Life is in asking1Compare E Spenser Poem 24. 2 Not life is asking… but in asking: life is much more than the quest for identity and the quest for identity is not as important or central as we often make it. That is what the Word tells us at the end – and earlier if we listen. But all life is ‘in asking’: this question voices itself again and again in joy and sorrow, work and rest, solitude and company, in past, present and future. And it is not to be put down and ignored, just because it is a self-important question, unafraid about intruding itself everywhere and demanding to be answered. It is like Cyrus, a servant of the Lord. It does not exist for its own glory, but its bustling about being great will serve God’s purpose. It is inherent in self-aware beings, in persons, whom God wills and creates. This self-awareness is the condition of the discovery of God and the relation with God, in which God is imaged and befriended: it is the created basis.
That it is only a servant of the Lord is evident in that it is and can be no more than a question. It is not an I AM, not an assured self-presentation, resting on a self-possession. There is an implicit acknowledgement of finitude, precariousness, givenness in mortality, in its being no more than a question. ‘You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they rest in You’.
The child asks Who am I? Asking, playing with answers, is essential for growth as persons. And it never ceases.
Who am I?3Compare D Bonhoeffer’s poem, Who am I? in Letters and Papers from Prison. Incomparable, but a debt to be gratefully acknowledged.
Death turns the question to
Who was he?4It is always death when our asking Who am I? – or Who are we? which is a form of the question, omitted in the poem so as not to confuse its space that depends on succinct selection but is nevertheless properly implied in it, inviting further reflection – is cut off, and the question is turned into Who is he or she? It happens in life: death does not rely solely on the past tense, but kills by asking, Who is he? instead of respecting and listening to (and sharing in the other’s) Who am I?
Does he take sugar? – a classic question which disables people, by-passing them, counting them as dead even while they live.
The question Who is/was he/she/they? is not always or essentially wrong. Indeed, it is necessary and useful in many contexts, scientific and relational. It belongs in a different territory from the question, Who am I? It is only wrong when it invades the other’s territory, occupying it.
Death stops the person asking, Who am I? just as it stops him doing or being anything for and in himself, with his bodily temporal self-awareness. Others have to dispose of the body, the relics, and that includes the self, which fades until is purely historical. The question, Who was he? is like the coffin decently confining the body, doing with it the best that we can do, given that the spirit, the breath of life, has departed.
The changing of the question marks the line between living and being dead.
Memorials answer for
a moment5Those who shared in the life, shared in the asking and the answering of the question, Who am I? but when death comes, they are bereaved. They are left to remember and seek to memorialise. Many contemplating their coming demise long for a lasting memorial, a name that will never die. But in ordinary human society, even a fame lasting for centuries is given to very few: most fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day. Memorials do not shield us from the reality of death, which is disappearance and oblivion. It comes quickly for most, a little more slowly for just a few, that the world goes on as though we had never been. Our children, some grandchildren, an occasional pupil, may remember while they have life, for who we are is involved in their living, their asking, Who am I? But they too will pass away. (Why is there a prejudice now against talking of dying as passing away? It is commonly thought to be an evasive euphemism, and probably with too much of a touch of outdated piety. But it is a term which captures something of what is deadly in death – the passing away, going beyond reach and beyond return.)
Memorialising, in services, in stones, is as right as it is inevitable. It is necessary to help to keep human life human. But it suffices only for a moment. It does not abolish death or arm us against it, as though it cannot touch us. The promise of eternal life as in the Gospel is not realised in our being remembered by loving ones who hold on to our memory. For their remembering too is mortal, it is for a moment.
This ‘for a moment’ is deliberately ambiguous: the memorial lasts only a moment, in the timescales of human history or of the Universe; but the memorial answers for the moment of the dead person’s being. For our lives, even if we live to be a hundred, are but a moment, a little day. Memorials atpt to answer for that moment. That is their dignity and human service.
Then silence6So it soon comes to silence. We go down into sheol, into Hades, where none can praise God.
Compare the arguments about the reading of Heb. 2.9: did Jesus taste death for everyone by the grace of God or without God? And if without God, is that a reference to the Psalms, so that death is really where God is not praised?
If we make our bed in Hades, is God there? Or are we cut off from God?
From our point of view, it is reasonable to think, we are cut off. God is silenced in this silence.
Here is the central issue of Christian faith: God and death.
God has not abolished death. Indeed, God gives and takes away: we have to reckon with God creating death. If we understand creation as God’s willing and creating this world then we cannot simply say that God never willed death or that there was ever a creation of the sort we are in which could do without death. Dying is as natural as being born. The creation is not composed of immortal beings.
I do not want a doctrine of creation which flies in the face of the obvious. It is silly enough to champion seven day creationism against evolutionary understanding, but it is even more silly to insist on creation as without death until human beings sinned. For the former does depend on massive modern scientific investigation and synthesis, whereas the latter is obvious to any ordinary person who is not trying to be an ostrich.
So we have to take death seriously, theologically and experientially – and those two walk together.
It is not just that human beings die and we together have to cope with death as a human social and cultural reality: it is that God is there too.
The silence that death brings may be the silence where God is and so may be the silence that silences God.
Silence
Where God is?
Where God is silenced?
Or where the Word calls
what is not
to be beyond question
Friend?
Notes
- 1Compare E Spenser Poem 24.
- 2Not life is asking… but in asking: life is much more than the quest for identity and the quest for identity is not as important or central as we often make it. That is what the Word tells us at the end – and earlier if we listen. But all life is ‘in asking’: this question voices itself again and again in joy and sorrow, work and rest, solitude and company, in past, present and future. And it is not to be put down and ignored, just because it is a self-important question, unafraid about intruding itself everywhere and demanding to be answered. It is like Cyrus, a servant of the Lord. It does not exist for its own glory, but its bustling about being great will serve God’s purpose. It is inherent in self-aware beings, in persons, whom God wills and creates. This self-awareness is the condition of the discovery of God and the relation with God, in which God is imaged and befriended: it is the created basis.
That it is only a servant of the Lord is evident in that it is and can be no more than a question. It is not an I AM, not an assured self-presentation, resting on a self-possession. There is an implicit acknowledgement of finitude, precariousness, givenness in mortality, in its being no more than a question. ‘You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they rest in You’.
The child asks Who am I? Asking, playing with answers, is essential for growth as persons. And it never ceases. - 3Compare D Bonhoeffer’s poem, Who am I? in Letters and Papers from Prison. Incomparable, but a debt to be gratefully acknowledged.
- 4It is always death when our asking Who am I? – or Who are we? which is a form of the question, omitted in the poem so as not to confuse its space that depends on succinct selection but is nevertheless properly implied in it, inviting further reflection – is cut off, and the question is turned into Who is he or she? It happens in life: death does not rely solely on the past tense, but kills by asking, Who is he? instead of respecting and listening to (and sharing in the other’s) Who am I?
Does he take sugar? – a classic question which disables people, by-passing them, counting them as dead even while they live.
The question Who is/was he/she/they? is not always or essentially wrong. Indeed, it is necessary and useful in many contexts, scientific and relational. It belongs in a different territory from the question, Who am I? It is only wrong when it invades the other’s territory, occupying it.
Death stops the person asking, Who am I? just as it stops him doing or being anything for and in himself, with his bodily temporal self-awareness. Others have to dispose of the body, the relics, and that includes the self, which fades until is purely historical. The question, Who was he? is like the coffin decently confining the body, doing with it the best that we can do, given that the spirit, the breath of life, has departed.
The changing of the question marks the line between living and being dead. - 5Those who shared in the life, shared in the asking and the answering of the question, Who am I? but when death comes, they are bereaved. They are left to remember and seek to memorialise. Many contemplating their coming demise long for a lasting memorial, a name that will never die. But in ordinary human society, even a fame lasting for centuries is given to very few: most fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day. Memorials do not shield us from the reality of death, which is disappearance and oblivion. It comes quickly for most, a little more slowly for just a few, that the world goes on as though we had never been. Our children, some grandchildren, an occasional pupil, may remember while they have life, for who we are is involved in their living, their asking, Who am I? But they too will pass away. (Why is there a prejudice now against talking of dying as passing away? It is commonly thought to be an evasive euphemism, and probably with too much of a touch of outdated piety. But it is a term which captures something of what is deadly in death – the passing away, going beyond reach and beyond return.)
Memorialising, in services, in stones, is as right as it is inevitable. It is necessary to help to keep human life human. But it suffices only for a moment. It does not abolish death or arm us against it, as though it cannot touch us. The promise of eternal life as in the Gospel is not realised in our being remembered by loving ones who hold on to our memory. For their remembering too is mortal, it is for a moment.
This ‘for a moment’ is deliberately ambiguous: the memorial lasts only a moment, in the timescales of human history or of the Universe; but the memorial answers for the moment of the dead person’s being. For our lives, even if we live to be a hundred, are but a moment, a little day. Memorials atpt to answer for that moment. That is their dignity and human service. - 6So it soon comes to silence. We go down into sheol, into Hades, where none can praise God.
Compare the arguments about the reading of Heb. 2.9: did Jesus taste death for everyone by the grace of God or without God? And if without God, is that a reference to the Psalms, so that death is really where God is not praised?
If we make our bed in Hades, is God there? Or are we cut off from God?
From our point of view, it is reasonable to think, we are cut off. God is silenced in this silence.
Here is the central issue of Christian faith: God and death.
God has not abolished death. Indeed, God gives and takes away: we have to reckon with God creating death. If we understand creation as God’s willing and creating this world then we cannot simply say that God never willed death or that there was ever a creation of the sort we are in which could do without death. Dying is as natural as being born. The creation is not composed of immortal beings.
I do not want a doctrine of creation which flies in the face of the obvious. It is silly enough to champion seven day creationism against evolutionary understanding, but it is even more silly to insist on creation as without death until human beings sinned. For the former does depend on massive modern scientific investigation and synthesis, whereas the latter is obvious to any ordinary person who is not trying to be an ostrich.
So we have to take death seriously, theologically and experientially – and those two walk together.
It is not just that human beings die and we together have to cope with death as a human social and cultural reality: it is that God is there too.
The silence that death brings may be the silence where God is and so may be the silence that silences God.