Do Not Resuscitate

From my sermon at the District Pastors Conference:

I went to see Millie in the hospital. At her age, with her heart condition and everything else going bad, I knew it wouldn’t be good. Her family was deeply concerned.

When I walked into her hospital room, quite a few people were already there. A couple nurses were working on IV tubes and monitors. Her family was there, talking with one of the doctors from the surgical team.

Millie was lying flat on her back in the hospital bed, eyes closed, mouth hanging open slightly. I had seen that look all too many times. I sensed it wouldn’t be much longer.

The conversation between the doctor and her kids was on possible procedures. He was explaining the risks of not doing surgery and just medicating, or going ahead with surgery, but with her condition, it would most likely trigger a “terminal event,” at which time, he told her family, “We’d need to know what you want to do.”

From behind him, eyes still closed, Millie raised her right arm straight up in the air, and in a remarkably firm voice said, “Do not resuscitate!” (The DNR bracelet was on her right wrist; she was making sure we all saw that.)

The doctor turned to her and said, “Oh, you heard all that.” He reassured her that they would do everything in keeping with her wishes.

When he left the room, I pulled up a chair next to her bed, and she opened her eyes a bit to look at me, and we talked. She told me she had her funeral all planned, what songs she wanted, the Bible verses I should share. She knew herself it wouldn’t be much longer. She said, “If this is how the Lord wants to take me out, I’m ready to go!”

A couple days later, He did just that. Millie got out of the hospital and out of rehab and out of her heart condition and out of every failing organ and cell of this life and Jesus brought her home to paradise. By God’s amazing grace she had taken the next step into Resurrection.

I truly understand and fully support those who sign on to Do Not Resuscitate orders. I find in that prayerful and faith-filled decision a reflection of the Apostle Paul when he says, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.” (Philippians 1:23). Paul had just said, “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” We Christians get that. We embrace it. We much prefer Resurrection to resuscitation.

The primary difference between the two is that to be resuscitated, you are still alive. You may look or seem dead, but you’re not there yet. Your living body just needs someone to restart the life processes, so you can continue living.

Not so with Resurrection. There you have to die first. You are most certainly dead. Dead dead. And the only One who can change that is the One who invented Resurrection in the first place. Resuscitate is medical; Resurrect is miracle.

God doesn’t explain the inner workings of Resurrection. He does not provide every detail of the process, nor the end product. We just know that we cross over from death to life. Paul, who I believe treats Resurrection as the fun part of faith, as he expresses so much wonder and joy about it, reflects that mysterious anticipation in Philippians 3:10-11:

That I may know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible (the NIV says “somehow”) I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

If our only hope is for this life in the physical world, then we have no hope at all, only pity. But Jesus inspires in us a real hope through faith in His Resurrection power, that when we have emerged from struggle and suffering, we will stand triumphantly next to Him in His Kingdom of Glory. We just need Him to take us from Point A to Point B.

Millie chose 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 for her funeral:

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

The groaning is real. We cannot ignore or erase the genuine pain and suffering that life on this side of eternity inevitably brings. Jesus gets that. In Matthew 27:46, the crucified Christ cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He’s quoting from Psalm 22:1, which goes on to say, “Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” But God did hear Him, just as He heard Millie, and He hears us. He saves us. Sometimes by resuscitating. All times by Resurrecting.

But before you get Resurrected, you get Crucified. With Christ. That’s the first step toward Resurrection, taken when the Holy Spirit baptized you into Christ and onto His cross. That’s what grace does. It saves us through Christ, with Christ and in Christ. We get what He’s having.

Paul mentioned that what is mortal may be “swallowed up” by life. He uses that metaphor in 1 Corinthians 15:51-56:

51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Victory has a big mouth, and the Gospel has a huge appetite. Death has been swallowed up. Defeated. Destroyed. The fight is over, the battle won. Jesus didn’t say, “Let’s get it started.” He said, “It is finished!” Bring on the Resurrection!

I’ve been asked that if I were able to start my own congregation and name it anything I wanted, what would I choose? I’ve given that some thought. I can’t go with “St. Stephen’s,” because that would seem a bit arrogant. I considered “Lord of Life,” but then I feared that once we started using the initials, no one would take us seriously.

I’ve always liked “Celebration,” but the good folks in Appleton serving with Pastor Rex Rinne already took that one.

I really enjoy what Pastor Bob Selle and our brothers and sisters in Wrightstown came up with in 2005 when they started their mission church. They named it “Alleluia,” with the explanation, “We are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song.” I love that! It’s got a lot of Resurrection to it.

So, Easter people, knowing that Christ has won the victory for us, and that we don’t need resuscitation nearly as much as we need Resurrection, say it with me:

He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

And Happy Easter, Millie! Amen.