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Eighth Sunday after Trinity
2nd August 2009

The power of love in the face of death

On Friday my newspaper carried the image of a young woman and her husband embracing one another with joyful faces. The story ran: "Families who help terminally ill relatives to end their lives will be free from the risk of prosecution after a landmark ruling today". The woman was Debbie Purdy who has multiple sclerosis and who has been campaigning for this change. She said, "It gives me my life back".

This event was part of a wider debate on the right of individuals to choose when they die, and the attitude of society to that. Traditionally, religious faith has held that the sacredness of life means that to end life prematurely is wrong.

The life of an individual is one life, and every life matters. One person's suffering cannot be dismissed or bundled up with that of others into anonymity. Individuals campaigning for the right of their relatives to help them to end their lives are often people suffering from terminal illnesses with distressing symptoms. They and their families don't want their particular tragedy to be swept aside by a moral judgement.

But we don't live in isolation, we live in society, and the law that aims to protect every life cannot simply and easily be set aside without their being some consequences for everyone. It is right to be concerned that people may come under pressure to end their lives. People are capable of great wrong and capable of telling themselves that wrong is right because it suits them. So whatever concessions are made, this matter will never be free of law.

It is important to note that those campaigning for change in the law are not all people who do not believe in God. But the driving force in all this is a change in the way people view the status of life. To deny the existence of God and of any sort of life after death or indeed judgement after death is to claim that there is nothing greater in the world than us; and no being to whom we can appeal apart from ourselves and our institutions. If the option to end life when life gets hard becomes a commonly accepted decision, our world will change. Sooner or later the Churches - in our case, our archbishops - are going to have to make a statement. Will it be a restatement of the past position of the church or will it be a more complex response which some will no doubt call a fudge or a compromise?

Belief in the life eternal is part of the Christian creed. If Christians believe that life belongs to God and is sacred, everything we do or say significant, then we accept a framework in which we comprehend that there is something greater than ourselves and that there are limits to our own power and our own right to exercise power. I have watched my own mother slip further into dementia unable to do the things she once loved, oblivious to the lovely surroundings of the home she is in. In her healthy life she was a gregarious person who made friends very quickly, took a great interest in people. Now she is withdrawn and gets angry with people. She was a person of great faith; now I don't know what she understands or thinks. But when I myself give communion or a blessing to a confused person I am acknowledging that this is a person created by God, and not to be dismissed because he or she can longer be what they once were. When he was alive, my father loved my mother in her confusion - which sometimes manifested itself in anger and mistrust towards him ř as much as he had when she was the young woman - the girl next door - whom he had so happily married after returning from the Second World War. I also think of people we have known here: Ken and Joyce Pinnock, Ted and Eileen Scoones: wonderful examples of the power of love.

The debate going on is a complex one and every case it will address is individual. There will be many people observing its progress who know from experience that while age and frailty can bring many sufferings, love does not necessarily grow weaker with age or pain. We have heard a lot from people who want the right to die; we also need to hear from the people who set us an example of the power of love, of faithfulness, and of trust in what will be. People who live out the words of St. Paul: faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Amen

© PCC St Martin's and St Paul's Canterbury 2008 - 2009