Several months ago, one of my dearest friends told me, “I am dead to him,” because I left my staff position within an organization where he serves as a board member. He was joking—I think?!? In his consistently cruel and kind way, he was telling me I would be missed under the guise of saying I was no longer useful to him.
He and I have a pattern of talking every few months, however, and so I expected that my “death” might be short-lived. Some concern, question, or simple desire to check in would resurrect our friendship and restore the connection. Sure enough, he called recently. My friend wanted to discuss a decision he was facing. It was great to catch up since we had not spoken since I resigned. As we finished the call, I said, “It was surprising to see your name appear on my phone since I am now dead to you.”
After a moment of silence, he muttered, “Well, you can be alive to me whenever I find it useful.” Not to be outdone, I responded, “Oh! So, now you treat me like you do Jesus!”
It may be a while until I hear from him again…
You are dead to me. Throughout history, humans have broken off relationships with one another for various reasons. We ostracize out of legitimate anger, deep hurt, and severe betrayal. Groups use social distancing for rebuke, correction, and discipline—sometimes as a means of redemption and others as pure retribution. And in my experience, we just as often cut others out of our lives because of misunderstanding, selfishness, defensiveness, and overreaction.
Recently, there has been a good deal of academic literature and more informal writing around the growing disintegration of traditional family relationships. Feeling liberated from ancient societal norms and fueled by an increasing awareness of the role trauma can play in our lives, it has become easier for children and parents, siblings, and other kin to cut ties with each other. Recent statistics indicate that over one-quarter of young adults are estranged from one or both parents. It has become easy to walk out of one another’s lives as if they are no longer living.
More than likely, we all know at least one person who has sworn off a now former close friend because they are from that political party. Wearied by toxic conversations or feeling as if our core values are being betrayed by staying in a relationship with a diametrically opposite person, some of us disengage and distance ourselves. After the 2020 election, there was a spate of news articles talking about parents pressuring their children not to date, let alone marry, anyone from the other side of the political aisle. Different race? Different Religion? Maybe. But for God’s sake, not a (insert the party you loathe here). Those people are dead to us!
Here, I would love to include a paragraph on how wonderfully Christian folk (or Quakers, for that matter) are so much better than this. How we avoid getting swept up in this tendency to write others off. How our skill at reconciliation, conflict resolution, and collective listening to the Spirit mitigate the tendency to fracture long-standing relationships. Or at least—when relationships do get broken—that we are relentless about seeking genuine reconciliation, rooted in the radical nature of God’s love and unity of Spirit that Jesus describes as the sign of our authentic witness to the world.
Unfortunately, and I confess my most profound regret here, we are poor at this work. We splinter fellowships, break communion, and “restructure” our conflicted conferences over theological and social differences. Though we say, we have come to know the God who makes us one, who leads us into all truth and has joined us in a bond of peace that is more real and lasting than any social, political, cultural, and racial difference among humans—in our weakness we give up. And though faith groups rarely use the language of being dead to one another, we, in fact, often treat one another this way.
I do not for a moment doubt the reality of trauma-induced pain that fractures families, friendships, and communities. Sometimes, what we say and do to one another is remarkably cruel and profoundly wounding. In these cases, separation and even estrangement may be an appropriate path for self-protection, let alone healing. But as the shadows of our lives begin to lengthen, there is often an innate urge to make peace with those who are part of us—part of us by blood or bond. We are meant to be whole, including the relationships crucial to our formation. We are inwardly drawn to make peace and see our broken relations mended. But if we are dead to one another, closed to the possibility of healing, how will we be made whole?
Many years ago, when I was serving as the new pastor in a local church, an older retiree contracted inoperable cancer. With the news of the diagnosis and the treatments that followed, it opened a space for me to get to know him more deeply. One day, when I had gone out to their home to visit, the old man asked me if I would teach him to pray. “I’ve gone to church much of my life,” he said, “but I’ve never really learned how to talk with God.”
For the next many months, I usually went to their farm once a week. He was a rough and rugged fellow with strong opinions and convictions about many things. But around this matter of prayer, he seemed quite tender and genuine in his concern to honestly know God more intimately.
Along the way, I gave him things to read. We considered what the bible had to say about prayer. We discussed and experimented with different prayer practices. Each time before I left, we would sit in silence for a short spell, and then I would pray for him, his beloved wife, and any other concerns weighing on him that day. What I could not do, despite encouraging it, was to get him to pray out loud. He simply felt too uncomfortable and somehow hindered in talking to God.
The man’s son was also a church member, and they shared a special bond of love and friendship. Alternatively, the great sadness in this man’s life was a broken and contentious relationship with his daughter. His stubbornness and her rebelliousness were the perfect ingredients for an on-again, off-again relationship marred by bitterness, anger, and hurt. In these dying days, they were no longer speaking to one another. They were dead to one another.
As much as we like to think of prayer as changing God’s will and mind, the reality is much more centered on how it shapes and changes us. As my older friend and I talked about, learned, and practiced prayer, there was a growing willingness to be open to his daughter, blessing her, praying for her well-being, and even reconsidering his role in healing their relationship.
As time passed, it became clear the cancer would kill him, and his health began to diminish. During one of our visits, I invited him to think about what was most important to him during his remaining days as we closed our time with prayer. Without hesitation, he asked me to pray that God might create a way to mend the relationship with his daughter. As the prayer ended, I invited him to think about and listen to how God might ask him to take the first step.
A week later, he let me know they had met. He felt led to phone his daughter and let her know the cancer had worsened and his time was short. He expressed deep sorrow for several specific ways he had hurt or failed her over the years and wanted to see her again. Though dying, he wanted to be alive to her again. She was overjoyed at the possibility and shared her sincere regret for the pain, worry, and heartache she caused him. In their reunion that day, genuine confession and real forgiveness kissed one another. A father and daughter made peace and took critical first steps toward becoming whole.
Within a week, my old friend was in hospice care at home. The last time I visited, he appeared unconscious. Sitting by his bedside, I stayed with his wife, son, and daughter. We shared the laughter and tears that come when someone we love is about to leave us. When the family stepped out of the room, I lingered in the room to silently pray for him one final time. As I got up to leave, he opened his eyes and said, “Aren’t you going to pray?” And then he reached out his hand to clasp mine and pulled them close to his chest. Before I could speak, he said, “Dear God—thank you for my life. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for my family. Thank you for helping me be at peace with my daughter. I am so grateful. Amen.
I don’t remember what I prayed. All I remember was walking out to my car and weeping for joy—that he had somehow found the words and, more importantly, the freedom to speak his heart to God.
That evening, he died peacefully, surrounded by his whole family.
I don’t know what his final days would have looked like had he not reconciled with his daughter. Based on my experience walking alongside people in broken relationships, I think it would have been different for both. As he passed away, they both knew the other loved them despite the pain they had inflicted on one another. Each took responsibility for their share of brokenness. Peace prevailed through the shattering of their relationship. Before it was too late, they became alive to one another to mend something that, deep down, meant the world to both of them.
I think about the people I have hurt and harmed over the years in the context of giving my death away. With the remaining time, what does it mean to take a scripture passage like Romans 12:18 seriously?
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live in peace with everyone.
Rather than waiting for someone else to make the first move, what am I called to do when we may be dead to one another or at least out of sorts with each other? What are the unintended consequences for myself, family members, friends, and communities of faith if I (or you) do not seek peace while there is still an opportunity?
Walking in the Way and Stumbling Toward Faithfulness 