Sermon: Suicide and Euthanasia 2 Cor. 4:16-5:9 August 14, 2005
THEME: The difference between turning off life support, euthanasia and suicide. We need to recognize God’s authority over life and death. Suicide and euthanasia (assisted suicide) are not compatible with Christianity though they are forgivable. We need to offer compassion, support and love to the sick and suffering. (This sermon draws heavily upon Adam Hamilton’s book, Confronting the Controversies.)
“A child is born with a medical condition that will take her life in a matter of days. She requires a feeding tube and oxygen to survive that long—without them she will die in hours. A man has discovered that he has a debilitating disease that will result in the gradual loss of all of his physical abilities in the next three years. He will be mentally alert but trapped within a body that no longer works, unable to speak, to walk, to swallow, even to breathe. A woman discovers she has an inoperable brain tumor. She worries that she will be a burden to her husband and children as her conditions worsens. Eventually she loses all ability to care for herself and requires her family to clean her, feed her, and carry her. A teenager has lost her battle against heart disease. She slowly slips into a coma. As her heart weakens she is sustained only with the help of a respirator and other life support. Another man has been told by his physician that he has a rare form of cancer that has attached itself to his bones. No only is there no cure but the process of dying will be extremely painful.” (Adam Hamilton Confronting the Controversies, p. 65)
A young man struggles with his sexual orientation. His family and friends have rejected him. He feels the weight of society’s repulsion and condemnation. Even his church has pushed him away branding him a “condemned sinner.” In the depths of despair he hangs himself. A mother watches as her only child is tragically killed. Grief consumes her, she is unable to work or even eat. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone, she pushes her husband and friends away. The medical bills from her son’s final days begin to pour in. There is no money to pay them. In the darkness of her son’s room she swallows every last pill she could find, lays down in his bed, and dies. One month later, her husband in hopelessness takes his own life. An older man never had time for relationships, marriage or family. His job was his life, he was successful and prosperous. But now he could no longer work, he was retired. He still woke up every morning at the same time. He’d dress and then sit down read the paper and watch reruns, he had no place to go, nothing of any value to do. Soon he quit getting dressed every day and he stayed in bed more and more. He felt useless, alone and rejected. There is was no use going on, he takes a gun out from his bedside drawer, cocks back the hammer and pulls the trigger.
These are real life scenarios that happen in cities across our nation every day. You may have been fortunate enough to have avoided being confronted by them personally, but the day will come when you will be touched by a similar situation just as difficult as these. It may be a parent. It could be a friend. God forbid, but it might be a spouse or a child. It could even be you. At such a time you will need to know what you believe about death and about how we die. If you are a Christian, the most important consideration for you will be to know what God’s will is concerning how the suffering face death and what is and is not acceptable regarding our treatment of those suffering and dying. In the Christian Advocate during the Terry Schiavo story, Bishop Lindsey Davis stated, “As a culture we’re uncomfortable with death and suffering and some of these end of life issues we confront only when we have to. That’s unfortunate because our faith has much to say about living and dying.”
For United Methodist scripture, tradition, reason and experience provide us guidance and framework for all of life and death situations. Though the Bible never uses the words suicide or euthanasia which is better known as assisted suicide or mercy killing, it does provide us with incite as to God’s desire.
But before we go on let me address an issue that many of us have wrestled with, the issue of life support. Often in the course of medical treatment for grave physical crises it is necessary to use artificial means – respirators, ventilators, heart machines – to keep patients alive. Sometimes when persons are placed on life support, the days that follow reveal that the person’s condition is irreversible. Often family members agonize over the decision to withdraw life support.
Some have erroneously called this decision “passive euthanasia.” Most, however, do not consider the decision to withdraw life support in individuals who are dying and who can no longer sustain their own life apart from artificial means to be a form of euthanasia. The key distinction is the difference between acts of omission and commission. In suicide and euthanasia it is the act – the injection, the gun, the pills ---that takes the life of the individual. When we withdraw medical life support from persons who are dying, it is the disease or physical condition that eventually takes their lives. These individuals could not have lived without extraordinary medical means. Though, it is important here to distinguish that food and water are not extraordinary; they are part of the natural order of creation. Individuals on extraordinary medical life support have already entered the death process. Life support is only postponing the inevitable. Turning off the life support system allow the individual to be received into eternity by God.
That having been said let us look at the case of suicide and euthanasia. There are at least seven different times in Scripture when a person took his own life or had assistance in the act of suicide.
Abimelech, the son of Gideon, in Judges 9 was a wicked ruler; he killed his seventy brothers in order to rule over Israel. During a revolt a woman dropped a millstone on his head, cracking his skull. As he lay dying Abimelech called to his armor-bearer and asked him to kill him because he did not want it said that a woman killed Abimelech, the king. The armor bearer complied.
In Judges 16 we find the story of Samson who was deceived by Delilah into revealing his strength came from God through his hair. Delilah cut off his hair allowing the Philistines to seize Samson. They gouged out his eyes, and chained him to pillars. Samson prayed to God, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And in one last display of might, Samson pushed the pillars with all his might and collapsed the entire building down killing himself and the Philistines.
In 1 Samuel 31, Saul and his men were also fighting the Philistines, when the battle grew fierce Saul was critically wounded by an archer. He begged his armor bearer to draw his sword and run him through. When the armor bearer refused, Saul took his own sword, fell on it and died. His armor bearer seeing what had happened, in despair, took out his sword and fell on it likewise and died.
Ahithophel, the prophet in 2 Samuel 17, was ignored and rejected so he saddled up his donkey, went to his hometown, put his house in order and hung himself. Zimir in 1 Kings 16 murdered the king of Israel and took his place. When the rest of Israel heard what had happened revolted and pursued him. Retreating into palace Zimir set in on fire, remaining inside to be consumed by flames.
And then in the probably the most well known suicide account, Matthew 27 recounts the death of Judas, the disciple who handed over Jesus to the Roman authorities. When Judas saw that Jesus was condemned he was seized with remorse and went away and hung himself.
Interestingly enough though, in all of those scriptures not once do we read that God because they had committed or assisted in suicide, condemned them to hell. In fact it doesn’t even say that the act of their death was sinful. It wasn’t until the fifth century that Augustine argued that suicide was a violation of the sixth commandment, “thou shall not commit murder.” Later Thomas Aquinas, who was catholic and believed that confession of sin must be made prior to one’s departure from this world to the next, taught that suicide was the most fatal of all sins because the victim could not repent of it. This is based on the fact that if a person dies while they are committing a sinful act, they are unable to confess and ask for forgiveness.
This is an incredibly damaging and unbiblical view. Do you believe you have confessed each and every sin that you have committed in your life? If it were possible to do so, then there would have been no need for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are sins in all of our lives that we choose to ignore or we legitimatize in our own self righteousness. There are sins that we commit that we aren’t even aware of. You see, the problem with the view of suicide as unforgivable because the person was unable to confess is that it represents a gross misunderstanding of salvation. We are saved by the grace of God, not by works. We do not know what was in the heart of individuals who commit suice, what has happened within them that has sent them into such despair. As we said a couple of weeks ago, only God knows all the facts, knows the condition of the heart and soul. He alone sees the degree of sanity possessed at the time of action. And He alone is the only judge.
Sometimes in our desire to have things cut and dry, black and white, we run head long into extremist views without allowing compassion and mercy to be present. And, unfortunately, the church has frequently erred on the side of judgment rather than mercy. Churches have refused to host funeral services for someone who has committed to suicide. They have refused to allow suicide victims to be buried in church cemeteries next to their family or brothers and sisters in Christ. In those instances the church has failed to demonstrate the life of Christ, they have lost the opportunity to minister to individuals in great need, and they have turned people away from the loving presence of Jesus Christ.
Lewis Smedes, professor of theology and ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary summarizes his thoughts on the Church’s response to suicide in this way, “I believe that, as Christians, we should worry less about whether Christians who have killed themselves go to heaven, and worry more about how we can help people like them find hope and joy in living. Our most urgent problem is not the morality of suicide but the spiritual and mental despair that drags people down to it. Loved ones who have died at their own hands we can safely trust to our gracious God. Loved ones whose spirits are even now slipping so silently toward death, these are our burden.”
Still, it is important to be incredibly cautious in our approach to the issue of suicide and euthanasia. Christians can not accept suicide and euthanasia a solution to life’s sufferings and challenges. God is the giver of all life and breath. In Genesis 9:5,6 we are told that we are not to take life intentionally because each of us is created in the image of God and God alone has this authority. When we intentionally take life, we usurp God’s authority and we begin to “play God.” Psalm 139 tells us that God alone has numbered all of our days and knows them from beginning to end. I Corinthians 6:19 tells us that our bodies belong to God and were given to us as a gift.
It is in faith that as Christians we believe that God is able to use suffering for our good and for the good of others. “Jesus suffered before his death. He knew what it was like to face pain and suffering, and he knew what it was to pray for God to take away the suffering[ – and for God not to.] Jesus put God’s purposes first before his own desire to end the suffering. Jesus suffered immensely on the cross but God used that suffering to save the world. Suffering often turns us to God. Suffering and the Christians’ response to it may turn others toward God. Suffering, mentally and or physically can deepen our faith and it can strengthen our souls. It is a key ingredient to life; it shapes us, brings out the good in us, and makes us what we would not have been otherwise. God is able to bring good out of evil and tragedy.”
We, as Christians, believe and trust God completely that he will be with us even in the valley of the shadow of death. We face the most frightening of circumstances with the knowledge that God will never desert us. You see, the power of the gospel isn’t simply that God walked among us to show us the way that we should live but that he showed us also how to die. On the third day Jesus rose from the grave. “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?”
It is in this faith, his certain and sure hope, that allows Paul in Corinthians to write, “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.” This is how Christians face death and suffering not by wanting to end it sooner rather than later, though we may have those feelings at times. We face death and suffering knowing that our lives belong to Christ—that they are not our own. We face death and suffering believing that in God’s good time we will be called home—we don’t have to hurry the process. We face suffering and death hoping that God can use us and use our suffering, to let God’s light shine through us and to bring something good from something awful and even something evil.
I have faced many struggles and challenges in my life, difficult and devastating events but I have never felt the depth of despair that can drive one to consider suicide. Nor have I ever had to face serious illness, lifelong debilitating pain or inability to care for myself. My heart goes out to all who have ever considered suicide, who have ever had to face the thought of removing life support from someone. My heart breaks for those who look at euthanasia as a way out of being a burden to their family, who feel that their life is no longer worth living. As a church we need to show tremendous compassion and concern for those in these crisis situations. We need to be there for them, love them, hold on to them and help them get professional help if need be.
I have not faced those situations but, I have seen individuals face death with dignity and hope in spite of very adverse conditions. My uncle began preaching in his teens and kept preaching all his life even when his vision began to fade. He just printed his sermons in bigger and bigger letters. But then he was diagnosised with Parkinson’s Disease and I watched as it robbed him of the ability to speak clearly, to walk or care for himself. I never once heard him complain about the disease. I never once even heard him questions “why me?” In his final hours, as a family we gathered together around his bed. His respirations and heart rate began to race rapidly. Someone suggested we sing hymns or read scripture to him. As we sang his heart rate and respirations calmed and slowed. Each and every time we paused for minute they would pick back up, racing as the beep of the monitors pinged through his hospital room. As we continued to sing to him it was on the promise of the song of Lord and Savior that he left this world. And it was at his funeral that his body was ushered out to the resounding joy of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Even in ravages of disease and death he allowed Christ to be supreme.
Let us pray:
God of compassion, your son Jesus wept with Mary and Martha at the death of their brother Lazarus; we ask now for your presence with the dying and grief stricken. May those who are afraid and in pain see your tears and know your embrace. Give courage to all who are anguished; give wisdom to those who decide the course of another’s life. Teach us to show the power of your love that suffers with us in all things and gives us life in abundance. Grant that in life and in death we may sing for joy beneath the shadow of your wing. In the name of the One who died and rose gain to reign with you and your Holy Spirit, now and forever; Amen.
