A friend died last Sunday. He died of a brain aneurism at 31 years old, in bed, at home, without warning and without the possibility of saving his life. Now, there are lots of ways to try to make sense out of this and many people will try in the coming days, weeks, months and years. There's also a lot that will be said about his death and about him and about the memories of him.
But almost none of that matters as much as the fact that in the wake of his death stand his two year old daughter and his wife and his family and his friends. Real tragedy, in my experience, is almost always compound. The collective elements that lead us to the experience of real tragedy are compound in nature.
So, rather than simply a death, we deal with the loss and the grief and the anger and the pain of family and friends who mourn the one who has died. And to compound the tragedy even more my friend was a young man, barely at the beginning of his adult life, with so much life left to live. There are, presumably, other elements that have compounded in his death; they are elements of which I may never get the privilege to know. These could be elements of anger, relief, frustration, sadness, etc. that his parents, his wife, his siblings, his friends, his coworkers or any number of people might conjure up as the memory of my friend swirls through their minds and hearts.
But the one element that swirls through my mind like the chaotic wind brooding over the waters of creation is my friend's daughter and her life now and in the future. I imagine her wondering where daddy is, wanting daddy to play with, wanting daddy to hold her when she has a bad dream, wanting daddy to be there when she is bullied on the playground at school, wanting daddy to be there at her graduation from high-school, wanting daddy to walk her down the aisle when she gets married, wanting daddy to hold his first grandchild. The list goes on and on and on in my mind.
And then the list gets translated to my own life and to my own children. What if I died? How would my daughter and son respond? No doubt, they would have the same wants as I imagine the daughter of my friend having. And then my heart breaks at the thought of it all.
Of course, this is one of the devil's favorite playgrounds. Just when my heart breaks, the devil makes me wonder if God has a hand in any of it. The devil makes me wonder if God can do anything about it. The devil makes me wonder if God would ever look out for my family if I died.
As I stood next to the casket of my friend last night, looking at his wax like body and praying to God for his family, especially his wife and daughter, the devil stood next to me, whispering in my ear his tempting thoughts of God's work in the middle of it all.
But, thank God, there was a Word more powerful stirring in those turbulent winds of my mind. It was this Sunday's gospel lesson. It was the image of Jesus lifting up and healing Simon's mother-in-law as she was sick in bed with a fever. And it was the image of Jesus standing at the doorstep of her house healing, casting out demons and proclaiming his message of salvation and freedom through his death and resurrection. Jesus was there, casting out the demon that was standing next to me, whispering in my ear that God had everything and nothing to do with the death of my friend and the loss and grief of his family.
And, I suppose, this is what baptism is for. After all, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, he destroyed the power of sin, death and the devil for each one of us. In baptism, each one of us dies with Christ and is raised to this new life, free from the power of sin, death and the devil. We have this Word of God, healing and casting out the demons in our lives. We have this Word of God so at the times of our lives that we are standing next to the casket of a friend and the compound tragedy of death is swirling in our minds, we can know that we have already died in the waters of baptism and we have already been raised to new life. So now we live in two kingdoms: the kingdom of the world where the devil tries to whisper devastating thoughts about life in this old world, and the kingdom of God where Jesus Christ reigns and tells the devil to get out, to go back to where he belongs, because he has no authority here.
This is probably why Martin Luther called baptism an exorcism and even included in his baptismal booklet the rite of exorcism from the Roman Catholic Church. In baptism, Jesus Christ has cast out the devil, together with all his empty promises, and comes with his full and life-giving promises of life and life eternal through the power of the Holy Spirit. God has given us the ministry of healing and casting out the demons of sin, death and the devil in baptism. And this is for each one of us.
So, dealing with the devil is not much of problem now, as God's Word has vanquished the power of sin, death and the devil. As those chaotic thoughts swirl, a stable Word enters into my mind and tells the devil to go back where he belongs.
While I am still sad about the death of my friend, and about all those elements that compound in his death to make it a real tragedy, I cannot and will not be bothered by the devil's tricks. He was a good dad, a good husband, a good friend. May God continue to watch over his wife and daughter and all of us who mourn his death.
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