This is Christ the King Sermons. Christ the King Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh. Thanks be to God.

This is part four of a sermon series called "Facing Death by Faith," and we're talking about dying. This is really an important subject for all people, but particularly for our congregation. My hope is that in doing this series, you're able to process some of your grief for people who are important to you, who you love, that you've lost. I hope you're able to think about your own death and talk about it in ways that are helpful. And I hope that you're able to think about what it means to live as a mortal person and to number your days aright.

I know that this is a hard series. I've heard from many of you about personal losses during this time, diagnoses. So I want to take a moment to light a candle and remember those losses that we have faced within this congregation and within your families, and just take a moment to acknowledge that this is not a theoretical topic for anyone. So if you'll just give a moment of silence.

The Question of Where We Die

Does it matter where you die? I bet most of you have an opinion about that question. In fact, surveys say that over 80% of Americans say, "I want to die at home."

Which is kind of an odd thing. If you think about it—and I don't mean to be cheeky here—but dead bodies don't care where they are. What really distresses people is not the idea of being dead in a hospital or in hospice, but it's dying there. It's being in an unfamiliar place that's sterile and feels alien and foreign to you, surrounded by a team of anonymous people and machines. And that's what's frightening to us.

You know what's ironic, though? People of faith, Christians, are some of the least prepared people to die. Statistically, Christians are some of those who make the least amount of medical decisions about their future. We who know the resurrection have more medicalized interventions, more expensive and very invasive treatments, more efforts at resuscitation, take more toxic chemicals in our last weeks than anybody else. Isn't that odd?

What Home Means to Us

Why do we want to die at home? I think for most of us, home is like this constant ideal in a world that feels increasingly hostile. Home is the place where you have that plant or that chair, you have your stuff. It's the place where you both rejoice and the place where you can mourn in private. It's where your most authentic self is, in your house, at home. Home sort of embraces us. Home is the place where we can feel consolation. We can be our true self.

But isn't it interesting that increasingly, more and more of us don't have a place that we would say, "Sure, that's home." The average American lives around 11 times in their lifetime. Well, I don't know what you think of when you think of home. Some of us might think of my grandparents' house. Anybody got that one? Or your apartment? You might think of a vacation place you like to go to. We have lots of ideals of what home is, even though we're people who are very transient.

There's a philosopher, Martin Heidegger. He said this is his ideal of home—a traditional peasant farmhouse in the Black Forest. I don't know why he seized on that one, but that's home. And I think all of us have an idealized picture of home somewhere.

Fearing Dying, Not Death

I think all those concerns about home, all those concerns about where we die, really have to do with how we die. Who wants their last days filled with tubes and wires and things that beep, heavy medication?

We don't fear death. We fear dying poorly. Look at the questions, the losses. Am I going to lose my dignity? Am I going to lose my people? Am I going to be alone? Why die in a hospital room instead of in a bed? That's why we long to die at home.

And that's where Hebrews 11 is so important and helpful for us this morning. It's thinking about this idea of home. What if home was never really a place? But what if home is a promise? How do we get courage to make decisions about end of life? That's what I want us to think about today. How do we get courage to do that while we're still healthy?

Here's what Hebrews points us toward: the gospel doesn't promise us the death we want. I wish I could tell you it did. It doesn't promise us the death we want, but it promises us the home that we need and we long for. We can face death with courage, not because we can control all the elements of how we die, but because we know where we are going and who is with us.

And therefore, here's where I hope we can go today. I hope you can take courage to begin to plan ahead and think ahead.

Faith Means Living and Dying as a Stranger

I'm going to walk us through the points listed in your bulletin very quickly. First is this: faith means living and dying as a stranger.

You know, Abraham obeyed the voice of God. God said, "Go," and Abraham went. He got out and he went to a place that he was later to receive as an inheritance, but he never settled there. Do you notice this? He never settled there. He always lived in a tent. Anybody love camping? Anybody love camping forever? No. He lived in tents. He wandered. He never fully arrived. He never found the German farmhouse.

These people of faith acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on Earth. — Hebrews 11:13

Think about Abraham's journey. God says, "Get out." And Abraham says, "Where?" And God says, "I'll tell you later." God says, "I'm going to give you a baby," and Abraham looks over at his 90-year-old wife and says, "How?" And God says, "I'll tell you later." And then God says, "Go sacrifice your son Isaac, the child of promise." And Abraham says, "Why?" And God says, "I'll tell you later."

Abraham's journey was always en route. God didn't give him all the answers or the blueprint, and we want those things from God, don't we? We want answers. We want blueprints. We want to know. Life for believers is always mid-journey.

Our culture tells us homes are where you're most comfortable, you're most familiar. Dying there means dying with familiarity and people. And a good death is when nothing's disrupted—everything goes like you planned it and controlled it. But Scripture says God's people have always been living slightly unsettled, on the way somewhere else. This was never meant to be home. That's hard.

So can your faith loosen your grip on security? Listen, dying in a hospital or hospice, which is the future for most of us in the room statistically, may seem like a failure. That may seem like this didn't work out. But it's only that way because you're not at the end. You're not at the end of the journey. It's okay. Not home yet.

The Danger of Wanting to Go Back

Second, the danger of wanting to go back.

If they had been thinking of the land from which they had gone out, they would have had an opportunity to return. — Hebrews 11:15

Abraham could have turned around and gone back to his homeland, back to Ur, back to the place where God called him. And we're tempted in a similar way to idealize the past, idealize a certain kind of death. We think, "If I can't die this way, I've lost something essential." And even good things like family and home, familiarity, can at the time of death turn into white-knuckle demands: "It's got to be this way. Must have it my way."

And when they do, what happens in families? Fear goes way up. Anger goes way up. Blaming goes way up. Decisions become driven by control. And it leads us to go to war.

I want you to think about the way we talk about death in our culture. We use warfare language to talk about death. Have you noticed this? We talk about someone very sick—they are fighting, battling pneumonia. A cancer survivor beating this infection. Or it's losing the battle. Losing the battle to cancer.

Maybe you know the name Susan Sontag. Susan Sontag was a writer, a feminist thinker, brilliant. And yet, she received cancer diagnoses over and over the last thirty years of her life, and her life became about not dying for thirty years. The last thirty years of her life became dedicated to all-out warfare against dying. It consumed her. Her entire life became about this, and she missed out on living with her obsession with dying.

Of course, I'm not advocating some kind of passivity among us this morning in the face of medical interventions and treatments that are available to you. I'm not saying those are wrong. I would not say that. But I am saying there's a balance. When life becomes about not dying, it's not really living anymore.

Christians know we don't have to go to war against death. In fact, it's silly for any person, Christian or not, to go to war against death. No one wins that battle. Everyone dies. The statistics are really, really clear—except Jesus, and by extension, believers.

Do you know one of the ancient titles in Latin for Jesus? Christus Victor—which means Christ the champion, the only one who's conquered death.

Through the cross, Jesus erased the certificate of death with its obligations that was against us and opposed to us, our sin, and has taken it away by nailing that to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly. He triumphed over them in him. — Colossians 2

We can't win any battle against death, but Jesus has done what you and me and Susan Sontag could never do. He won the war so that you don't have to fight.

If your faith isn't in Jesus this morning, and I always assume there are people here who are checking out the faith, not sure what they think about this, you don't have a champion. You don't have someone who's conquered death for you. It is a battle for you, and it's one you cannot win.

The good news of the gospel is this: you can put your faith in Jesus, and the one who has conquered death will give you eternal life. He will not make dying go away. But that is not the end of your story. For those who are in Christ, give up your weapons this morning. Here's my invitation: come to Jesus. Lay down your fighting. You can trust him.

Faith Looks for a Better Country

Faith looks for a better country.

They desire a better country. These people who live by faith. That is a heavenly one. — Hebrews 11:16

The Christian faith isn't escapism. Sometimes people brand Christianity as some kind of pie in the sky escapism. It's not escapism, but it is reorientation. It's a different way of looking at reality. The author of Hebrews doesn't say these people died in faith because they hated the world. No, they wanted something more solid than this world. They were looking ahead to their true country, their true homeland.

Some of you know I love the British writer and scholar C. S. Lewis—long dead now—his children's books on Narnia. Probably the least known or maybe one of the least popular of those is the last one, which is called The Last Battle, which features the death of the country and the death of lots of people there. It's a really sad book and you're kind of slogging through a lot of it. But I love at the end when they cross over into what is eternal life. A talking unicorn says this: "I finally come home. At last, this is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I've been looking forward to all my life. I never knew it till now."

What is your true home? It's not your grandparents' farm. It's not your vacation home. It's not the dream house you're building. It's not even the people around you, as precious as they are. Home is the presence of God unmediated and unending forever.

Listen to the benediction that God pronounces over Abraham:

They now desire a better place, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God. — Hebrews 11:16

This is staggering. This is maybe the most incredible thing that I can tell you. If you've trusted in Christ, God, over your life says, "That one is mine and I'm taking you home. I have a place for you. You're one of mine." That's maybe the most incredible thing I could ever tell you. The Lord of the universe says over you, "That one belongs to me."

Faith Trusts What We Love Most to God

Finally, faith trusts what we love most to God.

Abraham faces not just death, but he faces the loss of his future. — Hebrews 11:17-19

This is wrapped up in a story about God telling Abraham to take his son, Isaac, the child of promise—the miracle baby born when his wife is in her nineties—and to take him up the mountain and to sacrifice him to the Lord. Everything in Abraham's life is bound up in this legacy child, this child of promise.

We look at the next generation like, "This is our legacy. This is our mark on the world." We nod over this beautiful baby this morning, Joni, because it's a life filled with promise. It's the future. We look at our children as a legacy, and God says, "Abraham, entrust this child to me. Sacrifice him to me." And yet Abraham believes and trusts God. It says he didn't know what God was doing, but he believed that God was even able to raise him from the dead.

This is the thing that God is also calling us to: to trust Him with our legacy. If you're a Christian, Jesus is your legacy. A hundred years from now, it's very unlikely that anybody's going to remember the name of anybody in this room—not really, who appear on a family tree somewhere. But those who are in Christ, Jesus is your legacy. He is your true home. You can let go of the other things that are so important, even family, even making a mark on this world, even all the good things that we can do, and entrust those to the Lord and let go.

So here's the pay dirt: How does this Christian way of looking at life and dying that's presented to us in Hebrews shape our end of life decisions now? The text—I don't know if you read in here—I didn't see any medical advice. Don't you wish the Bible had a chapter that was like exact formulas? I wish it was after the maps section.

I've never found the formulas section for raising kids, making decisions about what God's will is for my life, career, or medical directives. I wish there was. There's not. Instead, God gives us something better. He gives us wisdom, and he gives us his spirit.

Applications for Us

First, we seek wisdom, not control. Faith doesn't demand "I must die at home," but affirms rather "I can die trusting God no matter what, knowing that my true home is yet to come."

Second, we value presence over place. What matters is not where you die, not even who you are with—that's a hard one—but who is with you?

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death... You're with me. — Psalm 23

Jesus will be with you.

Third, we can free our loved ones from impossible pressure during our own last days. A person's last days in this medicalized, legalized culture we're in—it's impossible to navigate. Really hard. Really, really hard. But if heaven is home, we don't have to get it right exactly. Families are under tremendous pressure to make decisions about a loved one. All care decisions are always acts of love, not verdicts on a family or friends. We can take that pressure off of them.

In Conclusion

Christians don't deny death. We renarrate it. We're not going away from home when we die. We're going to our true home and therefore we can die in faith even when circumstances aren't ideal. We can release control without despair. We can face death, not bravely because we're strong, but at peace because God is with us. As he said:

I go to prepare a place for you. — John 14:2

Now today, I'm giving you your toughest homework assignment of this whole series. I've been giving homework every week in church, which I know is a naughty thing to do for a pastor. And we've had you walk through exercises writing your obituary, writing blessings for people you'd love to bless, writing your funeral. If you've missed some of those, all those extra papers are out there on a stand in the lobby. You can pick up the ones you missed. There are also resources.

But today I'm going to give you a document that looks like this. It's called the Five Wishes. And this is professionally produced. We paid a dollar for each of them. It's not our material, but I encourage you to take one of these because it's about end of life medical decisions. Now some of you have done this, and bravo to you. But take one anyway. I'm praying over all of these that someone gets to use this. Maybe it's a family member. Maybe it's a friend you talk through this with.

These are five wishes about who I want to make medical decisions for me, what kind of medical treatments I want or don't want, how comfortable I want to be, how I want people to treat me, and what I want my loved ones to know most. I know some of you are 17 and some of you are 71, and it feels like to both groups "I don't need to do this right now." Nobody ever says "I'm pretty sure this is my last couple weeks." This is why I'm urging all of us to take one on the way out. Even if you don't have courage to do this right now, read it and stick it in a file folder somewhere where you're gonna find it. Please take a moment to really think over this and pray over this.

The Dancing Plague

In 1518, in Strasbourg, France, there was a certain type of plague that broke out in the country. It was very odd. Sufferers would convulse on their feet for hours on end. It became known as the dancing plague, and they would eventually die of dehydration and heart attacks, strokes, exhaustion. Hundreds of people were affected, and this would pop up in weird little places all over Europe for years and years to come.

Scientists and historians believe it was caused by ergot poisoning. It's a fungus that grows in brown bread that's been damp and in dark places for a long period of time. The chemical in it is connected to the same chemical isolated in 1938 that we know as LSD—same properties, hallucinogenic.

Several days after consuming toxic bread, the trip begins, and a bad trip. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle twitches, spasms, sensation of bugs crawling all over your skin. And if you lived long enough, gangrene. The common name for this condition can be called Saint Elmo's Fire.

I told you earlier in this series that I married an art history major, and here's where art history connects with this.

The Eisenheim Altarpiece: A Meditation on Death

There's a 500-year-old painting dedicated to the victims of Saint Elmo's Fire, painted for an altarpiece in Eisenheim in France by Renaissance painter Matthias Grunewald. The church is part of a monastery that was established to care for victims of Saint Elmo's Fire.

Altarpieces have been used throughout centuries in Europe, in the Middle Ages, in a largely illiterate population to tell the stories of the Bible and particularly the story of Jesus. The Eisenheim altarpiece is really famous, but it has another function—a teaching function that may be invisible to a lot of people.

The leaders of the monastery wanted to give the sufferers of Saint Elmo's Fire something to meditate on. They wanted to give them something to understand their own impending death. So I'm going to highlight two parts.

First, Grunewald painted a man stricken with Saint Elmo's Fire. This is a horrible image—demons tormenting people. But right here in the bottom corner, this is a man whose skin is green and he's got open sores. This is a man dying of Saint Elmo's Fire. The monks actually prescribed to victims of this disease to come in and stare at this image and to find themselves in it. They could look and see someone who looked like them, near death, dying of this horrible wasting disease.

Second, Grunewald painted Jesus. As a church, we take the second commandment really seriously—don't make images. I'm not putting this up here for you to worship. You can take a Westminster Confession exception, as an officer of the church, that says images of God can be used for didactic purposes, which is what this was used for. Because this is for teaching and instructing.

It is arguably the ugliest depiction of Jesus in Renaissance painting. His skin is discolored like gangrene. He's out of his mind. He's disfigured. Here's my prescription for you. Just like the monks caring for the dying—you're dying now. That's what aging is called. I don't know if you realize that. Some of you are more in touch with that because you're thickening and wrinkling. But others, you think this is far away from you. But Grunewald's painting, for those plague victims, gave the prescription: Look at the man dying, and look at the other man dying.

And that's my prescription for you. Can you find yourself in the death of Jesus? Can you find yourself in your aging, in your wrinkling, in your diagnoses, in your cancer, in your loss of control, in your loss of autonomy, your loss of dignity, looking at Jesus? All the gospel accounts give a detailed description of the death of Jesus on purpose. And my prescription to you would be simply this: study his death. Find your death in his death.

Jesus' death doesn't erase your dying, but it helps us to keep walking by faith on this pilgrim journey to our real home, to our true home, at home with the Lord. This isn't your true country. Your dream house isn't your true home. Even your body is not the last body you will have. You're going to get a perfected one. So you can face death. It's a tough journey ahead. I'm not going to lie to you. But one has gone before you, one is waiting for you, and one walks with you. Amen?

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let's pray together.

Father, help us to walk this pilgrim road by faith. Help us to make good decisions now. Help us, Father, to live in light of what's to come with wide-open eyes, and trust you that home is not where we are, it's where we're going, and that Jesus really has walked this journey ahead of us. The Spirit is really with us, and he's gone to prepare a place for us. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word in song together.