Death in Advent

A Meditation Upon a new Church Year and the UK's Assisted Suicide Bill

File: Brooklyn Museum - Fig-tree Valley of Hinnom - James Tissot.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Today is the first day of the new year—if you are a church-going Anglican. And what better way to celebrate this fact than to glance over across the pond at Mother Church, that ancient See where, so long ago, St. Augustine (not the one from Hippo, the other one) presided over a fledgling Christian world. What may we observe by peering over there, (metaphorically and spiritually, for most Anglicans around the world do not live there and have never even visited), in the mind’s eye climbing over old stiles, sitting down in a musty pew in some old church, settling in for a pint in an old comfortable pub?

That, in a closely divided vote, the UK Parliament chose to give the citizens of that sceptered isle the “right” to die. From the BBC’s long and fairly balanced account of how the day progressed:

Outside Parliament in the pro-camp, everyone is glued to their phones waiting for the result. Time delays mean some get the news before others. A quiet ripple grows into a loud roar. Huge grins and long hugs are exchanged between the supporters. “I just crumpled,” says Catie. Others are thinking of deceased relatives. “Granny would be rooting for us,” says Kate. “She didn’t want others to suffer in the way she did.” Iona’s mother died when she was 13. “It wasn’t the death she wanted,” she says, adding that her mother would have been so proud of the result on Friday. There is joy but also relief, as well as an understanding that this is just the first step in a long parliamentary process. Catie also says there needs to be an effort to try and address people’s concerns about the bill. As the campaigners celebrate, the bells of St Margaret’s Church begin pealing. It has nothing to do with the vote, of course. A couple have just got married and are leaving the church. But for the pro-camp, it feels symbolic, and they cheer along with every chime.

On the other side of Parliament Square, Anna is standing alone. Her eyes are full of tears and she struggles to speak. "I feel like today a line has been crossed," she says. Jane is leaving the area. She is off to meet her daughter and feels a bit more upbeat than Anna. “It is sad, but not as bad as we feared - 270 MPs voted against it," she says. "There was some resistance." Matthew is still at College Green. Using a tablet computer to communicate, he says he is thinking about the other children he went to school with who had severe disabilities. "My friends deserve to live as much as anyone else," he says. "Gradually lives like mine risk being devalued. [The bill] opens a very dangerous door." As he talks, vans have arrived and the campaign's bits and pieces are being packed away around him.

Ms. Leadbeater (what a name) is the person leading this effort. She is blond and fairly normal-looking. If only the bill could have been presented by someone dressed up like this:

File: Moderner Krampus Kärnten.JPG - Wikimedia Commons

Then we would really know where we were. Ah well.

The curious thing, of course, is that we will all die. None of us will get out of this life without passing through the valley of the shadow of death, unless the Lord returns sooner than Ms. Leadbetter, obviously, is ready for. In human terms, it seems perfectly reasonable to want to control the conditions of so tragic a circumstance as not being able to live forever. Being out of control, of which death is the final and most painful example, is the gaping existential wound of being human. The whole point of life is that it shouldn’t have to end, it should go on and on. When it doesn’t, because it can’t, because of sin, every step to retain some small crumb of certainty leads inexorably toward the very thing we’d rather not talk about or face.

The great irony, of course, is that ultimately the people who wanted this bill to pass and hope it will become the law will not be able to control or limit its outcome. Sure, you won’t be “assisted” to die unless you have a terminal diagnosis now, but in a little while, not very long from now, what “terminal” means will be adjusted to “sad” and the six months’ waiting period will narrow to just a few days. More and more people will be pressured to take this obvious and easy way out. The slippery slope, in matters like these, always emerges the victor.

And where is the Church in all of this? Did the bishops take up their staffs and converge upon the halls of earthly power to decry this wicked bill? On the Church of England website we read this:

Leaders of the major faiths have spoken of their deep concern about the impact on vulnerable people should assisted suicide be approved by Parliament, in a letter published ahead of the Second Reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Signatories headed by the Bishop of London, Church of England lead bishop for health and social care, who is a former Chief Nursing Officer for England, the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and the Chief Rabbi, warn that a ‘right to die’ could ‘all too easily’ end in vulnerable people feeling they have a ‘duty to die.’ A truly compassionate response to the end of life lies in investment in palliative care, they say in the letter, published in The Observer newspaper, signed by 29 faith leaders.

They say: “Part of the role of faith leaders in communities is to provide spiritual and pastoral care for the sick and for the dying. We hold the hands of loved ones in their final days, we pray with families both before and after death. It is to this vocation that we have been called, and it is from this vocation that we write. Our pastoral roles make us deeply concerned about the impact the bill would have on the most vulnerable, opening up the possibility of life-threating abuse and coercion. This is a concern we know is shared by many people, with and without faith. Even when surrounded by loving family and friends, people towards the end of their life can still feel that they are a burden, and this is ‘especially the case’ while adult social care remains underfunded, they write. In this environment, it is easy to see how a ‘right to die’ could all too easily end in feeling you have a duty to die,” they say.

Concluding their letter, they call for high quality palliative care services for all who need them, warning that palliative care remains ‘worryingly underfunded.’ We believe that a truly compassionate response to the end of life lies in the provision of high-quality palliative care services to all who need them. While there are many examples of excellent palliative care in this country, it remains worryingly underfunded. Investment in palliative care is the policy of a truly compassionate nation. It is the way to ensure that everyone in society, including the most vulnerable, receives the care they deserve at the end of life."

I’m grateful, of course, that “faith leaders” would find it within themselves to oppose such a “right” but cannot, at the same time, fail to observe how extremely lame and unChristian this statement is. Where is the tone of moral outrage? Where is the mention of a holy and just God who is the one who gives life and who claims for himself the right to set its limits? Where is any mention of the cross of Christ? Any articulation of the purposes for which suffering might be endured? Where, in short, is the Christian bit? Calling for more government funding in such a moment is, how shall I put it, fatuous and bad, an epic failure to read the divine mood.

Anyway, I, at least, am going to church this morning and I know that I will there be encountering the living God who is able to speak plainly, who is not confused about the day nor the hour, who isn’t subject to the votes of any nation. There we find him wandering the temple complex with his disciples, telling them what they may expect in the days to come. “On the earth” he explains, there will be “distress of nations in perplexity” because “of the roaring of the sea and the waves.” People will faint “with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world.” The sun and moon and stars “will be shaken.”

Is there a more apt phrase in the dying embers of this year than “distress of nations in perplexity?” And this before the end, when all the gaslighting shall cease, when all the rumors of wars and earthquakes and terrors will have come to a full measure and there is nothing to do but face the coming of the Son of Man in power and great glory. What a moment that will be, when all the cultural Christians and worthless C of E bishops have to look upon him whom they were so convinced was a useful myth, especially at Christmas time when it is one’s habit to trot over to King’s College for Lessons and Carols. Who needs the kingdom of God when you can just have the figs, baked into a pudding, served up with some holly and ivy while the three ships come sailing in as if the sea will not overturn itself in obedience to the Word of the Lord. Heaven and earth may pass away, they suppose, but only because of the lower-middle class’ carbon footprint and propensity to share hateful memes on social media. Whatever Jesus might have to say is not interesting enough to write about on the Provincial Website.

Thus, disappointed and beleaguered, any remaining true Christian Anglicans around the world begin the new Church Year in the usual way, looking up into the windswept sky, staring at the various thrifted crosses that adorn those storefront sanctuaries and buildings bought from other kinds of denominations that do not quite map over Anglican liturgical sensibilities. They sit and stand and kneel as the scriptures go by, trying to attend to that unseen, hidden certainty beyond the veil of this deathly life. They listen to Jesus’ promising to come when the moment is right. They listen for the roar of the living water flowing from the Mount of Olives, the very heart of a world in subjection to Christ. They establish their hearts blameless in holiness for the coming of the Lord and all his saints. And if they have a serious edge on them, which many, fortunately, do, when they get to say or sing the line in Psalm 50, “These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself,” they do it with absolute relish.

For one thing you may be sure about. That is the inexorable return of the Mighty One, God the Lord, who, speaking, “summons the earth.” If you can’t hear him and therefore assume that he is “one such as yourself” you are gravely mistaken.

God is not like us. He is not devoted to death. He doesn’t have to grasp for control over the faded ruins of the cosmos because he already holds them all together by the Word of his mouth. And his word is life. He is life. For his death bought life for anyone who lets go and grasps him.

So anyway, go to church—a real church—and here’s the whole Psalm, in case you want to gird up your loins as you head back into the fray. May the Lord bless you in this holy season of Advent, and should you desire to read more Demotivations at the sale price (good through till the end of Monday), click this link.

Psalm 50

The Mighty One, God the Lord,
speaks and summons the earth
from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God shines forth.

Our God comes; he does not keep silence;
before him is a devouring fire,
around him a mighty tempest.
He calls to the heavens above
and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
“Gather to me my faithful ones,
who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”
The heavens declare his righteousness,
for God himself is judge! Selah

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak;
O Israel, I will testify against you.
I am God, your God.
Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
your burnt offerings are continually before me.

I will not accept a bull from your house
or goats from your folds.
For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the hills,
and all that moves in the field is mine.

“If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and its fullness are mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and perform your vows to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

But to the wicked God says:
“What right have you to recite my statutes
or take my covenant on your lips?
For you hate discipline,
and you cast my words behind you.
If you see a thief, you are pleased with him,
and you keep company with adulterers.

“You give your mouth free rein for evil,
and your tongue frames deceit.
You sit and speak against your brother;
you slander your own mother's son.
These things you have done, and I have been silent;
you thought that I was one like yourself.
But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

“Mark this, then, you who forget God,
lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!
The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
to one who orders his way rightly
I will show the salvation of God!”