While it is not inevitable, life can be a bit of a downer. And no matter how far we rise, what is inevitable for each and every one of us is our eventual mortal demise. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Which is why, by and large, we don’t. In this culture we usually neither think nor talk about death. And when it arrives, increasingly ways are found to avoid, or at least distract us, from “it”. More than a few daytime TV ads offer alternatives to “trad” funerals. Funded (probably) by your over-50’s life insurance policy (so you needn’t worry about being a “burden”), one can now opt for a “direct cremation”, and your loved ones can remember you howsoever they wish (or not), without any “fuss”, and certainly without reminding themselves of their (or your) mortality.
But on my morning walk this morning (nothing excessive, just to the paper shop), I happened to get thinking about a number of folk that are no longer with us. Some were people that I didn’t know personally. This was prompted in part because I watched the “Concert for George” recently. Organised by friends and colleagues of George Harrison, former Beatle and devotee of eastern mysticism, Harrison grew up about a mile from where I’m typing. Despite prodigious talent, worldwide fame, a considerable fortune (his estate was worth about £100M when he died), and the love and affection of his family and many friends, it’s not clear he was a man who really found what he was looking for. He died in 2001, in a house belonging to someone else, albeit surrounded by his family and Hare Krishna chants. After his death his family released his final “message to the world”: “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another”. It was to George’s credit that at least he had been looking.
Another recent reminder of life’s biggest reality has been the sudden death of Alex Salmond. This is a name known to everyone in Scotland, most people in England, and not a few beyond. He was a former First Minister of Scotland, leader of the Scottish National Party (and beyond that Scottish nationalists in general), and general pest and thorn in the side of UK governments of every political stripe. He died last Saturday from heart attack, having made a speech, far from home, at a conference in North Macedonia. While a man with many political opponents, the subsequent tributes have shown that he was much respected and had many friends across the political spectrum. I have no idea what his opinions were on religious matters. Interestingly, he one described himself as a “Church of Scotland adherent”. So, not a believer, not a Christian, not even a Presbyterian, simply an “adherent” of one of Scotland’s mainline, and declining, protestant denominations. I’m not sure I really know what that means. Maybe that was the idea. He famously fell out with fellow nationalists in the Scottish Government, was subject of various inquiries, and was cleared of criminal charges (including charges of rape and sexual assault). While found not guilty (and “not proven” on one of the charges) by a jury after only six hours of deliberation, the trial did reveal patterns of behaviour that even his own defence counsel accepted might be construed as “inappropriate” (while falling short of criminality). But the trial, and the political and governmental machinations that surrounded it, revealed an unpleasant side to Scottish political life at the highest level. This has probably contributed to the demise of Salmond’s former party, the SNP. And while he was, and obviously felt, vindicated by his criminal trial, he was still seeking legal redress at the time of his death.
Perhaps more poignantly, he was speaking in Macedonia about democracy. But it was democracy that had delivered his most stinging defeat (while also bizarrely marking his biggest achievement). He successfully persuaded the Cameron UK government to hold a referendum on Scottish independence, and even got to choose the question on the ballot. And yet the people, by a convincing margin (much wider than in the Brexit referendum), rejected his view and voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. If all political careers end in failure (to misquote Enoch Powell), then you might have thought that to come relatively close to achieving a lifetime goal, see it dashed democratically by your own people (he was a nationalist after all), and then watch its likelihood recede even further because of the missteps and incompetence of your successors, would have been crushing. But by all accounts Salmond remained up for the struggle. Not “no” for him. He was ready to go again. But then he unexpectedly ran out of time. There are many who are shocked, and are left reflecting on the meaning of it all. One wonders how long it will be before their minds return to mundane and mortal matters, and they avert them once again from what is perhaps the most pressing of issues.
But I’ve known lots of others, not superstars or elite politicians, who have looked (or indeed not looked) and found the answer to our obvious mortality. And it is certainly not to ignore it. Over the years we’ve had various Bible study groups meeting in our home. And, over the years, some of the folk who we met with weekly, have died. In a number of cases I still walk past their former homes; I’m often reminded of them. All of them have left a gap of course, particularly for their immediate families, but also for that wider circle of which we were a part. And, along with their families we have grieved. The experience is inevitably difficult and challenging. And yet the folk I’m thinking of were Christian folk. I don’t mean that in the sense that they belonged to a certain culture, attended particular meetings, assented to particular religious propositions. What I mean is that they actually knew someone who had died (in a particularly gruesome manner), and yet returned shortly thereafter to life. When he eventually left our immediate vicinity he promised that he had not merely escaped death, but had overcome it. His claim was that those of us who knew him would be beneficiaries of what he had accomplished and share in this victory. Because of the culture that we are now all embedded in, this all reads like bizarre nonsense. Mystical and mysterious at best, deceptive and dangerous at the worst. But that is more apparent than real. What I have seen is the transformative power of the life and death of Jesus Christ time after time, in part if not yet completely.
Thinking about the moment of death is, I think, no more attractive to the Christian (the “Christ follower”) than it is for anyone else. And yet, emptied of its power to terrify and paralyse, death and its aftermath do bear thinking about. Because after the inevitable fall (if fall it is), there is now for those in Christ an equally inevitable, but much more comforting, rise in prospect. Thinking about life and death needn’t be any kind of a downer.
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