Lord of Life

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 28:1-10.

I love to read biographies but I don't enjoy the final chapters. Because you have to read about the person's decline and death. If it's the biography of a person you admire, their death might feel not as dignified as you think they deserve. C.S. Lewis was found on the floor of his bedroom having died from end-stage kidney failure exactly a week before his 65^th birthday. And because President Kennedy was assassinated that same day, Lewis' death was not widely reported at first. Mystery writer, lay theologian and Dante translator Dorothy L. Sayers died of a heart attack and was found dead at the foot of the stairs to her home. The death of Edgar Allen Poe, father of the mystery story, is itself a mystery. He was found semi-conscious, incoherent and wearing clothes that were not his own. His medical records and death certificate were lost. We don't know what killed him. Okay, that last death is intriguing. Not dignified but intriguing.

Dignified or not, everyone dies. And while in my experience as a nurse, most deaths are peaceful, they are still sad. You would think that, knowing it is the natural end of every life, human beings would have come to accept it. But our minds rebel against it. The earliest epic poem, featuring the earliest epic hero, Gilgamesh, is about his quest to attain immortality. In the end he discovers that death is inevitable.

The satirical website The Onion once ran the following headline: “Existentialist Firefighter Delays 3 Deaths.” Because, of course, people pulled out of the fire, though they may live for decades more, will eventually die of something else. It's a reminder that we really have no power to stop death. It's beyond our control.

We fear things we can't control: hurricanes, earthquakes, nuclear war, diseases, all of which can lead to that thing that is most outside our control and our greatest fear, death. Of course we can do things that mitigate these threats, like enact building codes that can withstand certain natural disasters better, and negotiate treaties, and develop vaccines and treatments for diseases. But as the Onion headline implies, we can't prevent death, just postpone it.

There are scientists who are researching longevity but they usually are trying to help us live healthier longer, not live forever. Fashion mogul Peter Nygard tried all kinds of medical interventions and actually talked to a longevity scientist. He said that he had millions of dollars so why couldn't he buy immortality? The scientist told him it was impossible. As the Shel Silverstein song says, “You can get rid of stress, get a lot of rest, get an AIDS test, enroll in EST, move out west where it's sunny and dry and you'll live to be a hundred but you're still gonna die.”

The Serenity Prayer goes, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” And death looks like the ultimate thing we can't change. So that would mean that we must accept death peacefully. There is nothing we can do to change its inevitability.

And the early part of the Old Testament would seem to agree. The fate of the dead is Sheol, a shadowy afterlife for everyone, which, if not exactly non-existence, is at least described as sleeping with one's ancestors. (1 Kings 2:10)

And yet the Hebrew Bible gives us glimpses of a different fate. Job says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I will see for myself, and whom my own eyes will behold, and not another.” (Job 19:25-27) That sounds like the resurrection of the body. And indeed the book of Daniel says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2) So the sleep of death is not permanent. Isaiah says, “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.” (Isaiah 26:19) And again Isaiah says of God, “On this mountain he will swallow up the shroud that is over all the peoples, the veil that is over all the nations; he will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face, and remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 25:7-8) By Jesus' time, most Jews believed in the resurrection of the dead, though not all. (Mark 12:18)

But talk is cheap, some might say. Where is the evidence? The New Testament doesn't just talk about resurrection, it points to its evidence: Jesus. Each of the gospels recounts Jesus raising one or more people from the dead. (Matthew 9:18-19, 23-25; Mark 5:22-24, 38-42; Luke 7:11-15, 8:41-42, 49-56; John 11:1-44) And of course they all end with Jesus being raised from the dead. The only other explanation is that the disciples stole his body, although how they could do that from a tomb guarded by professional soldiers and why they would then die for a lie rather than confess are extremely problematic.

Now the gospels were written around or after the time the apostles were being martyred. With the living witnesses being executed, Mark and the others decided to preserve their stories about Jesus. But his resurrection didn't first appear in the gospels, but in the letters of Paul, long before the gospels were written. And he mentions Jesus' resurrection in just about every one. In the earliest of them, 1 Thessalonians, he writes, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Thessalonians 4:14) That was written around 51 AD, just 20 years after Jesus' death and resurrection. And lest you think that's enough time for such a story to become widely accepted, that would be like someone in the 1980s claiming that President Kennedy rose from the dead. Too many people would still be around to dispute that assertion. After all, it took hundreds of years for legends to develop around a warrior named Arthur and elevate him merely to the status of king of all Britain. Yet we have documentary evidence that 20 years after he lived, people who knew Jesus worshiped him as the incarnate, crucified and risen Lord.

And in 1 Corinthians, written about 55 AD, we are given the first account of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. After mentioning his appearance to the twelve, Paul says, “Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:6) Paul is saying, “If you don't believe me, ask them.” Pretty gutsy if it was a lie. As Charles Colson, Special Counsel under President Nixon, said, “I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured it if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world—and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks.”

We know about such conspiracies because eventually someone talks. That's how we know the truth about crop circles and seances and the famous photos of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. The people involved talked. They always do. Yet not one person ever confessed that Jesus' resurrection was a hoax. Every witness when faced with the choice of life for recanting the resurrection or death for affirming it chose death. Because death no longer scared them. They knew someone stronger than death.

That's what changed the world. That's what changes lives: the good news that God loves us enough to enter the world in the form of his son, take upon himself our sins, die for us and rise again to offer his eternal life to all who trust and follow him. God has transformed the dead end of this life into a door to a new life, life in him, life as it should be and as he always intended it to be.

Jesus said, “What is impossible for mere humans is possible for God.” (Luke 18:27) He was talking about salvation but it holds true for every obstacle in life. God can overcome anything. He took his son who was whipped, beaten, skewered by nails, and hung from a cross to bleed out until he died and raised him to life again. Then he took the movement of a handful of Jesus' followers in one corner of an ancient empire and turned them into a movement that today encircles the globe. And he can take a couple of small and shrinking churches and infuse them with new life and with growth. Death is not as inevitable as we thought. Not to the Lord of Life.

It turns out that death is not the primary thing beyond our control after all. God is. God alone can control death. He alone can reverse it. He did it before. And he will do it again. He told us so because he loves us. So putting out trust in the God of love and light and life, let us cast off all fear of lesser things, let us go bravely forth into the world and let us proclaim, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!