A Small Casket

I just returned from a memorial service up north for a member of Laurie's extended family. Two days before her eighth birthday, Rachel Anne Vekved died when the family minivan hit a patch of invisible ice on a bridge and swerved into the oncoming traffic. Her mother and little sister were also in the car, but Rachel was taken and those two were left. No one was speeding, and there was no warning or time to say goodbye.

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I didn't know her that well personally, but we did see her from time to time, and I remember visiting her parents, Laurie's cousin Tim and his wife Nancy, in summer 2001 when Rachel was a baby and we were just beginning to think it might be time for one of our own. What I remember best is how quiet and peaceful the house was. I also have a short video of me pulling her little sister around, along with Sam and Aidan, in the back of a wagon when Aidan was 1 and Sam was 2 1/2. So we were at the graveyard literally blocks from Rachel's grandparents' house (where I pulled that wagon around) and watched that little-sister-turned-only-sister put a teddy bear on that casket, the one that seemed wrong, too small to be a casket. It should be too small to be a casket, but there it sat.

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The night before Laurie and I were watching TV and I got angry at the TV. Not just yelling-at-the-refs angry but ready-to-throw-the-thing-out angry. We were watching a taped show and when she pressed stop the TV channel came in as PBS, some guy looking a bit like Terry Bradshaw was standing on a stage with a Fibonnacci spiral behind him (and you can bet your down payment that guy didn't really know the first thing about fractals, and thought it looked cool). He was talking about something about how nothing bad really happens, you have to tune in to the universe, the typical "Secret" Gnostic crap. Usually I can watch those to laugh at them and mock them a bit. But this time I couldn't even handle the sight of that faux-spiritual garbage and couldn't turn it off fast enough. My mouth actually tasted bad after that.

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Seeing (and tasting) that made me understand John's writings in the New Testament a little better. It's jarring how he veers from love to radical exclusion of evil, especially to people like me who want to tolerate everyone. But John had friends who had been mashed up by the gears of evil, in this case, the Roman Empire or the local religious institutions (or both). And people were going around like this Terry Bradshaw wannabe telling people if they'd just get their mind set right they'd rise above their problems, like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix movies. That's not just laughable -- it's evil, although get me straight, it's evil that should be dealt with the way Jesus dealt with it.

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I also noticed that during the memorial service, the pastor gave one of the deepest, most real homilies I've ever heard, but in one little case I wanted him to go farther. He read Psalm 13, where David is in anguish and asking why-why-why? He skipped a few verses, all of those asking God why he lets David's enemy triumph over him. I understand him doing that, but reading that now, after studying Paul, I suddenly see that the ultimate enemy behind all other enemies is Death himself. In fact, most evil enemy types are those who are in league with death, who will use it to intimidate and get their way. Once a tyrant kills a dissident, that dissident is gone, or so the tyrant hopes. The reversal of Jesus's resurrection shows that the ultimate enemy of all, Death himself, is going to be crushed and reversed and wiped away. So keep those verses in your reading of the Psalms, reading "enemy" not as one of death's inconsequential henchmen in David's life, but "enemy" as Death, however he shows up. And in every echo of the enemy hear Paul's victory celebration in 1 Corinthians 15: Death is toothless and defeated, and we only have to wait worship and work until God brings all enemies under Jesus' feet.

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Death will be the last to go. Obviously Death is still very much here. By faith we hope that in God's future, when Jesus is king, Death will be destroyed as surely as David's enemies were.

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And I'll look forward to getting to know Rachel Anne a little better, and seeing Scott Becker again (and asking him to play Rainbow Connection for Sam), and my grandmother and grandfather and all those who have gone before in Christ.

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Till then, there's time to reach a new normal, and to give your kids a little more grace today. And try to avoid PBS when that guy's on.