The Death Of Death

Death and disasters dominate the news, don’t they? We all know that if it bleeds, it leads. We typically have, in addition to the usual accidents and murders, natural disasters, mass shootings, genocide, and war. The murder rate has gone up in nearly all our major cities – including the one I live in. Natural disasters in India claimed nearly 3000 lives last year. The earthquake in Turkey has claimed nearly 50,000 lives. Over 13,000 Ukrainians and as many as 200,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in the current war. And nearly 6 million people have died in the civil war in Congo.

All of the people who died had lives which mattered and should be mourned. But that mourning should not be limited to the lives that have been lost, but also to their souls. We can be sure that the Nigerians bombed in their churches and the Syrians crushed under falling buildings all called to God.

But the Christian has something that no one else can claim, and that is the assurance of eternal life. No matter what you believe, or how fervently, no matter how virtuous your life, or unfair your suffering, only Christ guarantees life after death. Islam does promise eternal life to those who earn it by engaging in jihad, or holy war. Even if one believes the promises of the Koran were true, which I don’t, there’s still no assurance, because what happens if the war you’re fighting isn’t holy after all and God doesn’t approve? And being killed in a natural disaster never qualifies. Hindus and Buddhists believe in reincarnation, which basically say, “what goes around comes around,” and you get what you deserve. From the very dawn of humanity death has been both an enemy and a mystery, and every religion down the entire long history of the world has tried to deny or control or escape or at the very least explain it.

But all of our frantic attempts are turned upside down when we come to the foot of the cross. Greater even than the mystery of death itself is the electric and powerful reality of Jesus Christ. Nowhere is the mystery more compelling than in the fact that instead of denying nor escaping death, Jesus faced it, embraced it, and defeated it.

There is a paradox in this death. Just a few verses earlier the bystanders heard Him say, “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me?” Where are the trust and commitment and confidence that Jesus displayed throughout the rest of his life, where are the trust and commitment and confidence with which he calls us to face our own futures?

What are you most afraid of in this world? Is it snakes or spiders, or height or darkness or crowds? Do you suffer from claustrophobia or acrophobia or - my favorite - luposlippophobia, which is the fear of being chased by wolves around a newly waxed kitchen floor in your stocking feet? If you find yourself, like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, being tossed into a pit of snakes, your most gut-wrenching, heart-stopping fear, you can hardly be blamed for losing it for a second.

Jesus had never in his life been alone before. Not alone in the sense that you and I know alone-ness. Have you ever experienced the sense of being intimately connected with God? To have that sure knowledge of a strong and loving presence surrounding you? Imagine spending your entire life rooted and anchored and fed by that power source and then suddenly - all of an instant - having it ripped away.

This is the horror that Jesus had anticipated the night before, in the garden. This is the agony that Jesus feared. Not the pain of the nails and the whips and the thorns, as horrible as they would be. Not the shame of being stripped and mocked and spat upon. Not the loneliness of being abandoned by his friends and followers. But the ripping away of the very ground of his being, the very splitting apart of his soul. This is what our sins cost Jesus, this separation from his very self, this loss of God.

But now, here in this word from the cross, His work finished, Jesus is showing us how to die. He is showing us how to “live by faith, rather than by sight.” [2 Cor 5:7] He is demonstrating for us in the most dramatic and moving way possible that “perfect love” does, indeed, “cast out fear,” [1 Jn 4:18] even when what you fear most is exactly what is happening to you.

Let’s talk a little about death. What is it, why do we fear it, how have we tried to deal with it?

Death is an enemy. No question. Now, some things are worse than death, and some causes are worth dying for. Patrick Henry preferred death to life without liberty; others have chosen death over dishonor or pain. The church is built on the witness of people who preferred death to denial of Jesus Christ. Death is not the greatest enemy. But it is “...the last enemy [to] be destroyed.” [I Cor 15:25] And even though we know what Jesus has done, we find it hard to live as though we believed it.