Sanctity of Human Life - June 2005

Related links to this sermon are
The Sanctity of Human Life, Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith Article 14
Euthanasia and the sanctity of life
What should we think about suicide?
Death And Dying

The seat belt sign blinked of as we passed through 10000 feet on our way to 33000 feet cruising altitude.
Rose let out a deep sigh, the kind that expresses what words cannot even grasp for. In that sigh was a glimpse into the pain of burying a mother, Susana Thiessen.
I wondered aloud if any one had tried to write a theology of sighing. Someone must have tried, because pain, the aquifer from which sighing spring, is a universal human experience

I wish you could have know rose’s mother
She had a sparkle in her eyes that combined mischief and kindness
She delighted in her children and grandchildren
She enjoyed being in the garden
She had a love of life

It had been a long a difficult three years
Roses mom had struggled with an accumulation of strokes
But three years earlier things got significantly worse
She was not the person that Rose had grown up with
I never got to know that Suzy Thiessen

Many of our days were spent in hospital rooms, at her bedside
Some of our days were spent at home, helping her in and out of a wheel chair, feeding her, and helping her with personal hygiene
Most of our days involved visiting her at a nursing home
Maybe she would recognize her children
Maybe not

Finally, the family gathered
A stroke left her in a comma
We sat uncomfortably, not knowing what to say or do
We had choices to make
Difficult choices
Withdrawing feeding tubs
Withdrawing hydration
Withdrawing oxygen

Everyone will die
Of this we are certain
But sometimes death is so complicated
And often it is the living that have to deal with the complications
Complicated decisions and complicated feelings

Of the five years that I knew suzy thiessen I knew her as someone in need
Her value was in who she was not what she could contribute
Certainly her children valued her for who she was
Did the medical staff? Did I

Shortly after Mom died I was faced once again with death
I was going to be a dad – the baby was only a few weeks old
But WE were pregnant
Of this we where certain
Rose was sick and had come to real loathing of Mexican food
A dislike I am glad to say she has recovered from

One day she came home from work and crawled up the stairs
The baby was gone
Died
We lost our daughter Kadi, Levi's twin, at 6 weeks three days gestation

While teaching piano she had gone into labour
And within the hour she had given birth to a peanut sized fetus and placenta
A baby

She was a wreck
I was a wreck

Our child had died
There is a well traveled trail called grief and we hit that trail hard

We cried
I wrote poetry – mostly bad poetry - words were just not adequate for my experience
We where angry and sad
For no specific reason we got mad at each other

In those moments my awkwardness emotionally, spiritually, and physically joined the pain of countless others who did not know what to say or do. This surprised me, you would think that us humans would have found a solution to the problem of pain, because surely, pain is a universal human experience.

These are the natural deaths
The life cycle deaths that take turns visiting our lives

It is easy to say that we value life
When we are speaking about the life of someone we love
When we value a whole package of memories, experiences, dreams and emotions
It is easy to say that this 6 week old fetus or this 63 year old mother is made in the image of good, because we have fallen head over heals in love with them

But if you and I are honest with each other
Things are not so simple

We struggle to love a dying parent that might have treated us poorly all of our lives
Technology has made living forever a possibility with machines and we
don’t know how to decide with life has really ended

Very recently the story of terry schivo was in the media as her husband and her parents fought a court battle and a political battle about the morality and legality of removing life support systems

And in Saskatchewan a few years ago
We witnessed the story of tracy latimer
a youth with cerebral palsy whose father said he helped her die, because she didn’t have a life worth living
he was charged and convicted of murder

the phrases active and passive euthanasia have become a part of our vocabulary
just like the words assisted suicide and abortion
and some in our society are even applying the concept of human rights to the right to die

So what is it to be made in the image of God?
To be made in Gods likeness as male and female?

Davids own child had just died and he was mad at God
And like a little child running and hiding under the bed the psalmist runs and hides
The words of his psalm wash over us

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, [a] you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to [b] me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.

In the deepest pain
In the most maddening madness
In the fiercest run away and hide feelings

The writer of the psalm tucks in this little section on god creating a human person
An image bearer
As surely a man and a woman had sexual relations to create a child
God is described as being active in creating

Actively participating in creating you
A co creator with my parents in creating me

Think about what that means

Our value is not in what we do
Our value is in the creators designing of us
And chronicling our days before even one of them occurred

At the beginning of our scriptures we have an account of creation

This what it says in Genesis 1
Then God said “let us make humankind in our image, according to OUR likeness;
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
So god created humankind in his image
Male and female he created them…

From the creation story we learn first that
Life is a gift from god
We don’t deserve it, or earn it or prove it
It’s a gift

Secondly human life is of value because it is God that declares its value
Over and over again in the story of creation god delciars “this is good. This is very good”

But humans are something different
We are not like the rest of creation
We are unique
We are image bearers
Made in God’s likeness
With the capacity for relationship with God
And with the capacity for relationship with each other

We don’t earn or aquire our worth
Right from the beginning God valued human life as worthwhile before we did anything
Our value was in who we where not in what we did
This is a very important thing to focus on

Our society is very functional
Our worth comes from what we do
And when something or someone ceases to be functional they are discarded

But god valued us before we did anything
And it is because we are image bearers of the creator
It is because God valued you and me
That we where blessed and given creative and purposeful work on earth

Over and over again in scripture we catch glimpses of Gods value and care for us
And over and over again we are reminded about our responsibility to value and care for each other

In the Old Testament, many of the laws had to do with the protection of life
The punishment for abusing or killing another human being was severe
From the child in the womb to the very old
From the slave who was treated as property to the stranger who was visiting
Life was to be valued, and protected
The more fragile the life, the greater the responsibility of the community to act as guardian, caregiver and protector

This was so strong that we read that if 2 men are fighting and in the process a pregnant woman is struck and miscarries her child, the men are to be punished because they have committed manslaughter

When Jesus came into the biblical story,
he affirmed over and over again that life was of great value

Reminding us not to worry, - look at the birds of the air who are cared for by the heavenly father…then he reminds us … are no you much more valuable than they (mtt 6:26)
And Jesus tells us “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. – so don’t be afraid; you are worth much more than many sparrows” (mtt10)

And Jesus instructed about the value of children, (mtt 18) - its not our ability to DO that makes us worth keeping

And Jesus even tells us that as far as life goes –
God does not make any distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous (mtt5)
Their lives are of the same value to their creator

And Paul teaches us that our bodies must be taken care of – they are god’s temple and they are not our own – we cant do with them what we want – god has a plan and a purpose for our bodies (1 cor 6:20)

In this quick survey of scripture we clearly see that human life is sacred,
we all have equal value,
and because god extends the same value to each of us,
we also must extend that value to each person

In short all human life is sacred and has dignity
And one of our mandates as Gods people is to protect and care for human life

So what do we do with this?

In a society where moral relativism makes legitimate everything from abortion to active euthanasia or assisted suicide
What do we believe about life and protecting life?

In a society where medical advances to sustain life,
where reproductive technology allow us to take do some pretty amazing things,
where genetic research has create a moral and ethical soup du jour
What are we to say and do as followers of Jesus?
What are the moral implications?

This could be a full semester course
I realize that
So I wont pretend to try to do everything

I began wrestling with the churches inconsistent treatment of life in the womb when I was about 19

For a long time I had been opposed to abortion
I believe, as is the position of our church
That abortion is a betrayal of Gods intention for creation
It cuts short God’s plan
It seizes the power of life and death from Gods hands

But it was on mothers day, when I was 19 that I noticed an odd inconsistency
A painful inconsistency

Mothers, as they entered the church where given a carnation
A kind and thoughtful gesture
Honouring mothers

But a teenage friend, who got pregnant decided against the option of abortion
and carried her baby to term then gave it up for adoption

She was overlooked or ignored
Tears streamed down her face
Wasn’t she a mother too?

And someone else whose only child had died shortly after birth also did not receive a carnation, an oversight I am sure – but a very painful one
Wasn’t she a mother?

Then I got to thinking
Outside the morgantaller abortion clinic I was seeing signs daily that shouted
Abortion is murder

But the couple who had a miscarriage
We didn’t celebrate that life as a church
No rose was place up front like when other birth announcements where made
And we didn’t mark the child’s death as a church
No name was given or no name announced
If we knew of the miscarriage at all we referred to it as a medical event, as an it or a thing not a life or a person
There was no public call for prayer and for care of a family in grief

I was deeply disturbed by the hypocrisy of it all

It was then that I resolved that the best way to declare the value of life
The best way to protest the immorality of abortion
The best way to protect the unborn child
Was to give honour and dignity to the life of the un born child
Even and especially when a child dies while still in the womb

And so Rose and I named our daughter Kadi
Our child
6 weeks and 3 days old

and we remember her daily with a momento purchased
a small clay bear
whose upturned face, half moon eyes and smile with a tongue sticking out
reminds us of a child who lived and yet who we never really got to know

I am not one to take up crusades
I protest and object to the immorality of abortion
But our strongest voice in the defence of the life of the unborn is our honouring of the unborn

And possibly our strongest action is not carrying a sign outside an abortion clinic
But making ourselves available to adopt a child who may otherwise be aborted
A child with downs syndrome
or taking in a 4 year old girl who is pregnant and needs the support she isn’t getting from others,
or adopting this young mothers baby

We often forget that part of the story of the rapid growth of the church in the first century after Christ
Was that Christians would go and rescue unwanted infants who where taken outside of the city to the dump to die
Tens of thousands of infants where spared death because they where unwanted
And where raised in Jesus following homes

Can you imagine making those personal sacrifices to protect and honour life?
Jesus said in Mathew 28 whatever you did for the least of these you did it to me.

Another reason for the incredible growth of the church was the care given to the dying

We sometimes think of the past in terms of the good old days
When in fact they are just the old days


But from the first century until today
The church has been very active in the care of the sick and the dying

We live in an interesting and unique moment in time when the state or the insurance company take care of the sick and the dying

But the greatest part of the missionary movement of the church over the centuries
has been the deep commitment of countless believers to care for the sick and the dying

Hospices and hospitals
Nurses and doctors
Many willing to give their own lives to save a life

How strange it is to have a discussion today about the merits of euthanasia
I don’t want to begin something when I am already way overtime
But the notion of intervening in someone’s life to cause death is completely foreign to the witness of the word of God
The idea that we would hasten someone’s death with unnatural intervention goes exactly against the witness of generations of believers who lived in a way that sought to preserve and protect life

Today we have only scratched the surface a huge topic
We could spend days investigating what scripture has to say about the sacredness of human life and our responsibility to honour and protect life
Would could spend days examining medical ethics and the multitude of choices and conflicts it has created for us

So I want to encourage us as followers of Jesus
To like Jesus lift up the down trodden
Lets be know for how we care the sick and the orphan
Lets stake our wallets and our reputations on how we bless those who are oppressed and how we take the side of life

The overflowing love of God in our lives should be seen as an over flowing love of the living

I began a few minuets ago with stories of death, loss and grief
Stories about my daughter Kadi, Rose’s mother Suzy Thiessen,
No doubt you are reviewing your own stories right now

Each of these deaths was complicated in its own way
I do not know what little or large deaths you might have confronted in your life
Or even in this week
I do not know what losses and what grief’s complicate your feelings and your thinking
I do not know what regrets you have
Regrets about what you have done
Or regrets about what you left undone
I know we are an odd collection of hypocrites who have to often compromised where we should not have
And tonight you might find yourself wrestling with frustration, guilt, shame or confusion

I want to offer you a word of hope
Jesus came to offer comfort when we where inconsolable
Jesus came to lift us out of the mud and the mire to set our feet on a rock and to make our foot steps secure
Jesus came to bring forgiveness because each and every one of us is in desperate need of forgiveness

AND Jesus came that we might have life and have it in abundance