The Meaning of Death in Human Experience

April 17, 1960
Akron

Easter is the climax of the annual celebration of life. The songs are joyous; the seeds are swelling; life is recalled from the depths by the trees; there is warmth in the air and fragrance in the breeze. We respond to the resurgence of life, as man has always rejoiced when the earth offers its green re-assurance of the persistence of life.

The myths of mankind have always celebrated the return of spring with rejoicing. As man, in his long evolution, gradually developed a keen self-consciousness, he found the eternal re-birth of vegetation, a model for his hope that the human spirit, too, would never die.

In the Christian celebration, the story of eternal life has been compressed. In most myths of dying-rising savior gods, the cycle follows the season – death in the autumn, resurrection in the spring after the long winter. Jesus is entombed on Friday and rises from the dead, Sunday, abbreviating the pattern into three days. Death, Friday – Life, Sunday.

The thrilling impact of Easter on the Christian world is not alone [in] that it is a central expression of the rebirth of life after the winter death. More strikingly, Christian Easter is an optimistic attempt to place happy meaning in the experience which has baffled and frightened man – death.

Unless we are willing to encounter the meaning of death in human experience, we can neither understand life, nor live it to fullness. Montaigne once said, “only the man who no longer fears death has ceased to be a slave.”

Dali, the artist who has created such provocative images, has made use of the idea of time. His painted watches are stretched out of shape, distorted, smashed. Perhaps Dali is saying that we would like to stretch time out, destroy it – somehow escape from it unceasing, precise measurement of our living days. But we are the miserable slaves of time, unless we can free ourselves from the fear of death.

Freud may have been essentially correct when he said, “No one believes in his own death. In the unconscious everyone is convinced of his own immortality.” How well this feeling of exemption from death was expressed by the Psalmist, “a thousand shall fall at thy right hand and ten thousand at thy left, but it shall not come nigh thee.” But is this not wishful thinking to dream that we may be exempt from the experience which comes to everyone else?

On a more aggressive level, that courageous old rationalist, General Ethan Allen, angrily resisted the termination of his life. When Allen's life was ebbing fast, his minister at the bedside told him gently, “General Allen, the angels are waiting for you.” Allen retorted, “Waiting are they? Waiting are they? Well, goddamn 'em, let 'em wait!”

Years before the gospels were to be shaped in written form, Paul wrote about the meaning of Easter. To Paul, death was the old enemy. In Paul's theology, death was the penalty for sin. As Christ was sinless, death could not hold him. Paul confronted death with his belief in Jesus' resurrection, “O Death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory.” Because he believed that the resurrection of Jesus guaranteed that death could never triumph, ultimately, he could reassure his audience (1st Corinthians 15, Phillips translation), “And so brothers of mine, stand firm. Let nothing move you as you busy yourselves in the Lord's work. Be sure that nothing you do for him is ever lost or ever wasted.”

But the sobering fact is that early Christianity was influenced strongly by the wide-spread belief in dying-rising vegetation gods. The confusions and contradictions in the resurrection stories, the fact that the earliest gospel, Mark, did not originally tell the miraculous story indicates that the literal coming to life of a dead man probably didn't happen.

What really happened has always been one of the great speculations of our civilization. Most of us in the liberal, free churches would believe that either Jesus didn't die or that the reports of his literal resurrection are without foundation. As you know, Holland Wolfe makes a very persuasive case for the probability that Jesus did not die on the cross, but was revived in the tomb by those closest to him.

But more appropriate for our purpose today, is to note how the resurrection story, irrespective of its historical validity, is the great assurance for people wrestling with the fears and facts of death.

There is unmatched democracy in the experience of death. Inevitably, it happens to every living thing. Heidegger, the German philosopher, commented, “Dying is something which nobody can do for another.”

Man's history varies greatly in time and place. But all cultures have death rites. Even the earliest humans buried their dead with weapons and moved the dead limbs into various, cultic postures before burying. The Egyptians were so sure of the continuity of human personality that when a king died, his tomb was a princely home. A staff of servants died with the king's entombment so that he might lack no accustomed attentions in the afterlife. Most of our vast knowledge of ancient Egyptian cultures has been derived from a study of the hieroglyphs and equipment in the lavish burial tombs.

The effort and hope to connect the living and the dead is a basic experience of the human family. One of the absolute facts of life is death. Or, if you wish, one of the absolute facts of death is life.

Consider what Shakespeare has Julius Caesar say to Calpurnia, his wife (Act II, sc. 2),

“Cowards die many times before their death.
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders I have yet heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”

It may be most strange that men should fear death, but fear it, they do. Those who should know the human psyche tell us that many of the anxieties which corrode our emotional stability are basically related to the fear of death. There is a child's prayer, steeped with fear, so old that its origins are obscure in antiquity, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

“If I should die” -- is that not the specter that haunts our contentment?

Obviously, the complexities of our inner selves are so great, that unraveling the knots of our plain and obscure fears is beyond the range of complete intellectual understanding.

We are living in times which show evidence of progress. From the time man appeared on earth until the present, in the modern, privileged West, almost thirty-seven years have been added to life expectancy. In the more fortunate areas, people can go through this increased life span without necessarily ever being exposed to real hunger or hardship.

But these benefits do not completely satisfy. We are haunted by intimations of mortality. Sometime in everyone's life there comes a shocking awareness, “I'm going to die sometime.” We maintain a sophisticated front, but in the experience of death, there is a certain kinship to a story in McKinley's political career:

1890 marked a Democratic landslide. McKinley met two other fellow-Republicans who had been overwhelmed by defeat. McKinley tried to make light of the beating, “Upon the whole, I'm glad it happened that way.”

“That's what I'm saying to everyone,” Joe Cannon retorted, “but boys, don't let's lie to one another.” (IN THE DAYS OF MCKINLEY, Margaret Leech, p. 48).

At the deep levels of our feelings, the return of life to soil and twig sounds a responsive chord. If life never dies in the earth, can it be true that life never dies in the human?

Thus the orthodox Christian gadfly shouts, “alleluia” on Easter morn because he believes that the risen Christ has gained eternal life for all those who believe in him. If one can shut out considerations of reason and history, the great sting of death is healed by the empty tomb of Jesus.

What about those of us who see no availability of a supernatural salvation scheme and see Jesus as human, not as miraculous guarantee that our self will persist? We are by no means exempt from the fear of death. This apprehension is universal among conscious beings. If there were no such experiences as death, would we be able to define and value life?

Death is a biological necessity. If death never took an extended holiday, life would soon become intolerable. There is no way we can eliminate biological death, even though we yearn desperately that there should be greater justice. Each of you knows person after person who would have lived longer or whose death might have been kinder.

The human experience of death cannot be eliminated. Biologically, life can be extended, but never without limit. Death is inevitable, but the basic message of returning life – Easter – Spring – Hope, is that death can be deprived of its horror. As battle with King Richard III approaches, Richmond says to his comrades,

“All for our vantage; then in God's name march.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallows' wings.
Kings it makes Gods, and meaner creatures, Kings.”

There are two contrary ways one can secure release from fear of death.

First is the Christian assurance, but discoverable in a multiplicity of forms in all the world's religions, then and now.

This is the affirmation of immortality. Death is not the end because the individual human soul persists in an eternal, spiritual framework. "Death is swallowed up by victory," Paul cried. The human spirit is immortal; our loved ones who have gone before are awaiting happy reunion. the soul is immortal and will glorify God forever. This is one way of rooting out the terrible fear of death -- if you believe it, whole-heartedly.

The alternate way of living without fear of death is to accept it as the end of personal consciousness. (This is my present belief). One's immortality is fond in children, memory and contribution of service. There is little doubt that "I" will cease to be. I will not know or be known, but the elements of which I am composed will change form and re-enter the great, dynamic, mysterious process of the Universe. I will be soil and sea, air and chemical, but I will experience nothing of this, for my consciousness will cease with my life.

I suppose those who fear death the least belong to one or the other of these two groups. The horror of death is diluted by a conviction about it.

Those confidently expecting personal immortality of spirit will find their satisfaction in preparing for life beyond time. Their ways will be honest and useful because of conviction that characters formed here will persist. Such a man will consider well his attitudes and acts because the persistence of these character traits will be eternal.

A man in the other group, feeling that it is fairly certain that death is the end, will seek to intensify his participation in the present. "Is there no other life? Pitch this one high."

If I "pass this way but once," and there is no other chance for me to help make life endurable, decent, joyous, and friendly, then there is no greater foolishness than to spoil my only opportunity.

Whether or not you expect an eternal home for your immortal spirit; or whether you believe the life you are living is the only conscious one you will ever have, by and large your control over life is limited in either case. Medicine has increased longevity, but everyone is ultimately subject to disease, decay, accident.

Our opportunity for control of life is not in its quantity, but its quality.

The meaning of death in human experience is not that we can avoid it, but that we can do something about the quality of life before death pays the inevitable visit.

The sports pages printed an apt illustration, recently. Training for the Olympic games, a muscular American shot-putter broke the world's record. He had long been skilled, strong, and co-ordinated, but had never seemed to learn to arch his throw high enough to secure the trajectory necessary for maximum distance. Then, across the uprights of the pole vault standards, he tied a string. In practice he learned to put the shot high enough to clear the string. When he learned to do that, he broke the world's record.

The meaning of death in human experience is like unto that. Whether one believes in the Risen Christ or growing man -- or any other variety of high-level ideal, life must be pitched high. As preparation for another life, or as justification for the only life we have, we need the enriching values of wisdom, beauty, love, goodness and truth, sparked by the universal Spring affirmation of the persistence and worthwhileness of life.