Death, Eternal Life and Easter

Johann Christoph Arnold doesn't mince words when describing his mother's death.

The matriarch of the Bruderhof community learned she had cancer of the lymph nodes late in 1979 and her condition rapidly deteriorated, accompanied by tremendous pain. After decades of serving others, she also found it hard to be an invalid who needed constant care. Still, there were transcendent moments. Throughout her five-month ordeal, children gathered to sing hymns and pray at her bedroom window.

"Just hearing their voices had an almost magical impact on her – physically and spiritually," said Johann Christoph Arnold, a writer and social activist who now serves as senior elder of the eight Bruderhof communes in the U.S. and England. "Her face would radiate the love they were giving her. Some of her last words were, 'The children. The children.' "

The inspiration flowed both ways. As the children learned about her suffering, many wrestled with questions of life, death and eternity. Annemarie Arnold knew this and, on her deathbed, prayed for those making life-changing decisions on the other side of the windowpane.

No one found it strange that children found inspiration in the dying days of an elderly woman. No one found it strange that she took comfort in the fact that her life and death inspired others. In a simple book called I Tell You A Mystery," Arnold describes many similar passages from life into death. These scenes may sound strange to many, he said, because so many churches fail to teach one of life's crucial lessons – that it's possible to die a good death.

This fear of touching death results in a haunting sense of emptiness in many Holy Week services. Churches that avoid the tragedy of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday will have little to say that rings true on Easter.

"Death is not a sweet thing that needs to be glorified," said Arnold, who lives in the Bruderhof community in Rifton, N.Y. "But you have to deal with the subject of death in order to say anything meaningful about the subject of life after death. You fall silent on one and you fall silent on the other."

It's impossible to address the hopes and fears in human hearts without talking about eternal life. Nevertheless, most modern church leaders seem People still believe in it: it's just that their concept of exactly what it is has grown foggier, and they hear about it much less frequently from their pastors."

Churches that hesitate to teach people how to live and die eventually lose confidence in their ability to talk about life after death. Part of the problem is that families and religious leaders have allowed outsiders almost total control of death and dying, said Arnold.

This would be unthinkable in the Bruderhof (place of the brothers"), a tiny Protestant movement that began in Germany before its commitment to pacifism and the sanctity of life led to Nazi persecution. Today, its 2,500 members remain committed to simple living, but do not reject hospitals, medical technology and many other benefits of modern life. They even offer a spiritual advice forum on the World Wide Web (www.bruderhof.org).

But they will not adandon their way of dying, said Arnold. This includes singing, prayer and worship at the bedside. After death, family members wash and prepare the body for burial. The entire community takes part in the funeral, a procession to the grave, the burial and testimonial meals. The goal is to celebrate the person's legacy and help everyone face their grief.

"I have seen many, many people die. It involves one's whole being – one's body, one's emotions, one's spirit," said Arnold. Those close to the dying person experience a tangle of emotions: dread, anguish, sorrow, hope, exhaustion and pain. But at the moment of departing, we often can sense signs of the resurrection and the life beyond. We may see a smile, a new look in the eyes, perhaps an unexpected movement or speech, as if the dying one is standing on the edge of eternity. It can be a moment of victory.”

The Torah, John Grisham and the Mall

At first glance, verse 22 in Genesis, chapter 18, doesn't seem all that important.

God has just told Abraham Sodom and Gomorrah are in big trouble. Then a strange clause in verse 22 notes that "Abraham remained standing before the Lord." It appears, says a footnote in a major new commentary on Genesis, that the nomad who would become a patriarch briefly struggles with himself, debating whether it is possible to change God's mind.

"Abraham can't decide whether to be silent or to argue with God," said novelist and playwright Chaim Potok, the project's literary editor. "Finally, he decides not to walk away and he begins to argue with God. . It's just a pause. But in that pause, something happens that changes everything. It's a moment that defines an individual. It defines a story, it defines a people, it defines a culture, it transforms everything. Abraham changes and, thus, we change."

It would be wonderful, said Potok, if more readers dug into these kinds of tomes to uncover the riches buried between the lines. However, the events and stories covered in the Jewish Publication Society's Torah Commentary are now part of our cultural air. Those who watch the evil Darth Vader struggle to rediscover his conscience, or who agonize along with the latest flawed protagonist in a John Grisham morality tale, are traveling in the footsteps of Abraham and other biblical characters.

"The basic assumptions of our popular culture – even Star Wars or John Grisham's novels – are built on the images and the themes and the great truths of these narratives," said Potok, who is best known for novels such as "The Chosen" and plays such as "Sins of the Father." "The big ideas, the big symbols, filter down into the popular culture and into our lives. Without Genesis, you can't have a Grisham."

However, it's unlikely that copies of scholar Nahum Sarna's massive, but surprisingly accessible, commentaries on Genesis and Exodus will appear anytime soon in airport book racks, or find a niche on shopping mall shelves next to the wisdom of television talk-show stars. But there are times, stressed Potok, when "life presses us up against the wall" and all kinds of people feel the need to take another look at unfiltered, archetypal texts.

One of the defining characteristics of what historians call "modernity" was that "modern" people automatically distrusted ancient texts and stories. There were religious answers to life's questions and then there were scientific, or "real," answers. Now, people are talking about "post-modernism" and one of its central tenets is that science doesn't have all of the answers. People who no longer believe that science is God often hunt for God elsewhere.

"What this has done is level the playing field and made the great narratives of literature, philosophy and religion as valid as any of those so-called 'modern' narratives – such as science – in terms of giving meaning to life," said Potok. "It turns out that the answers to life's big questions may not be in the bottom of a test tube. . They may even be found in the pages of a book."

Meanwhile, the clock is racing toward a new millennium. On a less apocalyptic level, many post-modern people have concluded that it's impossible to find meaning without regaining a sense of family and community. For millions raised in homes that were, to one degree or another, Jewish or Christian, this means coming to terms with the Bible – the ultimate multigenerational family narrative. If they approach these texts with an open mind and an active imagination, they may be surprised, said Potok.

"This isn't Star Wars. It's not that kind of fun. But at the same time, these narratives do move right along. You could even say – in movie terms – that there is a lot of jump cutting from scene to scene and from theme to theme. You have murders, dysfunctional families, flights from danger, great battles, close calls, broken promises, brothers betraying brothers, redemption and love. And everything happens very fast."

Major Abortion News in a Pulpit

It's fitting that journalists couldn't even agree on where New York Cardinal John O'Connor was standing as he opened another chapter in America's bitter struggle over abortion.

The New York Daily News said he was at the St. Patrick's Cathedral altar as he read: "Mr. President, you are in a unique position to insure respect for all human rights, including the right to life which is denied to infants who are brutally killed in partial-birth abortion." But the Associated Press reported that O'Connor spoke out in his "mid-Mass homily, delivered from the pulpit."

It isn't unusual for prelates to speak in cathedrals. Calling attention to the fact that a cardinal delivered a sermon in a pulpit, in the middle of Mass, is like noting that a teacher delivered a lecture in a school classroom. Reading between the lines, the key is that this statement by the seven U.S. cardinals was read in churches that represent undeniable power in mainstream America.

Offered a choice, President Clinton would rather stand next to the cardinals of Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., not turn his back on them. It's easier to score political points by blasting anti-abortion radicals than by repeatedly rejecting the counsel of pro-life clergy who consistently teach that all human life is sacred.

"As long as it's bomb throwers that we keep hearing about in the media, then it's easy for the president to say, `This is what the abortion issue is all about. These right-to-lifers are all right-wing fanatics,' " said Father Paul Keenan, assistant director of communications for the New York archdiocese. "But when the cardinals step out front ... it changes the shape of the debate."

Another reason the cardinals released their statement when they did was the media storm caused by Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers. In an unusual public confession, he said that he "lied through my teeth" during last year's debates over banning the procedure that opponents call "partial-birth abortion" and its defenders call "intact dilation and evacuation." At that time he said the procedure was used no more than 450 times a year. Fitzsimmons recently said it is used as often as 5,000 times a year and that in most cases both the mother and fetus are healthy.

"The abortion-rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else," he said, in a March 3 article in the Medical News.

No one disputes the basic facts of the procedure. It begins with the manipulation of the unborn child into a breech position in the womb. The doctor then delivers the body, except for the head, punches a hole at the base of the skull and suctions out the brain. The skull is then crushed and the delivery completed.

Everything Fitzsimmons said had already been stated in Capitol Hill testimony and in isolated news reports. But this time around, the mainstream media ran the story and abortion-rights leaders had to play defense.

"No sooner does abortion receive a tiny ... bruise than a fresh coat of makeup is applied to its cheek," wrote Frank Bruni of the New York Times. This suggests a "movement enveloped by an extremism that prohibits concessions, compromise, maybe even candor. ... It is a siege mentality that has kept many who favor abortion rights silent about their qualms over late-term abortions."

In this new atmosphere, some are publicly asking questions about the safety of late-term abortions, the role that abusive men play in forcing women to abort, the emotional cost of abortions and how early fetuses become "viable," or capable of living outside the womb.

Meanwhile, O'Connor openly used theological language and compared the abortion issue with a recent Passion Play controversy in New Jersey. The cast there includes a black actor in the role of Jesus and bigots have responded with death threats. Some people, said the outraged cardinal, "can't see the image of Christ in the face of a black man. ... Others struggle to see the image of Christ in the face of the unborn."

Hollywood, TV Ratings and Religion

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein admits that he laughed early and often during the Steve Martin comedy "Leap of Faith."

But afterwards, he was troubled by the 1992 film's portrait of a barnstorming preacher, faith healer and fraud who fleeces halls full of trusting, simpleminded and ultimately pathetic sheep. Surely such hucksters exist, Eckstein decided. However, as president of the Center for Jewish and Christian Values, the rabbi had worked with enough Christians to know that charlatans are not the norm.

And there's the rub. Anyone seeking more balanced, sympathetic images of preachers at the local multiplex and video store will need to hunt a long, long time.

"Is it any wonder that so many have negative views toward evangelists and, I would say, evangelical Christians as a whole?", asked Eckstein, during a Washington, D.C., forum on Hollywood and religion. "The fact is that Christian beliefs are belittled. ... The cherished symbols of their faith are put to blasphemous uses. If there is a Christian character in a film, you can almost always be sure that he is . a fool, a liar, a cheater, a murderer, a fraud or a crazy person."

At the very least, said Eckstein, such displays of media bias have hurt efforts to promote tolerance and understanding between opposing camps in America's culture wars. It's highly likely they've poured fuel on the flames.

The rabbi's remarks came before the start of the latest clash between the entertainment establishment and critics who accuse it of undercutting parents, clergy and other moral leaders. Right now, the usual suspects are debating the merits of the new television ratings system.

It's significant that many key actors in the TV Parental Guidelines drama have played leading roles in disputes over Hollywood and religion. Thus, in the months ahead, Jack Valenti and the Motion Picture Association will continue to sing the praises of those flickering icons that proclaim TV-G (general), TV-PG (parental guidance), TV-M (mature) and so forth. Off stage, others will quip that studio executives should be candid and stick other initials in the top-left corner of TV screens, such as PG-ABC (anything but Christianity).

It's hard not to notice the "peculiar wall of separation between God and screen," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.). "The common, Judeo-Christian principles that motivated our Founding Fathers' thoughts and actions and that have served as our society's moral safety net have been replaced with a brand of moral relativism that not only tolerates but frequently celebrates the perverse, the grotesque and the degrading."

The senator and other critics noted the irony of a recent Fox network decision to pull an episode of its horror series "Millennium" which centered on a series of clergy murders. The Washington Post reported that producers felt the timing was awkward, since this program would have aired the night after the death of Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. However, Fox decided it would be fine to use the episode a week later - dead priests and all.

Meanwhile, a rare chorus of feminists and evangelicals is attacking the critically acclaimed film "The People vs. Larry Flynt." Both groups are furious that it whitewashes parts of the Hustler publisher's perverse past, while fundamentalists also wonder if part of the film's popularity with Hollywood insiders is its use of the Rev. Jerry Falwell as a villain.

And so it goes, world without end. Hollywood bashes conservative religious leaders, many of whom respond with simplistic attacks on Hollywood.

Clergy must realize that it isn't enough to curse the darkness, said the Rev. Doug Millham, preaching at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. They should tell the faithful to pray for those who create the media products consumed by millions and support efforts to minister to the more than 2,000 committed Christians in Hollywood. They can encourage talented young people to enter the entertainment industry.

"There's no middle ground," he said, in a sermon reprinted in Movieguide magazine. "One change of producer, one change in script, one change in network leadership, will alter the course of what millions of people think and feel and believe about life itself."