More than a Makeover: A Christian View of Death

By Rev. Scott Stiegemeyer

When I was 16, I was a bus boy at a local restaurant. I bussed a lot of tables in those days. Now most of it’s just a big blur of dealing with half-eaten dinners, dirty spoons, and washing the sneeze-guard over the salad bar. But I remember one night like it happened yesterday.

Going about my routine, I suddenly noticed a waitress walking from room to room asking for a doctor. I was wiping tables in dining room number four, but I could see that there was some kind of commotion down the hall.

I walked a few steps closer and heard the startled voices. Was that someone lying on the floor? What was the waiter doing? “Oh God!” someone said. It looked like a fistfight had taken place. There was a long table with all the chairs pushed back. Scraps on the plates. And a big, yellow birthday cake.

A woman died in the restaurant that night. Someone’s grandmother. The whole family was there to celebrate her birthday, but she died at the table. As I was throwing the ruins of her birthday cake into the trash, I realized that while she was celebrating her life, death came and took her away.

The waiter doing CPR couldn’t save her. Her family’s distress couldn’t save her. Even the trained professionals with medicine, tubes and equipment couldn’t save her. In spite of many efforts, she still died.

Afterward, a Bible verse came to mind. “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Growing up in the Midwest, I know what cold weather feels like. And this verse reminds me of how you can see your breath when it’s sub-zero outside.Your breath appears, but only for a moment, and then it’s gone. Is that what life is? Just a breath, a vapor, a momentary mist?

That was the day I seriously started thinking about becoming a pastor. It occurred to me that my greatest problem was not that I had a job I didn’t like or that school was stressing me out. Not even that my parents didn’t understand me or that our home life was less than perfect. Death. That was the biggest problem I had to face, the biggest fear I had to overcome. And though I wasn’t exactly sure how, I knew that preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments could really help me.

Oh, I’d seen dead people before. A couple of my grandparents and other relatives had died by then. But it’s different in the funeral parlor. They are dressed up and have makeup on that makes them look a lot rosier than they did in the hospital the week before. In the funeral parlor, you have flowers and pink lights next to the coffin and soft soothing music. But lying on the floor in dining room number five, next to the salad bar, is something entirely different. That’s death without its makeup on, and it wasn’t pretty.

The world knows that death is wrong, but doesn’t know what to do about it. One way the world faces the grim reaper is with denial. If you just put your head in the sand, it’s not there. Right? So we get face-lifts to hide the fact that we age. We live recklessly. We put fingernail polish on corpses. All because we can’t or won’t look at the scary reality that everyone is going to die. Sometimes we even make up strange and ridiculous theories about ghosts, communicating with the dead, or reincarnation. But those are nothing but fantasy.The reality is that all of us die -- and it’s final.

Why do we die? The world answers that question one way. The Bible another. The world says that we die because death is just natural.You’re born, you mature, you die. The Bible says that God created Adam in His image and likeness, and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. Life comes from God. So where does death come from? St. Paul tells us, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they brought a death sentence upon themselves, and all people. “The many died by the trespass of the one man” (Romans 5:15).

The woman in the restaurant didn’t die in the middle of her birthday party because she was a nastier person than you or me. She didn’t collapse, stop breathing, and suffer cardiac arrest because that’s just the way things are. She died because she inherited Adam’s death sentence. And the same is true for all of us.

Being a pastor can’t keep people from dying. Or can it? Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Maybe the ministry of preaching and administering the sacraments can cure death. Jesus came to rescue us from the grim reaper. He came to do battle with death and kill it. And that is exactly what He does on Good Friday and Easter, with the cross and the empty tomb. St. Paul says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26).

By dying, Jesus breaks the power that death has over us. Everything that Jesus touched became something different. Water turned into wine. Broken bodies became whole. By touching the grave, Jesus changed death too. And by our baptism into Jesus, we become conquerors with Him. What can be said of Him, can also be said of us. His Easter victory is given to us. When we stop breathing one day, death won’t be a defeat, but a means for God to glorify us as He glorified His eternal Son, Jesus Christ.

The Rev. Scott Stiegemeyer is pastor at Concordia Lutheran Church in Brentwood, Pennsylvania. He is the secretary of Higher Things.