I believe he is good? Good enough to trust when dreams are shattered? When Jesus’ followers were disillusioned, and many of them left, he asked Peter, “Do you want to leave me too?” Peter replied, “Where else can I go? You have the words of life.” That is where I find myself—where else can I go? There is nowhere else. So, I hold fast to what I believe is true: Every good and perfect gift comes from God. Ultimately, our dreams are found in him.

Remembering David has been a means of re-centering over the years. I think of him whenever I contemplate my future. The three new losses of this past week are also sobering. Their deaths speak to me. They remind me that even good dreams of ministry, book publications, or graduate degrees, are not the summation of life. Jesus tells his disciples: “Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). At the same time, Jesus’s words can be hard to hear. I do want the demons cast out and the sick healed.

When I need something to help me cope with death, I sit with the words of David’s widow, Leigh, which she spoke at the funeral of her 14-year-old son, Peter. He committed suicide three years after his dad died:

“The horror of Peter’s death is overwhelming . . . What I do know is this: like those being addressed in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, I have two choices in front of me. Chapter 30, verse 19 says, ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.”’

This choice is one we are faced with over and over every day . . . You choose life when you fly across the country, twice now, to be by my side and give me a hug. You choose life when you bring my family a meal, allowing me one less dinner to think about. . . . You choose life when you give and give and give to me. Some of the acts of generosity are so huge, I promise they would take your breath away . . .

As a result, I stand here today to tell you that even in the unspeakable awfulness of what has happened to Peter, death will not have the final word, not in my house and not in my family. Horrific images and haunting questions of why will not be my focus, even if they manage to creep in sometimes. Darkness and evil and horror and sadness and guilt and pain will not be the last thing left at the end of the day. I will continue to tell them that they have no place in a life and in a family that has been won over by Jesus’ message of triumphant love. That love will triumph over everything, even this.”

In many ways unexpected deaths challenge me to live more courageously – living fully into the gifts and voice God has given me. I am particularly inspired by how Rachel Held Evans boldly spoke truth with gentleness and love in the face of intense opposition. She knew what she was called to do and did it wholeheartedly. Rather than giving up on dreams, the nearness of inevitable death, urges me to do the same.

At the same time, I know I must dream with open palms, surrendering the future to a mystery I cannot control. In that, I remember what David’s life has come to symbolize for me: a life well lived for 38 years whose significance was not dependent on whether or not he ever used his Ph.D. in Old Testament after graduation or whether he achieved all his aspirations. His life had meaning because he loved and was loved. His life had meaning because he pursued his dreams in light of God and lived fully into them with the time he was given.

Note: At both David’s and Peter’s funerals, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann offered an address. At this link, you can find Brueggemann’s speech at Peter’s funeral (displayed first), as well as Leigh’s. Both are well-worth reading for anyone grieving.

**Some parts of this post are excerpted from a reflection I wrote shortly after David died.