In recent days I’ve been reading
Drew Gilpin Faust’s book “This Republic of Suffering.” It is a masterful
account of how Americans dealt with death during and after the Civil War. The
war, like all wars, created a large number of dead and dying people. In fact,
the civil war was responsible for the death of 750,000 men. 750,000…greater
than the number of dead for all armed conflicts in which the United States
engaged, from the Revolutionary War to the current engagement in Afghanistan.
One consequence of that terrible
toll of death was how to handle the mortal remains of those who passed. Often,
in the heat of battle, bodies simply remained on the battlefield. The winning
side could go out and retrieve their wounded and dead, but the losing side
would retreat, and often their dead comrades in arms were either left where
they lay, or shoveled into mass graves.
There was a great focus in Christian
thinking during that era on dying well, what the medieval spiritual writers
called “Ars Moriendi,” or the Art of Dying. They wrote the treatises on good
dying during the time of the Black Death, when millions died of the plague. But
the concept of Ars Moriendi was equally potent when the Civil War was raging.
Such a good dying, in the period of the Civil War, included being in good
relationship with God, at peace regarding one’s death, and sending loving
thoughts to those whom the dying man left behind.
And so men would often write letters
to their loved ones before a battle, talking about how they knew that death was
near, saying that they were ready to be with God, were not afraid, and that
their loved ones should know that they would wait for them in the Heavenly
realm. If they were wounded or died in battle, comrades in arms would write
such letters to the families of the wounded, giving them comfort that they had
not been alone, they had been reconciled to their death, and that they were
ready to meet their maker as children of God.
This was, no doubt, a comfort to the
families who received such letters, but one of the great sadnesses for these
mourners was that they would not know where their loved one lay after death.
There was often no marked grave, no place where the mourners could go and
commune with their dead family member. Wives and mothers wrote to the Secretary
of War, asking about their boy – was he alive? If he was dead, where did he
lay? Thus, advocates like Clara Barton pushed hard for a way to keep track of
those who had died and their resting place, to provide solace to families and
to end questions about whether or not their brother or son or father was truly
dead. If one of the hallmarks of Ars Moriendi, the good dying, was being at
peace with the Lord, another equally important one was that the family was able
to lay the person to rest with dignity for his mortal remains, with prayer and
a marking of his final resting place.
Thus, many of the dead had the first
part of that good dying, but the latter part – a time and a place of prayer and
commendation, with family present and a marking of the place – was often
missing. In fact, the federal government worked for a decade beyond the Civil
War seeking out the unmarked graves so that those who had served and died would
be properly accounted for, reinterred, and named on an appropriate marker or
headstone. Ten years after the war, the
struggle for Ars Moriendi still consumed the souls and resources of a nation
trying to recover from its wounds.
I tell you this story because on
Good Friday we, too, struggle with Ars Moriendi as we listen to Jesus’ death
and burial. He died on a political battlefield – certainly no one could doubt
that his death was as much a battle of Romans and Pharisees against a religious
or political reformer they distrusted and hated – and his death was not
attended to by his followers, just a few of the women who were a part of his
band – his mother, his aunt, Mary of Magdala.
Did Jesus die a peaceful death? He
seemed resigned to what was to happen, and accepted it with little argument. In
other versions of the passion story, Jesus cries out seemingly in despair “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (a quotation from Psalm 22), but in
this version from the Gospel of John, he simply says, “It is finished.”
And then it is over, and his body is
taken in the dead of night to a tomb donated by Joseph of Arimethea. No
mourners weeping, no priests intoning prayers, no incense, only a little
preparation of the body before entombment. Even the women are not present,
those faithful women who had been the only ones to stand at the foot of the
cross. It is simply a gentle disposal of Jesus’ body to a safe place, an
appropriate place, a bit of a rush because of the impending Passover feast, but
it does not comport with all the proper burial rituals of 1st
century Jews. Not an artful death, not a good death as the medieval scholars
and the Civil War widows might have envisioned one. A lonely death after a
hard, hard dying.
I wonder if Jesus felt abandoned
while he was slowly dying on the cross, if he felt like he had failed in his
mission, if it all was worth it. Or did he know that this was the last good
thing he could do, to complete the prophetic vision, to deliver redemption?
If that was the case, it was the
most artful of deaths, the one that had the most meaning for all of Creation.
If we reflect on the primary
qualities embodied in Ars Moriendi, in the Good Death, what are they? To be in
good relationship with God – no question that Jesus meets this standard. He is
the Son of God, fulfilling his mission by dying on the cross. To be at peace
regarding one’s death: those words “it is finished” seem to say that he is
reconciled to what has happened, and accepts that his earthly body is
completing its task. To send loving thoughts to one’s family? Remember Jesus
instructing the beloved disciple to treat Mary as his own mother, and telling
Mary that this disciple would now be her son? Jesus is attending to the
business of providing for his mother’s welfare once Jesus is gone.
There may have been no conventional
synagogue service, no traditional burial service with weeping women wearing
torn garments, no public symbol of the honor that this man, this Son of Man,
deserved at his passing.
But make no mistake. This was “Ars
Moriendi” in its highest expression. Some of the trappings were missing, but
they were merely that – external symbols. What truly mattered in a good dying
was embodied in this most horrific of deaths.
It is good that we meditate on this
most holy of deaths, and reflect upon what it might mean in our own lives.
There are two directions we might cast our eyes. The first would be on the
Cross, as we give thanks for Jesus’ willingness to suffer and die for us, to
redeem us. The second, and in some ways the harder one, is to look at our own
lives. It is in our lives, of course, that we understand how we will die. Will
we die the good death, knowing that we were in communion with the One who
created us? Will we die at peace, knowing that we did what we could while we
were able to bring the reign of God to our world? Will we die satisfied that we
did what we could to attend to our families and loved ones, that no forgiveness
was left undeclared, no thank you left unspoken, no arrangement for care left
unplanned? Most important, will we have lived our lives in a way that pleased
God?
We look up at the Cross. We see the dying
and exhausted Jesus upon it. We know that no great funeral procession will mark
his death. But we know that his message and the procession of followers
continues even until today. This is
truly a good dying, the one that yields life beyond the grace. Will your life
and your death approach that standard of goodness?
Amen.
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