James T. Cleland - "Some Reflection on Death" (November 10, 1963)

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	(piano music begins)	0:19
-	Let us pray.	0:41
	Let the words of my mouth	0:44
	and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable	0:47
	in thy sight,	0:51
	oh Lord, our strength and our Redeemer.	0:53
	Amen.	0:58
	We have heard over and over again	1:08
	the axiomatic sentence,	1:13
	never underestimate the power of a woman.	1:17
	The fair sex is the efficacious sex	1:25
	because it is the tough sex.	1:32
	Now in recent weeks,	1:36
	the truth of the slogan has once more been driven home	1:37
	to us.	1:41
	Two women have written books on the same subject	1:44
	and hysteria	1:49
	has threatened to grasp one section of the business world.	1:51
	Ruth Mulvey Harmer wrote "The High Cost of Dying"	1:58
	and Jessica Mitford,	2:05
	(clears throat)	2:07
	a Britisher, penned "The American Way of Death".	2:08
	The morticians response	2:15
	has included such adjectives as communist	2:17
	(clears throat)	2:23
	(crowd laughs)	2:24
	and anti Christian.	2:25
	It has been quite a, "How do you do,"	2:29
	and, "The end is not yet",	2:31
	but one good may result from the scrabble.	2:35
	We are being forced willy-nilly	2:40
	to look seriously at the whole question of death	2:44
	around which have grown up both a conspiracy of silence	2:50
	and an atmosphere of unreality.	2:57
	So this morning,	3:03
	let us reflect on the matter of death	3:04
	as inquiring Christians	3:10
	rather than as annoyed, potential customers.	3:13
	It has been said that there are only two certain facts	3:20
	in life,	3:23
	(clears throat)	3:24
	death and taxes.	3:25
	Now this is not entirely true.	3:28
	One may dodge taxes by going to jail,	3:32
	but even in prison, one will die.	3:38
	Death is an ineluctable fact,	3:44
	inevitable, irresistible.	3:48
	It is just there.	3:52
	It hunts man	3:56
	because it is inescapable.	3:58
	Ecclesiastes, the Jewish teacher, knew that	4:02
	when he wrote,	4:06
	as we heard in the first part of the morning lesson,	4:08
	"For the fate of the sons of men	4:12
	and the fate of beasts is the same.	4:15
	As one dies, so dies the other.	4:21
	They have all the same breath,	4:27
	and man has no advantage over the beast	4:31
	for all is vanity.	4:37
	All go to one place.	4:41
	All are from the dust and all return to dust again."	4:44
	As someone has said,	4:52
	life is a pilgrimage between two dusts.	4:53
	Death is an ineluctable fact.	5:00
	There's an Arabian proverb	5:04
	which agrees with this point of view,	5:06
	death is a black camel,	5:09
	which kneels at the gate of all.	5:14
	Death is a black camel,	5:18
	which kneels at the gate of all.	5:22
	It cannot be dodged or sidestepped.	5:25
	It keeps coming.	5:29
	Do you remember the story of the gardener in ancient Persia,	5:32
	who in fear and trembling besought his prince for a horse	5:37
	that he might ride posthaste to Samarra.	5:45
	Prince asked the gardener, "Why?"	5:51
	In distraught, he answered,	5:54
	"I saw a death behind a bush in the garden.	5:57
	I must escape from here."	6:03
	The prince granted the request,	6:07
	saw the gardener mounted for Samarra	6:11
	and then went looking for death.	6:15
	Coming upon him,	6:19
	or is death a her?	6:23
	Never underestimate the power of a woman.	6:28
	(crowd laughs)	6:31
	Well, coming up on it,	6:33
	the prince asked, "Why did you frighten my gardener?"	6:38
	Death replied,	6:43
	"I did not mean to frighten him.	6:44
	I was somewhat surprised to see him here.	6:49
	You see,	6:54
	I have an appointment with him tonight in Somarra."	6:55
	Both will keep the appointment in Somarra.	7:03
	Do you recall the ending of Ruark's captivating book,	7:10
	"The Old Man and the Boy"?	7:14
	The old man has a terminal cancer.	7:18
	He breaks the news to the boy,	7:22
	"I ain't going to tell you that I'm gonna die.	7:27
	You would know it.	7:31
	You've had the best of me,	7:34
	and you're on your own from now on.	7:36
	I raised you as best I could,	7:41
	and now you are the old man because I'm tired	7:46
	and I think I'll leave."	7:53
	The boys eyes blurted into tears,	7:56
	and he said all the things that young people say	8:00
	in the presence of death.	8:02
	"Leave it,	8:05
	leave it," the old man said.	8:06
	"Like I always told you, if there was a way to beat it,	8:10
	I would have heard about it.	8:15
	It'll even happen to you unlikely as it seems."	8:19
	Yes, we better accept the fact of death,	8:26
	it'll even happen to us.	8:30
	And the old Negro to put it,	8:35
	"It's wise to cooperate with the inevitable."	8:37
	That's why Richard Baxter advised the minister	8:44
	to preach as a dying man to dying men.	8:49
	Well, granted the fact of death,	8:58
	what are we gonna do with it?	9:03
	Well, from one angle, nothing.	9:05
	It's gonna do something with us.	9:10
	But as reasonable creatures,	9:14
	it would be well for us to reflect	9:15
	on how we should look at death,	9:18
	to discover if we can make any sense out of it.	9:21
	Here are three ways of interpreting the fact of death,	9:25
	each worth a second glance.	9:29
	There is first the naturalistic approach.	9:34
	From the point of view of the biologist in his lab,	9:38
	death may be no more than one phase	9:43
	in the rhythm of organic existence.	9:48
	It is one fact among many to be recognized and accepted.	9:52
	It is a given.	10:00
	The biologist may approvingly echo Ecclesiastes,	10:03
	"For the fate of the sons of men	10:08
	and the fate of beasts is the same.	10:11
	As one dies, so dies the other."	10:15
	And that is that.	10:20
	But I sometimes wonder	10:24
	about the biologist's scientific objectivity	10:25
	when he has locked the laboratory	10:30
	and is sitting at home,	10:34
	reflecting on his own death.	10:37
	Does death take on a new significance	10:41
	when it's in terms of his death?	10:44
	T.H. Huxley defined life as complete correspondence	10:49
	with one's total environment.	10:56
	Life is complete correspondence	10:59
	with one's total environment.	11:02
	He defined death as the opposite of life.	11:06
	Does the approach of death cast any shadow	11:12
	on the biologist's life?	11:14
	Does it make him ask questions about the finality of death	11:18
	so that he becomes a philosopher as well as a scientist?	11:22
	Then second,	11:30
	there is the Old Testament outlook on death	11:31
	with scarcely a word,	11:35
	perhaps three references,	11:38
	more likely just one,	11:41
	scarcely a word	11:44
	about the possibility of any significant continuance of life	11:46
	after a man has returned to the dust.	11:52
	You see the death of the individual	11:56
	was hardly a pressing problem for the Hebrew	11:59
	because the unit of life were the family,	12:05
	the tribe, the nation,	12:10
	not the individual.	12:13
	What the Old Testament worried about	12:17
	was the inability to have children,	12:19
	the fear that the race might be snuffed out.	12:23
	Faith in a real life after death	12:29
	was no part of Jewish orthodoxy even in the time of Jesus.	12:33
	That can be seen in the case of the Sadducees,	12:40
	the controllers of the temple in Jerusalem	12:45
	who denied the resurrection of the body,	12:49
	that is, they denied life for the individual	12:52
	after the grave.	12:57
	As long as mankind continued,	12:59
	it was not of ultimate importance	13:03
	what happened to a man or to a woman.	13:06
	For the individual,	13:11
	there was no hereafter in any real sense.	13:12
	Now over against the naturalistic and Old Testament views,	13:19
	the New Testament position stands in stark contrast,	13:24
	there is complete confidence	13:30
	that there is a life for a man, for a woman	13:33
	beyond the grave.	13:40
	Now there were various reasons for this belief.	13:42
	Let's just mentioned two.	13:45
	One was the expanding concept of God.	13:48
	He grew in men's minds	13:54
	from being the tribal God first of the Canaanites,	13:58
	then of the Israelites	14:03
	to being the creator and sustainer of all men and nations.	14:07
	It's a kind of horizontal omnipotence and omnipresence.	14:15
	Similarly,	14:23
	he grew vertically,	14:23
	and finally he penetrated Sheol, S-H-E-O-L,	14:27
	Sheol, the abode of the dead.	14:34
	If God were in Sheol, then the dead were no longer dead	14:39
	but still alive in the presence of Him who was life itself.	14:47
	God extended His sovereignty to the netherworld	14:55
	and the Pharisees who controlled the synagogues	15:01
	outside of Jerusalem	15:06
	believed this	15:09
	and do not forget that they were Jesus' teachers	15:11
	when he was a boy.	15:17
	Tennyson expressed this view,	15:21
	though he expressed it with some tentativeness	15:23
	in "In Memoriam",	15:27
	part of which we sang this morning as the first hymn.	15:28
	Look at that second verse.	15:32
	"Thou will not leave us in the dust.	15:37
	Thou madest man,	15:43
	he knows not why.	15:46
	He thinks he was not made to die	15:51
	and thou has made him.	15:56
	Thou art	16:00
	just the goodness of the omnipotent, omnipresent God."	16:02
	The other reason for belief in an afterlife	16:12
	was the Easter faith	16:18
	in the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.	16:20
	This is the pivot	16:23
	around which the New Testament confidence revolved.	16:25
	Paul has given this classical exposition	16:30
	in the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians,	16:35
	part of which was read in the scripture lesson.	16:40
	The triumphal verse is 26,	16:43
	"The last enemy to be destroyed is death."	16:48
	Death was defeated when God raised Jesus	16:56
	from the dead.	17:02
	And Paul is confident that this victory	17:04
	extends to the Christian.	17:07
	He will die,	17:11
	oh, he knows that he will die,	17:12
	but he will not stay dead.	17:14
	Therefore, as Paul himself put it,	17:18
	the sting of death is removed, not the fact of death,	17:20
	but the sting of death is removed	17:25
	because the fear of personal annihilation has been overcome.	17:28
	That's why Donne could write in one of his sonnets,	17:34
	"Death, be not proud	17:39
	though some have called thee mighty and dreadful,	17:45
	for thou art not so,	17:51
	for those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow die not,	17:55
	poor Death."	18:04
	Donne pinpoints the Christian hope in two words,	18:08
	poor Death.	18:13
	Now what is the consequence of these interpretations,	18:18
	the naturalistic view,	18:20
	the Old Testament group solidarity angle	18:23
	and the Christian faith.	18:27
	Let's look at each.	18:29
	The naturalistic view has no single emphasis.	18:32
	For some, a sense of futility is dominant.	18:37
	Ernie Pyle, the distinguished World War II reporter,	18:45
	wrote this on hearing of the death of his mother.	18:51
	"It seems to me that life is futile,	18:55
	and death, the final indignity.	18:59
	People live and suffer	19:04
	and grow bent with yearning	19:09
	bowed with disappointment,	19:12
	and then they die.	19:15
	And what is it all for?	19:20
	I do not know."	19:23
	Ecclesiastes understood what Ernie Pyle was saying	19:27
	and agreed,	19:31
	"Vanity of vanities,	19:32
	all is vanity."	19:37
	That's the refrain of his book.	19:39
	But for others,	19:43
	there may be resignation rather than futility.	19:44
	This is the hallmark of the composed faithlist	19:48
	who accepts the inevitable,"	19:52
	There is a bullet with my number on it."	19:55
	There's a front bumper on a car	20:03
	with my name on it, S Mahnish Sanferiana.	20:07
	What the hell, spoken as one word.	20:19
	There may even be satisfaction that death comes.	20:26
	In a volume entitled "The Doctor and the Soul".	20:31
	Viktor Frankl stresses and restresses the view	20:34
	that it is death which gives meaning to life,	20:38
	death which gives meaning to life.	20:45
	Let me quote,	20:47
	"For what would our lives be like	20:49
	if they were not finite in time but infinite?	20:51
	If were immortal,	20:58
	we could legitimately postpone every action forever.	21:00
	It would be of no consequence	21:07
	whether or not we did a thing now,	21:09
	every act might just as well be done tomorrow	21:11
	or the day after or a year from now or 10 years hence,	21:14
	but in the face of death as absolute finis to our future	21:21
	and boundary to our possibilities,	21:30
	we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes	21:33
	to the utmost."	21:38
	Now, personally, I disagree with him	21:41
	even from the naturalist point of view.	21:42
	I mean, I think there's something to be said	21:44
	for loafing rather than working under this angle.	21:46
	But nevertheless,	21:50
	he holds that it's death which gives meaning to life.	21:51
	And of course, Hans Zinsser, the Harvard scientist	21:58
	was the poet laureate of the naturalistic view,	22:05
	which finds satisfaction, even positive joy,	22:10
	in death.	22:15
	Realizing that he had but a few more months to live,	22:16
	he wrote his gladness into his sonnets.	22:21
	"Now death is merciful	22:24
	he calls me hence Gently,	22:28
	with friendly soothing of my fears of ugly age	22:32
	and feeble impotence	22:36
	and cruel disintegration of slow years.	22:39
	And another sonnet,	22:45
	"How good that ere the winter comes,	22:46
	I die."	22:51
	I don't wanna us forget	22:54
	that some of our fellows in the university say,	22:55
	"Amen, okay,"	22:59
	to this naturalistic view.	23:03
	The Old Testament group solidarity interpretation	23:07
	is not without its devotees in our times.	23:11
	There are our folk who think more of family	23:15
	and race and nation than they do have their own lives.	23:19
	The cause is the thing,	23:26
	be the cause, the nation	23:30
	or the race.	23:32
	Listen to Rupert Brooke,	23:35
	the young poet of the first World War in his sonnet,	23:36
	"The Soldier".	23:39
	"If I should die,	23:41
	think only this of me	23:44
	that there's some corner of a foreign field	23:48
	that is forever England.	23:53
	There shall be in that a rich dust a richer dust concealed,	23:57
	a dust whom England bore."	24:04
	It's ironic that he was buried in Greece	24:11
	as if England or Scotland or the United States	24:17
	could enrich Hellenic dust.	24:24
	Yes, the Old Testament view is still with us.	24:28
	Nationalism, racism depends upon it	24:32
	and men live and die with confidence in it,	24:36
	loyalty to it and even with joy.	24:40
	Now, the Christian,	24:48
	primarily, because he believes in the fact	24:51
	and the festival of Easter	24:54
	takes his stand against both of these views.	24:57
	The individual is important.	25:02
	He is important to God and under God.	25:07
	God is a God who cares for man.	25:15
	He is our father.	25:20
	Therefore, the Christian believes	25:22
	that he as he goes on through death,	25:24
	beyond death to continued life with God,	25:29
	as was said, death is till a fact,	25:33
	but it is not the ultimate fact.	25:37
	Its sting has been withdrawn	25:39
	because of the promise in Christ resurrection.	25:42
	Therefore, a Christian has learned how to die.	25:46
	In fact, he may even look on death as a friend	25:51
	rather than as the last enemy.	25:58
	St. Francis of Assisi caught that	26:02
	in the song of the "Creatures".	26:05
	After praising the Lord God for the sun	26:07
	and the stars and the winds and the clouds,	26:11
	he added this line of gratitude,	26:15
	"Praised be our Lord for our sister,	26:18
	the death of the body from which no man escapeth.	26:24
	Praised be our Lord for our sister,	26:32
	the death of the body from which no man escapeth."	26:35
	He accepted death.	26:39
	He had better,	26:43
	but rooted and grounded in the Christian faith,	26:45
	he interpreted it in the light of the New Testament	26:50
	and called death our sister.	26:53
	Now there are many questions	26:58
	which cannot be dealt with in this sermon.	27:00
	"Ooh, the destination of the wicked," in quotes,	27:03
	"And the good," in quotes in an afterlife,	27:08
	the confidence of universalism	27:13
	that all will be saved,	27:15
	the meaning of the resurrection of the body	27:19
	as contrasted with the immortality of the soul,	27:22
	they offer other sermons.	27:28
	But you know, with Rudyard Kipling,	27:31
	I hope that there is time out	27:35
	(clears throat)	27:39
	between death and an awakening over there.	27:40
	Do you remember Kipling's lines,	27:45
	"When earth's picture is painted and the cubes are twisted	27:46
	and dried,	27:52
	when the oldest colors have faded	27:54
	and the youngest critic has died,"	27:59
	that's a good verse for university community,	28:02
	the youngest critic has died,	28:06
	"We shall rest	28:09
	and faith, we shall need it,	28:11
	lie down for an aeon or two,	28:15
	till the Master of All Good Workman	28:19
	shall put us to work anew."	28:21
	I like that idea of lying down for aeon or two	28:23
	several thousand years,	28:28
	"Cause I'd like to be somewhat rested and clear-eyed	28:31
	before I stand before my maker and my Redeemer."	28:34
	Now, those who believe the Christian view	28:40
	have the courage to live here	28:44
	and the confidence that all will be well.	28:47
	It takes none of the zest from the present,	28:50
	and it takes all of the fear out of death.	28:54
	John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir,	28:57
	the late Governor General of Canada	29:00
	ends one of his novels with these words,	29:04
	"There only remained the trivial business of dying."	29:09
	It's a 464 page novel,	29:18
	plenty happens	29:23
	and these are the last words,	29:25
	"There only remained the trivial business of dying."	29:26
	and that's a young man who's dying.	29:33
	Trivial it is because it is not final,	29:36
	but let me bring the matter closer home.	29:39
	Some years ago in Durham,	29:45
	I buried a lady of Scottish birth.	29:49
	I asked her husband, also a Scott,	29:54
	if his wife had died easily.	29:58
	He answered,	30:02
	"Jimmy," he's the only person on either side of the Atlantic	30:04
	who has ever called me Jimmy	30:09
	and he's never called me anything else.	30:12
	He said, "Jimmy, she died happy.	30:15
	She heard you preach over the radio in the morning,	30:21
	and she saw the Baltimore Colts when on television	30:25
	in the afternoon.	30:28
	(crowd laughs)	30:30
	And she passed away that evening."	30:32
	Now that is to greet the unseen with a cheer.	30:35
	This is more of unhappiness,	30:41
	this is blessedness,	30:42
	the blessedness of one to whom death came as a sister.	30:45
	She too was in terminal cancer,	30:53
	came as a sister and not as an enemy.	30:56
	She died in faith and within the faith.	30:59
	And as her husband said, she died easily.	31:04
	The faith of the church is centered on Easter	31:09
	because Easter, not Christmas,	31:15
	not Good Friday,	31:18
	Easter is the birthday of the Christian faith	31:21
	because of the resurrection.	31:28
	The first disciples found the assurance	31:31
	that Jesus the Christ under God is Lord,	31:34
	really Lord, even Lord over death.	31:42
	And He is our Lord.	31:49
	Therefore, brethren, be of good cheer.	31:55
	Amen.	32:03
	Let us pray.	32:05
	O God, support us all the day long of troublous life	32:11
	until the shadows lengthen	32:17
	and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed	32:20
	and the fever of life is over	32:27
	and our the work is done.	32:31
	And in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging	32:35
	and a holy rest and peace at the last	32:40
	through Jesus Christ our Lord	32:46
	and the peace of God, which passes all understanding,	32:49
	keep your hearts and minds and the knowledge	32:53
	and the love of God and of the Son Jesus Christ our Lord	32:56
	and the blessing of God Almighty,	33:00
	the Father,	33:03
	the Son,	33:04
	and the Holy Spirit be among you	33:05
	and remain with you always.	33:08
	(piano music begins)	33:12

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "Some Reflection on Death" (November 10, 1963)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4s75bm2p

Date:

November 10, 1963

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0246
ref5697_kta
uachapelsermaud
duke:628077
dcrau002251
ark:/87924/r4s75bm2p
bc5b83e0-93f1-457b-ac1c-f00fb4af0734

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James T. Cleland - "Some Reflection on Death" (November 10, 1963)

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1. James T. Cleland - "Some Reflections on Death" (November 10, 1963)

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James T. Cleland - "Some Reflection on Death" (November 10, 1963)

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