Homily at this morning's Eucharist
One of the saddest news stories of the
last week must surely be the one about the 14 year old girl who knew she was
dying of a rare form of cancer - with no hope of any cure. She wanted to live,
and she wanted to live so much that she asked if her body could be
cryogenically frozen in the hope that some time in the future - perhaps hundreds
of years in the future - a cure for her condition might be found and
somehow the doctors might restore her to life. She isn’t the first to have made
that request. But because of her age she was too young to make a will and too
young to determine what should be done with her body when she died. So she
asked her mother, who agreed. Her grandparents came up with the £37,000 it
would cost to dehydrate her cells so that they wouldn’t be destroyed by ice
crystals and to drain her body of blood which would be replaced by a sort of
anti-freeze, to pack her in dry ice and send her to a storage facility in
America where her remains would be stored in a canister of liquid nitrogen. But
her father objected - which is why her request became a news story. It required
a High Court judge to determine what should happen - and he ruled that the
girl’s mother should have the right to decide. So the mother set in motion the
process for freezing and storing the girl’s body. The girl died within 10 days
of the court ruling. The girl and her mother spent her last hours together -
the girl apparently was comforted by having her request granted, though reports
are that the mother was distracted by knowing just what would have to be done
immediately following her daughter’s death.
The story of a young person’s death is
tragic in itself. This story is so
much more tragic again. So much more life that could have been lived - the girl,
her family and the judge knew that; we know that. The desperate clinging to
life - that is human in itself. But the still further element of tragedy is
that the whole process of letting go in the face of death is denied - this
cannot be a good death - in a sense because death is denied: the hospital could
not do its work properly; the father was denied access to his daughter; the
mother herself seems not to have been able to be attentive in a time when every
moment of the present is so precious; the girl herself clung to a hope - but we
are left asking if she was sold only an empty hope. And no one seemed prepared
to explore the aftermath. How can loved ones grieve for someone who has died
but then been left in a state where there’s that most remote possibility of
some sort of resuscitation? No grave to visit or place to lay flowers, but the
knowledge of a large aluminium canister in which bodies are hung upside down
for centuries or until the money runs out or there’s a power failure or leakage
in the coolant system. And to what state could life be restored? Would anyone
have the will to bring the girl back to life even if it should be possible?
What sort of life after the damage of disease and the complications of the
preserving process? And with whom would that life be shared? Our living is made
worthwhile because of the context and relationships in which we live. Who would
be this girl’s loved ones for her?
It’s a sad story for our secular age,
where God doesn’t get a look in. Actually I think there are plenty of ethical
issues even for the most hardened secularists - at least if they approach them
from a properly humanist perspective. What
is it truly to be human? That’s the question we need always to ask. It
doesn’t seem to have entered the equation in this tragic case. And there’s no
sense at all that to be human is to be made in the image of God. We are made in God’s image, even with
all the flaws we possess of human character, frailty and disease. We are God’s
creation, not lightly to be handled, even if we might be aware most acutely of
its imperfections as we perceive them. And because we are made in God’s image,
we have a hope - even in the face of death - of redemption. Our bodies and our
minds, even our abilities and our relationships, are less than perfect - but we are loved.
That’s the affirmation we can hold to as Christians, even in the darkest of
circumstances, even when we can’t make that affirmation ourselves. If only
there could have been someone there for
that family to affirm it for them as that poor girl faced death. If only they
could commend her to God’s care and protection - to know that he holds her in
his heart; to say in the words of that simplest of prayers, May she rest in peace.
That needs to be our prayer for them now.
I’ve thought about their plight as I’ve pondered today’s readings for the
Eucharist. The plea of one of the thieves crucified with Jesus: “Jesus,
remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus’ response from his own
cross: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Is this a real promise? There’s no
theological underpinning: Christians and others continue to argue over the
nature of life after death. There’s the other thief who simply mocks from his own cross - hard words
denying hope in the imminence of death from one who is paying the penalty for
his own failures in life. But that is not to say that he himself is without
hope. Jesus promises hope to the one we call “the repentant thief” / “the
penitent thief.” But he doesn’t himself speak words of condemnation against the
thief who derides him. And Jesus’ words of hope in Paradise are not an anodyne
response. We look at Jesus on the Cross and see one who will himself cry, “My
God, why have you forsaken me?”
Forsakenness is a natural emotion in the
face of death. And it’s one that Jesus himself feels. He shares it as he dies
on a Cross under the inscription, “This is the King of the Jews.” This is our
King, Christ the King. But a King with a difference. Without special
protection, without bodyguards. Whose throne in this world turns out to be a
Cross - but who can because of that all the better reach out to us from it.
Vulnerable - as any of us. God’s Son - and affirming our call to be his
children. Let’s remember that for all who face their own Calvary - and for
ourselves.
(Readings at the Eucharist: Jeremiah 23.1-6; Colossians 1.11-20; Luke 23.33-43)
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