© 2013 The Wired Word
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On Saturday, March 22, a rain-saturated hillside in the state of Washington
known as the Hazel Formation collapsed suddenly, sending mud and debris across
the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River and onto the valley floor, covering
approximately a square mile. In the process, the slide, about four miles east
of the community of Oso, flattened, crushed and buried everything in its path,
including people. As of Thursday, 29 individuals, including a four-month-old
baby, were confirmed dead. Another 20 people remain unaccounted for and are
probably entombed somewhere in the mud.Not counting landslides caused by dam collapses, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, the Hazel collapse, sometimes called the "Oso mudslide" in the media, is the deadliest single landslide in U.S. history. One observer said that when the wall of wet soil and debris hit the river, "it was like a tsunami."
First responders and neighbors pulled eight survivors and a family dog from the muck. At midweek, five of those people were still hospitalized. One survivor, Robin Youngblood, described the mudslide as like being whirled in a "washing machine of mud and trees."
"We were tumbled inside and had mud in our eyes and nose and mouth," Youngblood said. "I am so grateful I am alive."
Forty-nine homes were destroyed, and State Highway 530, the main artery connecting the valley communities with the outside world, was severely damaged by the landslide. According to CNN, the state transportation department is now mulling over whether the road can ever be reopened.
Using information from satellite scans, authorities estimate that the debris field ranges in height from 15 to 75 feet.
Searchers on foot and operators using earth-moving equipment continue to dig in the mud, removing bodies. Search dogs have been employed to the point that they've had to be halted to let them rest.
More on this story can be found at these links:
Washington Mudslide Death Toll Hits 29. TIME
Washington Mudslide's Speed Led to High Death Toll. National Geographic
Washington's Hazel Slide Was a Long-Known Risk. Los Angeles Times
'These Are Our People': Residents Unite to Help Washington Landslide Victims. CNN
Worst Landslides in U.S. History. Weather Extremes
The Big Questions
1. When faced with the death of a loved one, what kind of "closure," if any, can be effected by the promise of, in the words of the Apostles' Creed, "the resurrection of the body"? Is this comfort clearer to you after time goes by following a death?
2. Can fear of death be overcome by confidence in Christ and the eternity described in the Scriptures? What does the Scripture mean when it says, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:55). Is that simply poetry? What real-time comfort is there in those words written by Paul? Yet the apostle must have known, as we know, that death packs quite a sting. Do the apostle's words help create the faith to endure during such times, or do they describe the faith we, or others, seem to already have and can rely on in times of loss?
3. Does the Christian teaching of bodily resurrection have any real power to meet the human longing to not be eradicated from memory? Explain your answer.
4. The traditional Ash Wednesday ritual includes the line, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." What does that mean? Why is it important to remember that? If we are to return to dust, why is there such insistence in our culture on preservation of the body after death -- through embalming, vaults and coffins? Although these may be familiar parts of our rituals (depending on where you live), what does their use say regarding our faith in God?
5. News such as this often causes us to shudder as much because of the cause of death as because of the deaths themselves. While some who died in the mudslide were reportedly killed by blunt-force injuries, it's probable that some others died from suffocation while being swallowed by the mud. That touches on a primal fear; George Washington was reportedly so afraid of being buried alive by accident that he left instructions about how many days he would have to be dead before he was buried. Is it death we fear or the manner of death? What's the difference? How should our Christian faith help us answer that question?
Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
Genesis 2:7
... the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground ..." (For context, read 2:4b-9.)
Daniel 12:2
Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (For context, read 12:1-4.)
Genesis says God created us from dust, and Daniel refers to death as sleeping "in the dust of the earth." These verses provide a basis for the Ash Wednesday ritual's pronouncement "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." A TWW team member comments, "Seems to me this encourages us to be both humble and hopeful, for didn't God create us from the dust of the earth? And if God could do that, then he can raise us from the dust to new life as well."
Questions: The Bible is clear that in God's ultimate plan, death loses, and everlasting life is the destiny for the righteous. What personal call do you hear in that? What are some ways in which this knowledge helps you to live more fully?
Habakkuk 1:2, 12; 2:4
[Habakkuk said,] "O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? ... Are you not from of old, O LORD my God, my Holy One? You shall not die." ... [God replied,] "... but the righteous live by their faith." (For context, read 1:2--2:4.)
TWW team member Frank Ramirez suggests that the complaint of Habakkuk the prophet speaks to the human fear of nonexistence: "The prophet complains in chapter 1 that God has not answered his questions about injustice. God replies, no problem, I've got it covered. I'm sending the Chaldeans [Babylonians] to destroy you. That will solve the problem. Habakkuk replies that God, unlike us, lives forever and is above the fray. God's reply in chapter 2 is that the righteous live by their faith, which is good as far as it goes.
"This leads us to the gospel of John," says Ramirez. "In John, you either get it or you don't. Nicodemus [John 3] struggles to get it. The Samaritan woman at the well [John 4] gets it." (See more in the John 11 discussion below.)
Questions: What is Jesus' answer to nonexistence? In the prophet's recollection of his dialog with God, it almost seems as if God has forgotten what humans go through. In our efforts to witness to our faith in God, are there times when we seem to forget the real pain that accompanies life? Do we sometimes forget to provide comfort in the here and now by focusing on the hereafter?
John 11:38, 41, 43-44
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. ... So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. ..." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." (For context, read 11:1-44.)
When his beloved friend Lazarus dies, Jesus confronts the fear of nonexistence:
When he learns Lazarus is sick unto death, Jesus delays, saying that this will all be for the glory of God. When Jesus himself finally sees the grief of his friends Mary and Martha and the others who are wailing, he weeps. (They've already confessed their faith in him and in the resurrection of the dead, but of course that's not enough when your brother has just died. It never is.)
Verse 38 describes Jesus as "greatly disturbed." The Greek word John uses for this is embrimaomai, which can be translated "angry in oneself" or "angry with oneself." Team member Frank Ramirez suggests that Jesus was mad at himself for having caused all this grief by not coming promptly when told of Lazarus' illness. The idea is that Lazarus' death and the weeping of Mary and Martha allow Jesus to fully feel the pain of human grief. He "gets it."
Ramirez continues, "Jesus lives all of our fears about being entombed in his death and resurrection. The unknowing, the leap of faith. The hope of rescue and resurrection. Jesus is here. Big arrow pointing at the mudslide. You Are Here. So Is Jesus."
Questions: What do you suppose it was like for Lazarus to wake up in the tomb, swathed in burial cloths? Imagine yourself in Lazarus' place. What would you say to Jesus? If you felt terror in waking up in a dark tomb, would your relief in being released make up for it? Would you be angry at Jesus? Grateful? Both?
1 Corinthians 15:42-44
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. (For context, read 15:35-57.)
Be sure to read the entire context for these verses, for it is the New Testament's primary passage about the resurrection of the body. In popular notions about life after death, the picture is often that our body decays and our soul sort of floats up to God and lives on. This concept is sometimes shorthanded as "the immortality of the soul," but that term is not in the Apostles' Creed and can lead to confusion, as though we can be separated into two parts -- a physical part that is mortal and dies, and a spiritual part that is immortal and cannot die. As long as one trusts God and follows Christ, there is perhaps no great harm in picturing things that way, but it does miss some important affirmations of Christianity about the sovereignty of God.
Rather than immortality, Christianity's life-after-death doctrine is better called resurrection. Some Christians describe it this way: When we die, our whole being dies, body, mind, soul, spirit -- every aspect of us dies. But then, for those who have accepted God's grace, God, who gave us life in the first place, gives it to us again. We all go to the grave completely expired, every part of us kaput. But then, in God's own time, he raises the faithful, not resuscitating the old body, but giving the person a new resurrected body. That's what Paul is saying in the passage above.
To suggest that the soul or spirit is immortal puts it on a par with God. If our souls cannot die, then why do we need God? We'd have the ability to prevent our own extinction. Resurrection, however, says that God comes to the faithful dead with a new gift of life and re-creates us -- not just the soul part of us but all parts of us.
Thus the Apostles' Creed's insistence that we believe in the resurrection of the body, for in biblical thought, we don't just have a body, we are a body (thanks to preacher/writer Frederick Buechner for that way of expressing this idea). We are not just spiritual beings trapped inside a prison of flesh. Rather, the body is part and parcel of who we are, and resurrection tells us that in eternity, the faithful in Christ will function as full beings -- body, mind, soul, spirit.
In short, Christianity's teaching is that: 1) human beings are a unity of spirit, soul and flesh, 2) our earthly life does not exhaust the meaning of who we are created by God to be, and 3) immortality is not something we inherently possess, but is given to the faithful in the next life as a gift of God.
Questions: One TWW team member tells of a faithful Christian -- a member of his church -- who was blind (in fact, her eyeballs had been removed) asking him if she'd be able to see in heaven. How would you answer this woman? What sort of blindness do you struggle with in your faith journey?
For Further Discussion
1. Commenting on this week's news story, a TWW team member mentioned being puzzled when seeing reports about the extreme time and expense invested in searching for people assumed to be dead in disasters such as this mudslide. She said, "I think my puzzlement/insensitivity is related to a deep confidence that there will be a bodily resurrection as a result of the awesome work of Jesus Christ. Am I naive or just untested?" How would you answer her question for yourself?
2. Respond to this quote from an unknown source, but said to have been used by Josef Stalin: "One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
Responding to the News
Pray for all those who have lost loved ones in the mudslide and for the communities of that valley that have been devastated by the disaster.
Closing Prayer
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