Pentecost+5/Proper 8B (Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24)

There’s one topic that we generally don’t like to talk about in our culture. We either avoid it or consider it taboo. The more we love each other, the harder we find it to talk about. What would that be? It’s death. It’s about facing our own and our loved ones’ mortality. Though it’s such a depressing topic to discuss, the Christian tradition has always focused on death to see Jesus on the cross and beyond. Whether Christians would shy away from it or not, death is the only ticket to the mystery of the resurrection whereas crucifixion directs us what kind of death we would like to have. (i.e. If we die, is it for ourselves only or others? This is to ask if we live our lives for ourselves only or for others as well.)

I recently attended an event called “Death over Dinner” at the hospital where I work. This event invites participants to talk about death. The questions that they’re expected to ponder are: “Share about a death you encountered that had a profound impact on your life. Did it change the way you think or talk about death? How else did it impact you? How would you want your final days to look? Who is around you? What would you eat? If you died suddenly, would your loved ones know what to do?” These are difficult questions to answer. How would you respond to these questions? If I may share with you my answer to the question of “What would you eat?” it’s a deep-fried Oreo! 

Now, let’s look at our first lesson. The author in the Book of Wisdom talks about death by starting with an interesting statement, “God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living.” Some of us might react to this huge theological statement, asking “Then who made death?” At first, I thought this author’s statement was misleading. Didn’t the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit say otherwise? I went back to Genesis 3:17-19, which I’m sharing here with you: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust, you shall return.”

The key here is that the ground, not us, is cursed in the sense that requires our labor to bear fruits. Biological death is never God’s final verdict. That we are dust and to dust, we shall return is the nature of life. Our human (adam in Hebrew) nature associated with dust (adamah in Hebrew) metaphorically depicts how we come to exist. Death is something that we as mortal beings are to accept. Everything alive is always in action. It always changes. Death is a part of that change. As much as we don’t know how we come to be before birth, we don’t know how we come to be after death. Between birth and death, we’re living and dying in both biological and spiritual senses.

While biological death is a part of life, the author in the first lesson seems to be more onto an existential death. This is complete isolation from self, others, and God. Biological death does not separate us from our loved ones and God in a spiritual sense but this existential death does. So the author writes, “...through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.” What triggers this existential death or spiritual isolation is envy. 

Envy and jealousy are alike but not the same. Jealousy is about wanting something that someone has without having to take it away from that person. Envy, on the other hand, is about wanting something 
that someone has by taking it away from that person. Jealousy has a sense of admiration whereas envy has none but a self-centered motif. Envy may be understood as a combination of one’s experience with both greed and rage. The fruit of envy is an inner and outer division. In this state of envy, my neighbor becomes my enemy or potential victim (?!) and I’m neither satisfied nor content with myself. There’s never enough. It is one’s state of complete isolation from self, others, and God, which we may call hell. 

Jesus’ death is the death of this existential death that he died for others. There’s no room for envy to sneak in on the cross. Nowadays we may be more afraid to face biological death than existential death. The more we accept the nature of life that we return to dust at some point, the more we become open than closed to ourselves, others, and God. This is how we move beyond birth and death with our baptized bodies and live fuller to the openness of God who expands our beloved communion with our neighbors in Christ through Holy Eucharist. Amen.