The Cross of Jesus and the Reality of Death

Dear Friends in Christ:

We began our 40-day Lenten journey this year on Ash Wednesday with the imposition of ashes making the sign of the Cross on our foreheads. These words from Genesis 3:19 were spoken to Adam: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” They remind us of our common mortality. We all will die. But, through the victory won by Jesus Christ on the Cross, death has been defeated, and we are given a resurrected life with God forever!

Last year, during our Wednesday evening Lenten worship services, we used a DVD series titled, “Confronting Death - A Christian Approach to the End of Life” with Lutheran Pastor Walter Wangerin, Jr. He spoke from his own experiences of living with life-threatening cancer.

In the March issue of The Lutheran magazine, Pastor Wangerin wrote an article titled, “Letters from the Land of Cancer”. In it he has some important things to share that certainly spoke to me. Here is a sampling:

“I have lately become intimate with death, with my death. It waits in the tumors in my chest… these malignancies are quiet now, but will one day move again and consume me… The doctor said, ‘This kind of cancer does not go away. It will kill you.’ I was truly grateful for his forthrightness… To know what’s coming gives me the independence and dignity to confront it directly and to prepare. So the doctor has given me an edge. I mean: to experience death, the real thing, convinced it is close and coming, has set me at the edge of existence. I have found the wall of Time, which embraces creation and all humanity.”

“The edge: cancer grants my spirit a high place from which to view the fullness of Time, from it’s First down even to its Now. I have lived! I have dwelt in the house of Time. I am one of its inhabitants. Its people have been my community. And I am dearly grateful to have found a home among them… Oh, how rich and how varied is my family! ...I have children who call me ‘Papa’ ...And you, kind readers of my writing, you are my friends. Time embraces the generations… (before and since) My parents, Walter and Virginia. Time doesn’t divide us after all. I grin and thank God with all my heart that I am in such a company.”

“I do not exaggerate. Truly, to have cancer is to experience divine benefits, which are only intensified the closer death comes to me and for me.”

“I have written a small book titled Letters from the Land of Cancer (Zondervan, 2010). It offers you a running account of my experience with the disease, the pain and the benefits.” Come, join me there… Let’s discuss together bodily things and spiritual things, both.”

“IN LIFE, IN DEATH, O LORD, ABIDE WITH ME.” (Hymn #629, Evangelical Lutheran Worship)

— Pastor David Fetter