On Sunday mornings before worship, I check the news to see if there are any new tragic deaths that need to be mentioned. Sometimes I end up writing concerns in the margins of the sermon or the prayers of the people. I did not do that 10 years ago.
Maybe I should have, but the clouds seem lower than before. Death seems to surround us more than it used to.
The war in Iran began on Feb. 28. AI determined the 900 initial strikes. We targeted what used to be a naval barracks, but is now, or was, an elementary school. Using outdated information, the United States military sent a Tomahawk missile into a school. We killed 175 people, most of them children. This war has resulted in more than 2,000 deaths, most of them civilians.
Brett Younger
The war in Ukraine started four years ago. About a half million people have died — 325,000 Russian soldiers, 140,000 Ukrainian soldiers and at least 15,000 Ukrainian civilians. But you have to scroll down the page to read about it. We have gotten used to that war.
We have gotten used to shootings in synagogues and schools. In the first two months of this year, there were 18 incidents of gunfire in schools. We find it hard to keep them straight. In 2025, there were 38,762 gun-related deaths in our country. So much death.
Americans are dying younger. According to one study, premature deaths rose 27% from 2012-2022. Now, 10% of males die before the age of 50. Young Americans are dying because of alcohol, drugs, accidents and homicides. Cancer is rising among young adults. Researchers are not sure why.
One of my church’s Lenten small groups has been meeting each Saturday to talk about movies that were nominated for Best Picture. The first was Hamnet, the story of the death of a child. The second was Train Dreams, the story of the deaths of a mother and daughter. The third was Sentimental Value, the story of a mother who commits suicide. Last Saturday we talked about One Battle after Another, the story of lots of people dying. They get shot, blown up, run off the road, gassed and cremated. Next week we are talking about Sinners. In that film, 134 people die — 86 men and 48 women. I have not seen it yet, so I do not know if those numbers include the vampires.
We picked these five without noticing that all of them are about death. We could have picked Secret Agent, in which a hundred people die. Frankenstein and his creation die. In Marty Supreme — a movie about ping pong — people die in shootouts. In Bugonia — spoiler alert, but you had five months to see it — everyone dies. No one dies in F1, but Brad Pitt keeps wrecking cars at ridiculous speeds. All 10 movies nominated for Best Picture are about death.
Why is death at the center of our attempts to entertain ourselves? Maybe we watch fictional stories about death because we want to pretend death only happens in movies, that we are safe if we are not living in 16th-century England, driving a race car, carrying a gun, setting off bombs or fighting vampires, monsters or aliens.
“We want to act like death is far away, because it is not.”
We want to act like death is far away, because it is not. We are drawn to the inertia that lies next to death. We give in without recognizing it.
We move away from life in small ways. Talking to friends becomes checking our phone. Reading a novel becomes reading recipes on Facebook. The songs we used to sing out loud become background music.
The casual way we step away from life is scary. Playing with our child becomes watching our child play. Listening becomes waiting for our turn to speak. Compassionate concern becomes melancholy.
We should be frightened by the ways in which we move toward death. Caring for the poor becomes being in favor of caring for the poor. Doing our best becomes doing what will get by. Worshipping God becomes critiquing worship.
We keep our distance from life by filling our days with busyness. Our souls get smothered. Death comes in the passionless routine that suffocates life.
In Train Dreams, Robert Grainier is an orphan, born in 1886. He works as a logger in Idaho. He falls in love. His wife and daughter die in a fire. He grieves for his family and the future that never will happen. His life is consumed by loneliness.
Joel Edgerton in “Train Dreams” (via IMDB)
This is how the movie begins: “There were once passageways to the Old World; strange trails, hidden paths. You’d turn a corner and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with the great mystery, the foundation of all things. And even though that Old World is gone now, even though it’s been rolled up like a scroll and put somewhere, you can still feel the echo of it.”
Throughout his difficult journey, Robert learns to feel the echoes of hope.
Rick Romancito writes: “The movie embraces the audience in honesty and truth, in the need to look past things that are superficial in order to consider what our lives really mean and what comes next.”
The story is about the way life breaks our hearts, but it also is about living with a greater appreciation of love and beauty. Life is a privilege even when it is terrible. Some of it is tragic. Some of it is magic.
William H. Macy’s Arn says: “Beautiful, ain’t it? All of it. Every bit of it.”
The movie ends with the main character flying in an open cockpit plane, upside down for a moment.
The narrator concludes: “When Robert Grainier died in his sleep sometime in November of 1968, his life ended as quietly as it had begun. He’d never purchased a firearm or spoken into a telephone. He had no idea who his parents might have been, and he left no heirs behind him. But on that spring day, as he misplaced all sense of up and down, he felt, at last, connected to it all.”
We misplace our sense of up and down, but we are connected to it all. God opens our eyes wider. God helps us breathe deeper. God takes us beyond death to life in unspectacular deeds. We live in quiet, forgettable moments when we decide to pray instead of complain, do better with the next hour than we did with the last, and offer help when we don’t have to. In this painful, beautiful world, God helps us live.
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.