Have We Forgotten The Same Thing As The Architects Did?

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When the first high rise flats were built in Britain, it soon became apparent that among the many signs of negligence in their design was that the lifts were too small to take coffins. To this day, undertakers often have to stand guard at the base of lifts, while the body is taken out in a body bag and hastily transferred to a coffin at the bottom.(1)

They had forgotten that people in flats sometimes die - forgotten not because Tower Block architects are terrible people but because all across society, Death is something we don’t like thinking about. Because we are terrified of it.

The Romans were so terrified of death that they buried people outside the towns so that their ghosts wouldn’t come back and haunt them. In this country we aren’t quite as bad as that - but, as less people go to church, fear of death is rising. Once upon a time, people would happily have had the coffin of their loved one open in their front room as they waited for the funeral. Not any more. Now we are terrified of death. We want to pretend death doesn’t happen because we are afraid of our own death. And we are afraid that is the one thing that is totally beyond our control

However, there was ONE person who wasn’t scared of death - Jesus.

It’s odd when you read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death- particularly John’s Gospel which goes into the most detail. Jesus is the one who is meant to be having his freedom taken away from him yet actually Jesus is in complete command of the situation. He knows what is going to happen - and indeed tells his disciples at the Passover Meal on Thursday night; the people who come to arrest him are more frightened of him than he is of them. One of Jesus’s terrified disciples picks up a sword and takes a swipe cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant - only for Jesus to immediately heal the ear. You think someone who could do that didn’t have the power to get down off the cross/

He freely lets himself be taken to the high priest’s house. The guard who slaps him for speaking too boldly to the High Priest is given a neat put-down. When Pilate “tries” Jesus it is more like Pilate being on trial: Jesus stands still and poor Pilate goes in and out of the Praetorium like a cuckoo in a clock at midday. The carrying of the cross feels like his choice rather than an imposition. The new relationship between the beloved disciple and Jesus’ mother, whatever the deep significance we read into it, is Jesus’s initiative. (2) In the midst of awful things being done to him, Jesus calmly says “Father Forgive them for they know not what they do”. Rather than appearing frightened himself, Jesus provides pastoral care to thief being crucified next to him. And then he ends it all triumphantly with “it is finished”.

Jesus has got things totally under control….

His death wasn’t some tragic accident - it was something he freely went to.

And he went through to take away our fear of death.

Romans tells us Death entered the world through sin. We look at the world and it doesn’t feel right. It’s not right that more than 1000 people died as a result of the hurricane in Mozambique. It’s not right that people are dying of an Ebola epidemic in DRC. It’s not right that your gran died of cancer. It’s not right that your baby was still born, died before she could even be born. The world isn’t right.

And the bible tells us human sin is behind it all - we can see obviously when human greed creates the climate change that causes 1000 people to die in the hurricane in Mozambique. And the bible tells us- all the mess, all death, all tragedy - stems from the way we have broken the world.

Just like we tried to break Jesus on the cross. We thought that the cross would break Jesus - but actually on the cross Jesus breaks sin and death…

God - the one who flung stars into space (3) - the one who is totally in control - comes as a human being and freely takes death on the cross.

And on the cross Sin is broken [snap a pencil to show the break] God takes the consequences of sin on himself to begin to put our mess right.

In the Church of England in one of the prayers we use - we say “Dying he destroyed our death” “Dying he destroyed our death”.

The Romans, I told you, were terrified of death, burying corpses as far away as possible from where they lived.