My neighbor died last night. Suddenly.

No warning. No danger signs.

She went to bed and never woke up.

We woke up in the morning to police cars and an ambulance outside their house. Eventually the ambulance left, a medical examiner showed up, and then the hearse came.

I walked across the street and stood on the sidewalk as they wheeled her out. I prayed prayers found in the Book of Common Prayer. The funeral home workers and the medical examiner and the remaining cop all looked at me like I was insane. I felt insane. Standing on a cold sidewalk, weeping through the Litany at the Time of Death, the last words of the commendatory prayer chasing after that unmistakeable profile of the low slung hearse as it turned out of sight:

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

Prayers and tears repulsed them.

Our culture has no soul. We’re mechanistic, clinical, and procedural with an institutionalized aversion to anything that doesn’t fit that mold.

We thought the aging mom in the house had finally passed. Her daughter and son-in-law had moved in over a year ago to care for her.

But it turns out it was the daughter, the caregiver, who had suddenly died.

I spoke with her husband. He had come outside to walk their little dog.

He was…what’s a word that captures this kind of hellscape?
_______

In the Gospel of Mark, the writer uses the phrase “kai euthus” over and over and over to move the story along. It’s a constant refrain of “and suddenly” or “and immediately”. It’s an exhausting pace as the writer pushes Jesus from story to story until the apocalyptic climax of crucifixion and a strange anticlimax of a tomb with angelic visitors telling people about the resurrection, and everyone running away and not saying a word.

We’re still like this because life is still like this. We can feel like we’re dragged along, lurching from one sudden moment to the next. And we hope it all leads to the mountain top, the corner office, the “good life”, but way too many of us end up betrayed and killed for no good reason, and when we get to the other side, people still aren’t there for you.

And suddenly…

The caregiver dies, not the one who is sick and in decline.

And suddenly…

The ones you’ve loved and invested in cast you aside.

And suddenly…

That loss of appetite means you have an inoperable tumor.

And suddenly…suddenly…suddenly…suddenly…

Can you imagine how Jesus must have felt when the people ran away in fear after the angels told them he’s alive and to go meet him in Galilee?

I can see his shoulders dropping as he sighs and shakes his head. We’re such a bundle of anxious grasping for control.

But he remains.

Waiting in Galilee.

The place where it all started.

If we just slowed the hell down, we’d know where to run.