Beati mortui, qui in Domino moriuntur

Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him:

So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 17, and indeed John 15-17, tends to scare people. So many words, so many tangents, so much said. I suppose I could try to give a nice meaty exposition of it; but then we’d be here until Christmas, & you’d be much better to go home and get out a good commentary.

So I’m not going to do that. I was considering doing something like it, until a friend rang me to tell me that his cancer has spread and that the best they can offer him is palliative chemo.

And then this passage took on quite a different meaning for me.

I think we can all sometimes be mesmerised by the mass of words and the apparent difficulty of certain passages of the Bible. It is so easy to burrow into the words and forget about the meaning - and, perhaps even easier, to forget the context, to forget who is talking; and, in the case of John 17, who is talking to whom, and when.

It’s very simple really: this is a prayer, a prayer from the man who gave us the Lord’s Prayer; the man who also happened to be God and so knew how God wants to be prayed to.

St Augustine said of the Psalms: “So that we should know how to praise God, God first praised himself.” That’s even more true of the few examples that have come down to us of Jesus’ own way of praying: what we call “The Lord’s Prayer”; the various very short prayers scattered through the Gospels; and this one.

And this one teaches us two basic things: how to pray - and it isn’t necessarily what we would expect - and how to face death.

Well, yes: this is a relatively young man, in full health and lucidity, facing death, undoubtedly the most significant and well-prepared death in history, praying his last thought-out prayer to God; it is a prayer that sums up his life, mission and teaching, and his dearest wishes. The last testament of a person is a thing of great significance; if it is actually spoken as they face death its significance is hugely increased. Many of us, when we get to that stage, and if we are not too incapacitated, are so scared of death that we are not capable of articulating any such thing.

I am not generally too keen on Radio 4’s Thought For the Day, but I make an exception for Rabbi Lionel Blue. A while ago, having just come home from a stay in a hospice he was musing on the NHS, the lessons that his hospital stays had taught him, and finally - briefly - he referred to the debate about assisted dying. I paraphrase: “I hope I will be free to choose to end my life when the time comes,” he said, “but I am not sure that I will actually do it. I have found that God comes closest when I am at my lowest...and I wouldn’t want to miss out”. “And I wouldn’t want to miss out.” Three years later I am still in awe over that phrase. It shows the most astonishing courage, and the most astonishing faith - the courage and faith, properly speaking, of the martyr. A willingness to endure absolutely anything to find God, or, as another Rabbi put it, to be found in him: “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ and may be found in him.”

Dying is not a pleasant process, and facing death is terrifying. Most of us would like to avoid both, and most of us, if we were honest, would prefer a sudden death. However, in the old Litany of the Saints we read: “From a sudden and unprovided death, deliver us, Lord.” We are not to desire a sudden death: “in case we miss out”.

That’s quite a good answer to those who accuse Christians of seeking out suffering or making themselves miserable in the name of their religion. No - by no means. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it in abundance. But some of us find - I think many of us find - that God is closest to us when we are at our lowest; and while we rightly hate the lowness, still...if we have courage, and if we truly seek God, do we really want to risk “missing out”?

“Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord.” (Rev 14:13:)

Kierkegaard believed you could build an entire spirituality around the word “as” (forgive us our sins AS we forgive, be ye perfect AS your heavenly Father is perfect). I think you could construct an entire spirituality around the word “in”.

And the place to find it is in these “difficult” chapters. We are in Christ, and he is in the Father, and God is in us, and we are made for glory.
People often stress, and rightly, that there is no glory without the cross. But I wonder whether Jesus wouldn’t prefer us to say that with the cross there is glory. As he makes this prayer he knows what he’s on his way to, but it’s the glory he sees, the glory which is his by nature and ours by gift.

I am not sure there is one “correct” Christian position on “assisted dying”. I don’t think my friend would want to make use of such a thing, even if it were available - because he knows he is in the Christ who descended to the depths and is with us in the depths, and he wouldn’t want to miss out. But we are not all so brave, and we shouldn’t condemn those who hang on to their faith by the skin of their teeth, or be ashamed if that is true of us.

But isn’t there something exhilarating about going all the way? About descending with Christ - no, in Christ - all the way to the depths, to the very door of eternity, in his way and in his own time, and finding him far, far closer than we had ever dreamed, far far closer than he had been even at our lowest during our life?

In the words of John Tavener’s Funeral Ikos:

With ecstasy are we inflamed if we but hear that there is light eternal yonder; that there is Paradise, wherein every soul of Righteous Ones rejoiceth. Let us all also enter into Christ, that we may all cry aloud thus unto God: Alleluia!