Death is sweet

“Death is the last station on the road to freedom”. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said those words to his friends when he was taken away to be executed, two weeks before the end of the war. He was part of the plot to kill Hitler. I just finished his biography. 

In a sermon written several years before, he talked about death, bringing a perspective we rarely get to hear about.

“No one has yet believed in God and the Kingdom of God, no one has yet heard of the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting  and looking forward to be released from bodily existence. Whether we are young or old, makes no difference. What are 20, 30 or 50 years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal?

Life only really begins when it ends on earth. All that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up. That is for young and old to think alike.  What do we are so afraid when we think about death?

Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible. If only we can be still and hold fast to God’s word, Death is not bitter if we have not become bitter ourselves.

Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild. Death is sweet and gentle. It beckons to us with heavenly power if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of our joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace. How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows rather in our human anguish we are shivering at the most glorious heavenly, blessed event in the world! Death is hell and night and cold if it is not transformed by our faith.  But that is just what is so marvelous. - that we can transform death.”