Jan. 22, 2017 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday Text: Ephesians 6:11-18
Dear Friends in Christ,
Her name is Maggie. I know her as a casual acquaintance because I played basketball and went to the seminary with her husband. We talked periodically in the course of our time passing each other in life. Maggie went on to become a mercy outreach leader in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. In the spring of 2014 she was diagnosed with a stage-four brain tumor.
Brittany Maynard is 29 and has a stage-four brain tumor. Her fear is that this tumor is “out of her control.” Maynard moved her family to Oregon to have legal access to physician-assisted suicide. She doesn’t see it as suicide, even though quite literally she will take her life.
You and I are Christians living surrounded by these two life scenarios. Our world occupies the epicenter of man and monster, kill or be killed. Our life inhabits the edges of death and hell itself, the gauntlet of sin and survival, live and let die. You can sit on fences about politics. You may fall silent about controversies. But there remains rules, and no matter how far you run, you will not escape. You cannot slip beyond the reaches of the long arm of the Lord God Almighty. Where are you?
“HERE WE STAND”
Many people, like Brittany, who choose assisted-suicide, are uncomfortable with the term. In America we always have to dress things up so people will wear the terms. We add polka dots with “aid in dying” or lace accents as we call it “death with dignity.” No matter what we call it is bad law because we never see where it leads. Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, warned that “assisted suicide is not progressive, in fact, it puts many vulnerable people at risk, and we have already seen examples of that where it is legal.”
We carry grief so heavy and guilt so haunting that we believe it freedom to end our own lives. We haul fear so chilling and failure so choking that we tolerate terminating our sons and daughters and advocate euthanizing our fathers and mothers. We drag underbellies so vulnerable and blind sides so exposed that we separate children from marriage. We lug spines so stiffened and skin so hardened that we settle for human rights instead of insisting on heaven’s gifts.
Maggie knows there is no dignity in cancer or any other debilitating illness. She has been poked, prodded, radiated, chemotherapied, and cut open so many times that she stopped worrying about being dignified. She knows death is out of her hands. What is intolerable to the assisted suicide advocate is not suffering or dying, but not having control over life and death.
Here we stand knowing we are not in control. The Lord God created us male and female in His own image. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit made us each a little lower than the heavenly beings. We should know better, but our lives have been left broken. We have become both victims and culprits of violence against life. We have grown compromised, conditioned by our culture of death. We have gotten ourselves impaired, captive to sinful selfishness, whatever our shape or stage from fertilization to final breath, heartbeat, and brainwave. Nobody comes holier or with more worth than the rest. No life proves more dignified than another. We arrive, exist, and expire as neighbors by nature and brothers and sisters by birth, whether we like it or not. We all require armor, a Savior, deliverance, redemption. We all crave compassion, forgiveness, mercy, grace. Here we stand.
Brittany Maynard did end her life on November 1, 2014. She struggled with this decision even wanting to postpone it because she had been having fun with friends and family. Here is her quote, “Today is the day I have chosen to pass away.” There is no sense of the Lord or faith in that. The key word is “I.” She felt she was alone.
Maggie sent a letter to Brittany and even posted the letter on You Tube. She wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. Maggie writes, “Death sucks. And while this leads many to attempt to calm their fears by grasping for personal control over the situation, as a Christian with a Savior who loves me dearly and who has redeemed me from a dying world, I have a higher calling. God wants me to be comfortable in my dependence upon Him and others, to live with Him in peace and comfort no matter what comes my way. As for my cancer journey, circumstances out of my control are not the worst thing that can happen to me. The worst thing would be losing faith, refusing to trust in God’s purpose in my life and trying to grab that control myself.”
We do not stand alone. We never stand alone. Another One stands in your place. He has armor. He brings armor, and He gives armor, because He is armor. Jesus Christ is the armor of God, the whole armor of God, for you and for us all. He shelters, sustains, protects and defends any who cannot defend themselves. The Lord will fight for you, and you only have to be still. Fear not, stand firm, and behold the salvation the Lord works for you today.
The bare shoulders of Jesus dress the impaired life with God’s wrath-satisfying righteous sacrifice. His punctured heart captures our wrongs and redeems us. His shed blood arms all who are vulnerable with God’s life-justifying Word like medicine that cradles them away from the devil and hell. Because Jesus stands here, here we stand, every human being precious at every stage in every state, no matter what she’s done, no matter what he can’t do. Jesus is why we stand, and we stand with Christ, with the many blessings of abundant and everlasting life.
We stand with you because of the Church’s ministry and brotherhood and not by culture’s impulses or bandwagons. You stand claimed and positioned in this baptismal Sacrament, crowned and preserved through this Holy Communion.
Maggie died on September 25, 2015. Before she died she told her daughters and us, “For Christians, our death is not the end. Because our Savior Jesus Christ, selflessly endured an ugly death on the cross and was laid in a borrowed tomb (no “death with dignity” there), He truly understands our sorrows and feelings of helplessness.”
Here we stand in joy and not out of anger, in hope and not out of fear, because we stand to forgive and not compare, to save and not compete. Here we stand to relieve and release, not to accuse. Here we stand to listen, assist, embrace, and befriend, not attack. Here we stand speaking truth and sharing love because we stand overcoming sin and selfishness, death, and the devil, and not against one another. Here we stand firm but gentle, strong but humble, even after so long and before such odds. Here we stand, Gospel-motivated voices, Lutherans For Life, because we can do no other. God help us.
Amen.