The Absurdity of Death

Full of Eyes

A Homily for Graveyard Vespers

On All Souls’ Eve

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

If death is the end, then nothing matters. Not really. Not ultimately. Everything we’ve ever done, everyone we’ve ever loved, will be nullified by the grave, ground to powder by unfathomable aeons of relentless time.

People often comfort themselves by saying that we will live on in the legacy we leave behind, in the memories of our loved ones. But of course “live on” is exactly what we won’t do. Memories are no substitute a living, breathing person, who can love us, hold us, surprise us. And once the people who do remember us die, it’ll be as though we never existed at all. I mean, really, who knows much of anything about their great-grandparents? Do you even know their names? And we’re only a few generations removed.

Some people claim that if death is the end, if there is no afterlife waiting for us beyond the grave, then that makes this world, this life, more meaningful, more significant. But again, this is exactly backward. If this life is all there is—if everything we do or think or love or say is lost in the sands of time—then it’s all meaningless. Whether we choose to live as Joseph Stalin or as Mother Teresa is immaterial. We all end up dead, gone, and forgotten. The good we do, or the evil we do, will be lost in time like tears in rain.

If death is the end, then there’s no such thing as justice, not in any real or objective sense. For indeed, even if we were able to establish a perfectly just society tomorrow, it would be built upon the bones of all who went before us, who never knew justice. And where’s the justice to be found in that? Life indeed becomes absurd, a fever dream, a spark of light amidst infinite darkness, and all the things we cherish, all the things that make us human—goodness, truth, beauty, love—are but fantasy, illusion. The distinction between “love thy neighbor” and “eat thy neighbor” becomes a matter of taste, subject to the whims of digestion and the weather. It all becomes absurd.

But nobody believes that, do they? Not really. Not in their heart of hearts. Those who trumpet the absurdity of existence and the finality of death nevertheless love their children; nevertheless strive for goodness and truth and beauty and justice and all the things we cannot deny no matter how we attempt to rationalize them away. The mind is no illusion; the soul is no epiphenomenon. Indeed, illusion is something that minds have; it cannot be something that minds are. There is more to life than that which we can see and touch and measure alone—more to life than death.

Skeptics often point to the diversity of religious belief, conveniently ignoring the commonalities, the universal human conviction that there are worlds beyond this one, lives beyond this one; that goodness and truth and beauty are real; that the world has meaning and purpose and value and is thus intelligible. And every society has always believed that death is not the end. Why, it’s only the beginning. And we could dismiss this as a convenient fiction, as an anesthetizing lie drawn from the human imagination so that we need not stare into the abyss.

But then we must explain why the abyss is so frightening to begin with. If death were the natural end of all things, there’s no reason we should fear it so, no reason to resist. Surely natural selection has given us the drive to survive, but why value life over death in the first place? Why value existence over nothing? Indeed it is often atheism, and not religious belief, which exists to comfort us, to absolve us, to let us hide in the shadows rather than step forth fully into the light.

We’ve come to a stage in our society wherein it sounds scandalous to state obvious truths. So allow me to scandalize you: all men seek goodness and truth and beauty, which can be found in this world but which point beyond this world. Life has meaning and purpose and value; if it didn’t, then all of reason, all of science, would be but a fool’s errand, to say nothing of philosophy, religion, daily life.

And at the root of it—at the root of every religion, every philosophy, every human life—is love. Self-giving, life-giving, death-defying love. It is love that upholds the world in every particle of matter, every scintilla of time. It is love that gives life meaning and value and purpose, love that underlies and upholds every experience of goodness, truth, and beauty. It is love that raises us up from the muck and mire of a fallen world and liberates us to stand in awe of worlds unknown in ages yet to be.

It is not life but death that is absurd; because death has no substance, is literally no-thing. Death is merely the absence of life, as darkness is the absence of light and cold the absence of heat. And we know very well that all the darkness in the cosmos cannot extinguish the light of even one single candle burning in the night. Thus the solution to death is life: life freely given, life poured out for others; which is to say, love. Love is the light shining out in the darkness. Love is the flame which the winds of winter cannot snuff. Love is life outliving death.

Brothers and sisters, we worship a God who became Man, that He might descend to the dead, enter the abyss—and thereby fill it with the infinite life and love and blood of God. The grave is full to bursting with the eternal life of Jesus Christ. We have all lost loved ones, in sorrow and in grief. But in Christ Jesus, death has been transformed. No longer is it empty, dark, and bottomless. No longer does it nullify all that’s gone before. For Christ has conquered death. Christ has filled the abyss. And those we lay to rest in the earth we lay now into His life and light and love forever.

In Christ, the universal human conviction that death is not the end comes now to fruition, blossoms forth for all to see. Those who die cannot be dead. They’re more alive than you or me.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.