We are all hiding in our homes from an invisible global enemy. I am not referring to the latest pandemic; I am talking about “he who must not be named”. Covid 19 is just his vehicle, his latest chariot. I am referring to death itself.
Saint Paul calls death “the last enemy”. Death is not something we are supposed to discuss in public, which is strange. It is the one thing that happens to every single one of us; yet, it is the one thing that must not be mentioned. We can post whatever we want on here about sex, or politics, or religion, but not this enemy; this plague that devours us all. He is not to be mentioned in polite company. Well, I have never been accused of being polite. (I am, however, charming, and good-looking.) 😉
We have sanitized death; it is now a cold and sterile thing that happens in hospitals and nursing homes. Or a distant thing that happens on a far-off battlefields. You are permitted to weep, but don’t ask embarrassing questions. This has always felt like a conspiracy to me. Not a human conspiracy; I don’t believe in those; we are not that clever. No, this is a conspiracy of silence; imposed on us by beings beyond our control. They do not want us to discuss the elephant in the room. They are content for us to keep our heads down and stay busy with other things. And, as we drive past graveyards, they whisper to us; “nothing to see here folks, move along.”
The few things we do manage to say about this enemy have never made any sense to me:
“Death is just a part of life”, I am told. Nonsense. How could death be a part of life? Whatever else death may be; it is not life.
“We must accept death because it is natural.” Then why does EVERYTHING about it seem so unnatural? I have buried several childhood friends. I have buried a little brother. I have buried a father and a stepfather. I watched my own daughter die in my living room. None of it felt natural to me. It all felt wrong. “But this is simply the circle of life.” You may say. Then I say it is a stupid circle that must be broken.
“Everything dies”, we are told, as if that were some kind of reassurance. But I don’t want everything to die. Do you? We all live in a world where everything and everyone dies and yet none of us want anyone to die. Why is that? Where does this counter-intuitive instinct come from? “He has written eternity in men’s hearts” the Scriptures tell us. I think most of us spend most of our lives telling Eternity to shut up.
Death is a thug. Death is a bully. Death is a monster. Death is an intruder in this world. Death is a taskmaster who worries us, to death. Death is a tyrant; a dictator who keeps his citizens hiding from him, and afraid to talk about him. He always has them looking over their shoulder in fear. Death is a kidnapper who steals our children and demands a ransom that we can never pay. Death is an enemy of the whole human race, and I will not make peace with it. There is no reason to anymore.
Some time ago, word began to leak out of Jerusalem. About someone who had escaped; he was one of us. A Galilean teacher who had been executed in the name of politics and religion. Death had another victim. The Teacher was trapped in the grave. He was being held in what the Jews called Sheol, and what the Greeks called Hades. But he got out. He broke the rules. The political and religious authorities tried to shut it down, to hush it up, but the more information that came to light, the more glorious the news was.
It seemed the whole mechanism and authority of death could not hold the Teacher because of who he was and how he lived. You see, he did not sneak out under the wire of this prison camp we all go to. This was not some secret “spiritual” resurrection that no one saw. No, he blew the doors of death open from the inside. Like Samson with the city gates of Gaza, Jesus of Nazareth wrenched the gates of Hell from their foundations and carried them away. He then looked over his shoulder and shouted the same two words that he spoke to us at the beginning of his ministry, “follow me”.
Death’s reign of terror is over. It now has an expiration date. It is still a monster, but a toothless one. it is still an enemy, but an unarmed enemy. He still has a big house, but his front doors are missing. So when the curtain finally falls here, and your ashes are ashes, and your dust has returned to the dust; you can stay if you want, but I’m going to do what I have been trying to do for over 30 years. I’m going to follow the Galilean.
In a few weeks over 2 billion people on this planet will be singing about this event. There will be many songs and prayers and sermons, in many different languages; all cheering the Galilean. But what echoes in my heart during times like these are the words of an old African American preacher. The refrain of his sermon will reverberate into eternity as he pondered the darkness of the crucifixion, and many other things, in light of the resurrection a few days later. He kept repeating “it’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin!”. Take those words with you in the coming weeks, because things are going to get worse before they get better. It may seem like one long Friday, but Sunday is coming. “Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning”, the psalmist reminds us.
“From the gravest of all valleys come the pastures we call grace.
A mighty river flowing upwards, from a deep but empty grave.”
“I have come that they might have life…” – Jesus