The Last Words of A Brother

The last words of a brother to be considered in the context of the first words that are offered to those being ushered into the eternal presence of their Lord

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
— Matthew 25:21

“Nice to meet you again, I’ll meet you guys soon.”

His last words to us–my fiancé and myself–were tinged with humor and wrapped in an inside joke. How fitting. How true to his spirit of joy, warmth, and of a loving and true friend, brother, and fellow saint.

And ironically, a double edged sword. Fitting because they reflected who he was in the every day, and fitting because they prophesied who he would, in the next half hour, become—a graduate of the Church militant to the Church triumphant; no longer bound by his earthly body, but a soul joined to the Father in Heaven; unable to meet us here on earth again soon, but still also promising to meet us soon (yes, soon, somehow, someway, for all things are soon) in a newer, holier, and better way, when we are reunited to him in glory.

So often do we who are Reformed speak of the Church militant, where we are, and the Church triumphant, where our brother and so many other saints who have gone before us are. So often do we speak of the perfect will of our Heavenly Father, and of His complete sovereignty. So often do we casually slip into theoretical and theological discussions about what Heaven will be like, what the Second Return of Christ might entail, and of all other such mysteries.

It is another thing entirely to experience the mystery of a loved one, one with such a promising future and seemingly so many years ahead of him, being called home, and in an undeniably tragic way.

It is another thing entirely to experience the perfect will of the Father in this mystery–how even the distressing manner of his death and heartbreak of discovering him and being by his side in the chaos of it all was providentially orchestrated for the glory of God and comfort of his family. It is another thing entirely to be laughing and fellowshipping with a brother, present with us here in the earthly realm, and to only half an hour later see him and know, instinctively, that he is already rejoicing in the presence of the Almighty, a member of the faithful militant called to the triumphant courts of his King.

As we were crying out to the Lord for mercy and for his life, he was, simultaneously, experiencing the life everlasting. As we turned heavenward to praise the Lord upon hearing the official confirmation of his passing, crammed into that tiny hospital office, he too was praising the Lord in perfect Spirit and Truth, with the whole expanse of Heaven stretching before him. We may have beheld his face and shed tears of sorrow, but he was beholding the face of Jesus Christ, our tender Savior, who welcomed him home to the Land of the Living, where every tear is wiped away. ¹

That is what it means to possess the Christian Faith, to have been gifted it. To experience death in such a tangible way, yet not doubt for even a second the everlasting life that is promised to the children of God, and to have complete hope in the resurrection of the body on the last day.

Why did He rise in the flesh in which He suffered, unless to show the resurrection of the flesh…. But if our physician Christ, God, having rescued us from our desires, regulates our flesh with His own wise and temperate rule, it is evident that He guards it from sins because it possesses a hope of salvation…”
• Ambrose of Milan, On the Resurrection ²

I remember so vividly jumping out of the car and running with my fiancé toward the body of our friend, our brother in the faith. The only words that would leave my lips were, “Good and gracious Father, have mercy.” Even while my speech was limited by the shock of the scene, by the slowly rising mire of panic that comes with trying, unsuccessfully, to revive a loved one, threatening to choke off every rational thought–even then, every Psalm, verse, and passage that my father required me to memorize, and catechized me in as a little girl, was illuminating and flooding the horror-hollowed valleys of my mind, staunchly pushing back the swamp of consternation with a burning, holy power.

I recalled Revelations 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Just as Christ first did for me when He saved me as a child, all the Word I had been given and had consumed was knocking on the door of my mind, forcing its way past my shaken sensibilities to give me a deep comfort that contradicted what my five senses were experiencing.

“Yea, I have loved You with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee…Sanctify them in truth, for your Word is truth….I AM WHO I AM…Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine…The Lord is my Light and my Salvation, whom shall I fear?” ³

And there to parry the dawning fear that would later be realized, over and over I heard, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” ⁴ This well-known and well-beloved passage from the book of Psalms was the rising buoy I clung to in the wreckage of my comprehension. For surely, we knew our brother to be counted among the saints. Surely, he was a child of the Most High, his name written in the Lamb’s book of life. As such, even the elements that made the manner of his death sorrowful and painful were precious to the Lord, for our brother was precious to Him.

These passages and more were so captivating in the fortitude that they gave that it almost seemed silly, almost felt wrong. They continued to pierce my mind as the darkness of the evening unfolded, like a lighthouse beacon cutting through the blackest and fiercest of storms, showing me the way when there was none, ever guiding me into the rest of my God. It was my Heavenly Father giving me no choice in receiving the mercy He so freely gives His children; it was my Lord keeping His promises to not forsake those who He loves.

The dissimilitude of smelling death and sorrow but hearing the words of life and truth ringing in your mind, louder than the cacophony of sirens, shouts, or even the deafening silence of a hospital waiting room, is one example of the paradox that defines the life of a Christian.

How is it possible to feel a grief that cuts you to the bone, but to concurrently be upheld by a peace deeper and more still than any well, a peace “that surpasses all understanding?” ⁵ It is a contradiction that mirrors the mystery of the Gospel; the mystery of a completely irredeemable people, dead in sin, being redeemed and raised to new life on no merit of their own, but entirely through the ransoming work of the blood of Christ.

“And so we, having been called through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety, or works that we have done in holiness of heart, but through faith, by which the Almighty God has justified all who have existed from the beginning; to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”
— Clement of Rome, The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians ⁶

Yet, while there is a surety and steadfastness in this mystery, in the oxymoron of mourning turned to dancing, ⁷ there is an understandable confusion on the why of it all, because these mysteries are inherently heavenly, and we are still bound upon this earth. This enigma is one that is not unique to us in our grief, but rather, one that believers have wrestled with through the centuries.

Gregory of Nyssa, upon the passing of his brother, Basil of Caesarea, wrote On the Soul and Resurrection, a dialogue modeled after Plato’s Phaedo. Attempting to process and make sense of the loss of his beloved brother, one who most assuredly was “so great among the saints,” Gregory visited his sister at the convent where she dwelt, only to be driven to deeper despair when he found her on the brink of death as well.

In the dialogue that they shared, Gregory wrestled with the promised resurrection of the body with great vexation of soul and spirit, while his sister attempted to calm him with rational discourse and the recollection of both Scripture and philosophy, ⁸ full of a calm fidelity even in her own sickbed, a fidelity grounded in the Gospel and resurrection promises.

Even great pillars and patriarchs of the faith and of the Church felt and feel grief, are overcome by it. Even those who hold the Holy Writ close to their hearts, believing assuredly in the truth of its living Words, weep wretchedly, longing to have one more moment, one more second with a loved one.

Even Christ, the Word in flesh, wept in grief.

The passage of John 11, while already a favorite of mine because it is nestled away in my favorite Gospel, now carries a more significant breadth of meaning when addressing the questions that come with breath-thieving swiftness in the aftermath of a tragedy. Mary and Martha, two women who conversed, walked, sat, and broke bread with the Lord of Lords were still so broken by the grief of losing their brother that they came to Jesus as little children to a trusted guardian, shattered to simplicity so that all they could say was “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ⁹ And Christ, the Lord of all Creation, in whose hands is both the breath of all living things and the keys to Death and Hades, the very Resurrection and the Life–bore their grief with them.

“Jesus wept.” ¹⁰

In the shortest but one of the most profound verses in the whole of Scripture, we see how permissible it is to grieve those who we loved, to feel their absence keenly and wish it were not so.

Yet, this is not the end. Twas not the end for Lazarus, nor our brother, nor for us. The sorrow of mourning is not to be the defining quality of our grief, for how then could it be turned to dancing? How then could the gladness that follows, the gladness whose sole purpose is to cause us to sing praises of the glory of the Lord, come? ¹¹

Indeed, it has been told us, “Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” ¹² Thus, the tale told in John 11 does not end with Christ’s tears. They were the prologue for the resurrection power that was to come, even as our tears for our brother and all those who have gone before us are. As Lazarus was brought back to life and to where His Savior was, so has our brother been brought to the fullness of life and to the face of His Savior.

And so shall we be brought one day too, one day “soon.”

For not only are we assured that our dearly departed are far better off now than they once were, but we are equally assured that we will join them there, that we will know them as intended, free forevermore of the weight of this world.

We are assured that even as we plant their body, the former vessel of their soul, in the ground and water it with tears, that we water not in vain, for that vessel is a seed that will burst forth in perfect glorification when the trump sounds. That together, caught up in the sky and carried “further up and further in,” we will all while away eternity in holy communion with our precious Triune God.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle ¹³

I have, of late, been reading and rereading Revelation, pondering on this eternity, and trying to envision and comprehend–even more than I did when I was four years old and read that book for the first time–what our brother is seeing right now. What he is experiencing. But I find myself just as flummoxed and inquirious–if not more so, for the more you learn, you realize the less you know–than my four year old self.

Saint John was taken up out of his own body to be able to receive the visions he recorded in Revelations, and well did this apostle whom Christ loved record them. They still fall short of the glory upon glory. They still leave the reading believer straining for a deeper understanding, and yearning for the day when we will no longer see dimly, but will finally see in full. ¹⁴

Our brother is seeing it all. He is living it, tasting and seeing it. The scales have fallen from his eyes and the veil pulled back. There is nothing between him and the throne of the God he so faithfully served for the entirety of his young life. He has entered into his inheritance and although he has eternity to pull from it, he will never run out of the riches of Heaven. May we be as steadfast as he was, and strive on to Zion.

“This hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend.
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.”
― John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress ¹⁵

Even as Gregory of Nyssa described his brother, so will I dare to describe our brother the same, one so “great among the saints.” Not great for his works or many accomplishments, but because his life was so defined by the Gospel. Great because all those who knew him spoke of his holiness before all else, and were so compelled by his example that even in eulogizing him, said that they would be remiss if they did not share this Gospel with all who were present to celebrate his life.

This is greatness because it encompasses all the communicable qualities of our Creator that his Lord sanctified in him and in his life. Though he has gone ahead on the way, the glory his life gave to the Lord does not depart with him, but will continue to shew forth in the lives of those who knew him and who carry his memory.

Dearest brother, we rejoice to have known you, but more so that you were known to Jesus, who kept you faithful to that great end. You have run the race, and beaten us all. Even so, we will cherish the gift of knowing you, the joy of being united to you in the Body, and for the immense honor of serving you at the last, until we meet you once more–and yes, it shall indeed be soon.

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”
1 Thessalonians 5:23

END NOTES:

1. Revelation 21:4. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
2. Ambrose of Milan. On the Resurrection. Translated by Marcus Dods. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts. Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885. ↩︎
3. Jeremiah 31:3, John 17:17, Exodus 3:14, Isaiah 43:1, Psalm 27:1. (King James and English Standard Versions) ↩︎
4. Psalms 116:15. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
5. Philippians 4:7. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
6. Clement of Rome. First Clement. Translated by J.B. Lightfoot. In Apostolic Fathers, edited by Michael Holmes. Baker Academic, 1992. ↩︎
7. Psalm 30:11. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
8. Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and Resurrection. Translated by William Moore. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by Phillip Schaff. Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893. ↩︎
9. John 11:21, 32. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
10. John 11: 35. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
11. Psalm 30:12. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
12. Psalm 30:5. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
13. Lewis, C.S. The Last Battle. HarperCollins 2002. ↩︎
14. 1 Corinthians 13:12. (English Standard Version) ↩︎
15. Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. Culturea 2024. ↩︎