Death is our Enemy

Death is our Enemy 

      I was recently watching an interview with Ben Sasse.  Ben served as the Senator of Nebraska for eight years until leaving to become the President of the University of Florida.  His tenure was shortened because of a health issue that his wife was suffering.  Last year he heard the devastating news that he had cancer.  Not just any cancer, but pancreatic cancer that had spread to multiple areas of his body.  It was an advanced, aggressive stage four cancer.  In his own words he described his cancer diagnosis as a death sentence.  At best his doctors gave him a few short months to live.  Since then he has thrown everything he has at the cancer, even trying experimental treatments that have created open sores on his face.  This father of three is facing a reality that none of us want to face, the reality of death.  This is what Sasse said during his most recent interview: “Death is terrible. We should never sugarcoat it. It is not how things are meant to be. But it is great that death can be called the final enemy. It’s an enemy — but a final enemy — and then there will be no more tears.”   He described it as an enemy.  My heart raced when I heard that word.  It brought me back to sterile hospital rooms watching Tiffanie wage war against a disease that was killing her.  I hated cancer.  Hate cancer still.  I hate death.  Death is no friend to me, it is my foe.  I never have hated something more in my life then death.  Death is not gentle. It is not kind. It is not some poetic friend that walks us home.  Death is an enemy, one in which I do not plan on making peace with anytime soon.  I admire Sass because of his warrior spirit.  He faces a foe that physically will indeed take him, but spiritually, that long, daunting foe has already been defeated.  

      Each of us know that death exists.  It's one of two inevitable things, the other being taxes.  People that haven't teen touched by the cold hang of death try to soften the blow.  They try to make it into a manageable monster that doesn't seem as bad at it is.  People told me things like “She’s in a better place.” “It was her time.” “God needed another angel.” I understand the heart behind those words, but if I’m being honest, they never sat right with me.  They wanted to soften a blow that had already struck and broke my heart.  Why didn't it sit right with me?  Because I watched death's long, cold arm take my first wife.  I watched it steal breath from lungs that once laughed and sang glory to God. I watched it silence a voice that filled our home. I watched it take a future we were still building. There is nothing about that which feels natural or right.

      Death doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t negotiate. It invades. There’s a moment after loss where everything feels upside down. You wake up, and for a split second, you forget. Then it hits you all over again. The absence. The quiet. The weight of what will never be the same.  That’s when you realize something deep in your soul already knows the truth:  We were never created for this.  There’s a reason death feels so wrong. It’s because it is.  God created man to be in perfect union with Him.  God, in His foreknowledge knew that man would sin and that death would come to the world, but nonetheless when God created man He did not create Him with an innate understanding of death.  It was foreign to those that were to enjoin unending union with God.  That is why death stings.  Death also stings because it doesn't just affect the heart, but the soul.  Psalm 34:18 talks about a crushed spirit, or a broken soul.  Death hurts the inner man, the eternal part of us.

      Scripture calls death an enemy, and I’ve come to appreciate that honesty. It doesn’t dress it up. It doesn’t pretend it’s part of some beautiful cycle. It names it for what it is, a thief, a destroyer, an intruder into God’s good creation.  We accept death as a reality, but we aren't to become accepting of it.  Death is still my enemy, I hate it with ferocity.

      But that’s not the end of the story.  Because if death is an enemy, then it has a victor.  Read that again.  An enemy demands a hero, a conqueror.  That is where the reality of Jesus strikes in a unique way.  See, Jesus didn’t come to make peace with death. He came to defeat it.  Again, read that.  Jesus didn't come to compromise or negotiate with death.  He came to destroy it, to break the chains that it holds on people.  And beloved, He did it in the most unexpected way, by walking straight into it.  The cross looked like defeat, the world still describes it as foolishness. It looked like death had won again. Another life taken. Another story ended.  That is until three days later; everything changed.

      The grave couldn’t hold Him.  That matters more to me now than it ever did before.  Because when you’ve stood face to face with death, when you’ve felt its sting personally, you don’t need clichés or platitudes. You need hope that can hold up under real weight.  And the resurrection alone does.  It doesn’t erase the pain. I still feel the loss. I still have days where grief shows up uninvited and hits me in the belly again. I still wish things had gone differently.  But I no longer believe death gets the final word.  Christ does.  I remember standing at Tiff's funeral talking to death.  I told death that it did what it was designed to do.  It came to hurt and separate, but death lied.  Death sold itself short, but death was not the final story of Tiffanie Robinson's life.  Jesus was.  Tiffanie won't be remembered for cancer or dying at 37 years old.  She will be remembered for her faith in Christ alone.

      That means my wife’s story didn’t end in that hospital room. It didn’t end at the graveside. It didn’t end in the silence that followed.  It means death took something from me, but it brought her home to heaven with Jesus.  Death hurt me, still does, but it didn’t win.  One day, because of Jesus, death itself will be undone. The enemy will fall. What was stolen will be restored. What was broken will be made whole.  And I’ll see her again.

      Until then, I don’t pretend death is anything less than what it is. I don’t sanitize it, make it clean, try to rationalize it away. I don’t make peace with it.  I call it what it is, an enemy.  But I also remember this: It’s a defeated one.  And because it is defeated my heart beat is to tell the world about the hope that Jesus alone can give.