Liturgy: “The Profit of Death,” or, “Whoopee, We’re All Going to Die!”

What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.

This week’s Scripture readings:
Psalm 30
John 21:1-19
Acts 9:1-20
Revelation 5:11-14

This week’s liturgy is contributed by Prof. Dru Johnson, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies:

In their 1965 anti-war song, Country Joe and the Fish asked, “One, two three, what are we fightin’ for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Viet Nam!” The pointlessness of the war in Viet Nam was already setting like concrete in the consciences of young Americans. Why go to Viet Nam to die? What’s the point? The song’s summary—”whoopee, we’re all gonna die”—thinly veils the soured anger of the day.

That question—what’s the point?—is both new and old. It’s new for every one of us who has to ask it of ourselves. But it’s an old and oft-repeated theme in Scripture as well. David appeals to God in the Psalm, “What profit is there in my death . . .?” God says of Paul, “For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Concerning Jesus’ post-crucifixion appearance to Peter, Jesus hints at Peter’s death and John interjects: “This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.”

We are all going to die. I’ve been returning to my own personal death often in the last few years. At this point in life, death no longer feels like a hypothetical—an over-the-horizon bridge to be crossed. And the question that always attends the thought of my own death is, “What’s the point of my current life?” Compared to classrooms of the world, I often feel silly for teaching already-well-educated students in an opulent Manhattan college. I cannot help but feel that I would better serve the world in Africa, the U.K., or a trailer park in Kansas. But my coming death corrects me. I’m NOT serving “the world”—what an asinine concept of immaturity. I am serving our God and the goofy enterprises to which He has called Dru Johnson to serve in.

We’re all gonna die. Though death is unnatural to us creatures of Eden, it’s a real and actual terminus ad quem (which is pretentiously-quoted-Latin for “limit to which”). I take comfort in death as the process of God’s call on my life because it forces me to work with haste and diligence, when I want to slack. Death reminds me that the assignments on which I work will neither be seen nor appreciated in full by me. [Os Guinness reminded us at his Interregnum lecture that, like Jesus, Abraham, and a few other “holy ones,” they never saw the fruition of God’s promises in their lives. In trust, they acted.] In trust of God’s call, I teach at The King’s College, bought a house in New Jersey, and even brought children into the world.

Like pain and pleasure, death—my own personal death—instructs and focuses me away from my silly ideas about the world and toward God’s wisdom in placing me here with you all.

Whoopee! #forrealz