I’m sure many of us will know Henry Scott Holland’s poem Death is nothing at all, a popular reading at funerals:
Death is nothing at all. It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you, and the old life
that we lived so fondly together is untouched,
unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes
that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort,
without the ghost of a shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.
All is well.
One wonders how Jesus, “deeply moved in Spirit and troubled” (John 11:33) and weeping, would have felt if these words were quoted at him. “All is well” doesn’t seem to picture how Jesus was feeling at the grave of his friend Lazarus.
As someone who has had both parents die before I reached the age of 31, there isn’t a singe part of me that agrees with the statement “death is nothing at all.” I’m sure the odd card I was sent by well meaning folk quoted this, but though the thought may have been a kind one: to provide comfort, in fact the result was the opposite.
The consistent picture of the Bible is that death is an enemy (1 Cor 15:26) It is an alien intruder into our world as a result of sin, and is not part of God’s perfect created order. The message of the Bible to those who are grieving is that they are right to grieve. It is normal, it is proper. Jesus did it! He cried when his friend died, despite knowing he would raise him from the dead just a few moments later.
To be told by the Bible that death is as bad as I think it is, is a wonderful comfort. It shows that there is a God who understands, a God who cares – that life is valuable and has meaning, that relationships are important and breaking them is tragic; that human beings have dignity and to be buried in a box in the ground is not what we were made for. The Bible tells us that death is awful – and we must be so careful that we don’t pretent it isn’t, in order to try to help people who are grieving.
Contemporary society’s approach of trying to minimise death, and play down its wrongness, must surely be based in part upon the total absence of any other answer. If there is no solution to death, we might as well embrace it and get used to it.
But the picture of the Bible is vastly different. What Jesus offers in the Bible is not a hopeful re-living of memories, but the conquest of death itself:
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25)
Death is not minimised, it is defeated. In fact it was defeated through Jesus’ death – that dealt with our sins so that we need not face the penalty for them:
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-- that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Heb 2:14-15)
Jesus is the one who now controls people’s eternal destinies:
“I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” (Rev 1:18)
The Bible’s view of death is that it is terrible – which I find a great comfort. I don’t want to live in a world where death doesn’t matter, and I don’t want to worship a God who doesn’t care.
The Bible also says that death is defeated – which I find unspeakable comfort. I long to live in a world where death is no more, and worship a God who cared enough to face death for me.
So lets not give the false comfort and false hope of Death is nothing at all. And in a world with no answer to death, lets proclaim the most wonderful truths of the gospel, through which life and immortality have been brought to light!
Lets bring our own souls, and other people, to Jesus, who not only wept with those who wept, but also died instead of those who should have died. The answer to the problem of death is not minimising it, or learning to cope with it. It is nothing less than resurrection!
[see http://www.oakleys.org.uk/blog/2009/01/king_of_terrors_death_still_not_nothing.html for full sermon of Holland, from which Death is nothing at all is taken. In fact, this poem is taken out of context – Holland was using it to express what he thought was a common, but wrong view of death! How tragic that is has been so misused, and what a reminder of how important context is!]
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