Sermon for March 30th

“For you do not give me up to Sheol.” Repeat after me, “For you do not” “give me up” “to Sheol”. We don’t use the word Sheol nowadays much, do we. We hardly even know how to say it. But the word is used sixty six times in the Bible, so it deserves some attention. What does it mean? Sheol, the place of the dead. Not hell, but the grave. When the Bible talks about Sheol, it is not trying to make you think of devils, or fire or a place of torment; Sheol is the place where everyone went when they died. So my question for you is this: Have you ever been to Sheol? Have you ever died?

“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there, if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” That’s what Psalm 139 says. God seems to be everywhere. But psalm 16, our psalm today, gives a little more information on what God actually does. He is not only present, but doing something in these places, “For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the pit.” God is present in death, in the grave, in Sheol, but that in itself is not good news at all. The good news is that God will not stay silent there like all the rest of the dead people, but God actually has something to say.

Have you ever died? I’m not asking for you to give me an account of some out of body experience you had on a doctor’s table or anything where your heart stopped beating for an inordinate amount of time. I don’t want to know the five people you met in heaven. That death is an important one, and one that, finally, must be dealt with as well. However, the time when you heart stops beating and you take your last breath is what Martin Luther would call the “little death”. The easy one. I’d like to know when you have died and kept having to breathe through it. When you felt like everything was taken away from you except your heart beat. That’s what Luther would call a big death. And that big death is as much like Sheol as anything else.

A big death is when you wish you were dead, but you aren’t that lucky. Losing a beloved husband, wife or a child is one such example. They stop breathing, but you die. All your wonderful dreams and intentions are lost. We go through life expecting that the future is always there, but when someone dies it’s like the rug is pulled out from under us. It’s hard to realize how much of your life you have wrapped up in someone until you can’t share that life with them anymore. That is Sheol. That is the big death Martin Luther talked about.

As I walk to church down past the graveyard two or three days a week, it appears that death is a pretty natural part of life. Many people and movies refer to life like a circle so that we shouldn’t be so afraid of dying and things like this. At my seminary, some professors argued that death is no problem, but it is the fear involved with dying that is a result of sin. Death should be no big deal. But the fact is that we can only whistle in the graveyard as long as we don’t have to bury someone there.

Scripture tells us that the wages of sin is death. That seems about right. Even when death seems to be the best possible outcome for our loved ones, nobody likes the result very much. For those of you who have sat with someone who was dying, you might have prayed for death to come quickly. Of course, but that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have wanted them to be with you longer. When we deal with death, we deal with the outcome of sin, and we die in this experience. That is why God does not keep silent, but interrupts with his promise of new life. “I am the resurrection and the life!” Even though our hopes die with our loved ones, we can only then hope in Jesus. This big death rips faith out of our hands and tosses it out into the darkness, but God speaks from Sheol and gives you Jesus to be your light and your salvation.

Big death happens to all of us in many different ways—not only at hospital beds and graveyards. There is a line from the movie Under the Tuscan Sun that I think really gets to this point well. One of my favorite lines is when Francis speaks about her divorce to a friend, “A divorce really should kill you. When the person who said they would love you forever says that they don’t love you anymore it should just kill you, like a swift bullet to the heart. You shouldn’t have to go on living through something like that.” Many of you have lived through this kind of death, when the very foundation of your life was shaken. Many of you have known people who have lived through this kind of death.

What is it about a divorce that rocks us all to our core? Marriage is not just about living in the same house, having kids or sharing a life together. Intertwined with it are many hopes and dreams. It means security and companionship. And when a marriage ends, or a separation begins, it feels like everything is taken away from you, like you have lost your direction, like you have died even though your heart keeps on beating. Even in our society where divorce happens so often, everyone feels the hurt somehow.

At seminary, I was asked if I thought it would be ok to preach about divorce since Jesus calls it a sin in different texts. Since so many people in the church are divorced, pastors often don’t want to make anyone feel bad or singled out. But here’s the thing, nobody likes divorce. Nobody wants divorce. I don’t think that this is a newsflash for any of you, right? Sometimes divorce is the best choice to make, but even then it is a result of sin. The question is not whether we sin, but what does God do with our sin? What does God do when we have lost everything? What does God do in Sheol when we have died? God forgives sin and speaks up even when we have lost the ability to speak. He says, “I will not give you up to Sheol. I will not give you up to this death.”

Sometimes this big death will involve your job. When you have worked toward a goal for years on end only to change direction midway through your life, this is a death. A death for all those dreams you had made. When you are expecting a job offer for months on end only to be rejected again and again, this is a death to all your plans. When your children leave home. When you retire. When you move into another home. This is death for us. Sometimes your heart aches even when you are experiencing new joy. But God does not expect you to deal with these times by yourself and he does not just sit idly by. God speaks into your darkness and gives you faith to see into a new light, “I will not give you up to Sheol. I will never leave you or forsake you.”

We don’t find much need of God in our day to day life. We plan our trips, we make out our schedules, we have our conversations and seem to do just fine on our own. When things are going fine, our prayer life fades. When we are boasting about our success, God’s voice seems distant if not non-existent. We choose not to listen to God. We choose not to look at God. We choose not to believe in God.

So God finds a way to get through to us when we least expect him to show up. In the dark, rainy day funerals where pastors speak a word of hope. In the care and consolation of a friend as we sign divorce papers. We are driven to pray to him when there is nothing left for us to do. We are driven to the scriptures when we can listen to nothing else. And here, when we wish we could just give up and go away, God speaks into the despair and promises you a new heart. Yes you have died, but your life is hidden with Jesus. Only when Jesus comes again will you finally stop dying and receive eternal life. Your life is hidden with Jesus and his promises. Promises of hope even in the darkest times. “For he does not give you up to Sheol; he never has and he never will.” Amen.