"Why Do People Have to Die?"

Pastor Laura Guy

March 30, 2008

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We acknowledged that a theological discussion about death can only happen when we are not grieving the loss of a loved one. For those who are hurting, we can remind them that Jesus also knew what it meant to lose someone he loved - likely his father Joseph - and he walks with us in our sorrow.
We read Jane's letter, asking God why people have to die. To find the answer, we read the story of Adam and Eve in Gen. 3:1-13, 19. We saw that God created a perfect world without death. He walked with us and there were no barriers in the relationship. But in order for the love to be real, there had to be another choice. God placed a very dangerous tree in the garden to be the other choice. The fruit of that tree allowed you to be your own god. Unfortunately, that's what we chose. It's called the Fall because the perfect world God created fell, and the imperfect world we live in, a world where people are their own gods, contains pain, sorrow, illness and death.
We saw how God has been hard at work from the beginning to undo what we have done. He tried to clean up our mess through the children of Israel and the prophets. But Jesus was God's ultimate solution to our mess. In Jesus, the pieces of God's perfect world are slowly being put back in place. In Jesus, death is not the end; we can walk with God forever.
We answered Jane's question, ..."why don't you just keep the ones you got now?" by realizing that God does want to keep the ones He's got now. He wants to keep all of us with Him forever. That's why He sent Jesus. We prayed that God would forgive us for wanting to be our own gods, and we thanked Him for sending Jesus to clean up our mess.
We shared communion at the table of love.