Bishop Varden says facing death in peace means looking it in the eye

Death brings absence, powerlessness, pain and even anger. Yet the Church sings of peace. Bishop Erik Varden took up that apparent Christian paradox in the homily he preached on September 4 at the funeral of Ulrik Sverdrup-Thygeson.

Varden began with an image that has been part of Christianity for centuries: the Requiem. Faced with death, he said, the Church sings of peace whatever the circumstances, whether the person who has died is "an old man laden with years or a small child," whether they died surrounded by those they loved or "in the chaotic isolation of a trench."

The paradox of singing of peace in the face of death

There is something deeply paradoxical in that Christian response, Varden said. Even people who have not been inside a church for years may associate the word Requiem with consolation, partly because of the great musical settings that have given the Mass for the dead a universal form. But that familiarity, he warned, can make people forget how extraordinary the Church's proclamation is.

"We can easily forget how paradoxical it really is to sing of death in a key of tenderness that throbs with hope," he said.

In human terms, death remains shocking even when it was expected. Varden described the moment of dying in terms most people can recognize: a person may lie unconscious on their deathbed and still be unmistakably present. Then death comes, and that presence suddenly gives way to the sense of an absence.

He also looked at the way people speak of those who die and those who remain. In Norwegian, he explained, the person who dies "takes leave" of us, and those who remain are spoken of as being "left behind." The expressions are not absurd, Varden said: those who remain stand "at the crossroads, powerless."

Such an experience can provoke "strong reactions of grief, rebellion and rage." After acknowledging all of that, Varden asked the question running through his homily:

"And yet we sing of peace?"

'Fear paralyzes'

Varden pointed to two grounds in the Gospel for understanding where that peace can come from. The first has to do with the will, and it begins with the words of Christ: "Let not your hearts be troubled."

He then turned to fear. "Fear paralyzes," he said. When someone sets out to manipulate another person, he said, one of the strategies is precisely to make them afraid.

But fear does not inevitably determine a person, Varden said. There is a considerable capacity to keep it from taking over the mind, and the first step is to recognize reality as it is.

"We can face what is real; what terrifies us is what is imaginary."

Starting from the facts, Varden said, makes reasoned decisions possible. The problem comes when a person is trapped in the idea that what is happening should not be happening. In the face of death, he said, that carries particular weight.

'We must accept death as part of life'

Peace in the face of death does not mean denying what is happening, Varden said, nor presenting death as artificially beautiful. He proposed the opposite: recognizing it and looking at it as a reality that belongs to human existence.

"To face death in peace we must accept it as part of life."

He was explicit about what that acceptance means: "We do not have to hide it or make it beautiful." The response is simply to "look it in the eye" as something that comes to a person and is given to them.

The Christian peace Varden described does not come from ignoring how shocking death is. His homily started by acknowledging it. Death produces a real absence and can provoke grief, rebellion or rage. But a person can face what is real, he said, without necessarily being ruled by fear.

The second condition for peace: faith

The second ground Varden pointed to also comes from the words of Christ: "Believe in God, believe also in me."

Faith can become a complicated matter, he acknowledged. He referred in particular to the Norwegian context and to the effects of a certain rhetoric that came out of the Reformation. That rhetoric, he said, has paradoxically led people to see faith as a kind of "work" that has to be performed correctly.

That raises anguished questions: if salvation presupposes faith, how can a person know that they believe enough? How can they know their faith is pure enough? Varden recalled that both literature and human experience show people who have been driven close to despair by questions like these.

To clarify the problem, he turned to the biblical meaning of the word used for faith.

Faith not as anguish but as faithfulness

The Greek term pistis, used in the New Testament for "faith," can also mean "faithfulness," Varden said. For him, that changes the perspective.

Believing, in the biblical sense, is not an anguished and solitary search that keeps checking the quality of one's own faith.

"Faith is the firm certainty that Someone keeps his hand both over me and under me, so that I can walk and stand secure."

To express that trust, Varden also recalled the words of the psalm: "You hem me in, behind and before." Even if a person took "the wings of the dawn" and dwelt "at the far end of the sea," he said, God's hand would still be guiding them there.

"That is how biblical faith speaks," the bishop said.

Where does a faith that can hold up in the face of death come from?

Varden set out three grounds on which that trust can grow. The first is "a carefully considered, rational understanding of God," nourished by Scripture and theology. The faith he described is not a renunciation of reason.

The second comes from looking closely at the lives of other people. The saints matter especially here, he said, because their lives show "with wonderful diversity" how faith can take flesh in very different human circumstances.

Their lives offer direction for a Christian's own life. Faith then stops being only an idea and can be seen worked out concretely in men and women who lived it in very different situations.

The third ground is a person's own experience. Over time, Varden said, a believer can look back and recognize a faithfulness they may not have perceived in the same way while living through each circumstance.

"The older we grow, the more clearly we see that it is true: God really is faithful; and so I can believe, I receive faith as a gift."

Christian peace does not remove pain

Varden returned to the paradox he began with. The Church can sing of peace in the face of death, he said, not because it ignores what it means to lose someone and not because it tries to erase the pain of those who are "left behind."

He had already acknowledged the shock of death, the experience of absence and the grief, rebellion and rage it can provoke. The peace he spoke of has another source: accepting reality without being ruled by fear, and trusting in God's faithfulness.

The Christian does not need to hide death or make it beautiful, he said. He can "look it in the eye."