Death is Real: Death is Overcome
Death is Real: Death is Overcome
9th April 2023
Matthew 28: 1-10
Death is a fearful thing.
In this passage, those who are first to find Jesus’ tomb empty, are reassured (a couple of times) not to be afraid.
Clearly the reality of death is fearful – there in the graveyard, surrounded by tombs.
We can understand that death is a fearful thing.
Because of this, perhaps some of us prefer the part of the Easter story where Jesus is raised to life (over his death on the cross).
It does seem more positive and hopeful to emphasise resurrection life.
But… there is good reason to see both Jesus’ death AND resurrection as vital for authentic and enthusiastic faith.
I want to suggest today that while Easter is death-defying,
it isn’t death-denying.
The resurrection doesn’t ‘cancel out’ the terrifying reality of the death on the cross.
Death is real.
God takes it seriously.
We see Jesus face it with seriousness.
We know Jesus wept at the death of his friend.
And as the threat of death hangs over him in the Garden of Gethsemane, he expresses dread in his desperate prayer.
Archbishop Rowan Williams puts it this way:
“Easter may tell us that death is conquered, but it doesn't tell us that there was never any contest.”
Death marks the end of growth,
the end of our plans,
the end of control.
All that we know, all that seems so very certain to us is gone.
And all that is left is God.
Just as at the very beginning of creation – there is God.
When death has done all it can, God remains – untouched.
God’s loving and generating will is eternal.
Death can destroy anything in the universe, but not the One who made the universe.
In other words:
Death is real, and God is greater than death.
In death, we don’t need to fret about retaining some characteristic ‘through death’;
be it an immortal soul,
an enduring spirit,
or an inherent identity.
The Easter story doesn’t tell us that Jesus ‘survived’ death somehow,
or his spirit lives on beyond his death on the cross.
It is about death obliterating this man,
swallowing him in its darkness –
and him being called up out of that nothingness.
The understanding of the Church is Easter is the first day of creation all over again,
celebrated as ‘the eighth day of the week’.
God speaks the creative word, making real His irresistible will.
So, we too can be completely annihilated by death, but God is Creator.
We hope not for ‘survival’, but re-creation by God’s loving will.
What’s the best way to dispose of a body…?
I’m sometimes asked this by people wanting to know what’s the ‘Christian’ policy for instructing the funeral directors.
Is burial best, or cremation…?
…or the latest environmentally-friendly technique of alkaline hydrolysis (sometimes called ‘aquamation’) – which uses chemicals to dissolve a body.[1]
There is sometimes a sense that in death our bodies need to (somehow) be ‘maintained intact’.
It might be that our thinking has been influenced by some references in scripture about the last days:
‘16For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess 4:16)
Should we be buried, ready for our bodies to emerge again from the ground?
(see Stanley Spencer’s, Resurrection in Cookham Churchyard)[2]
Our theology says (like it does so much of the time):
it’s not about what WE do but about what GOD does.
The restoration God has in mind is something God will be able to do.
‘Creating’ is God’s unique expertise.
Extending much further that idea that perhaps dead human bodies will be raised up, is the declaration that God doesn’t just perpetuate, but transforms:
‘For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.’ (1 Cor 15: 53-53)
More important than the mechanism of HOW God brings us life, Easter celebrates God the Creator, who is faithful in keeping relationship with us.
God gives of himself to those whom he has called.
And resurrection is the renewed call.
So, the Easter story helps us to live with the truth that:
Death is real; and death is overcome.
We don’t have to deny the reality of death.
In fact, together as Church we have resources of faith
that help us prepare for death;
to keep death in view,
each day being reminded of the fear,
and getting used to living with it.
I’ve only got time to give you one example…
We sing our faith in the hymn ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah’:
When I tread the verge of Jordan,
bid my anxious fears subside.
Death of death, and hell's Destruction,
land me safe on Canaan's side.
Death is real; death is overcome.
You can probably think of other hymns, prayers and spiritual disciplines we use that help us keep death in view,
and live with the fear of it.
Furthermore, this truth:
Death is real; and death is overcome.
is an opportunity for us to share hope in our world.
In a culture that is reluctant to accept death, we can offer hope amidst the despair that death is the end of all meaning.
We are mortal, and that is basic to who and what we are as humans.
But the resurrection is the Creator God’s renewed call to us.
This is what gives us our conviction for human dignities and rights, and our Easter hope.
The gospel, insists we have limits AND eternal hope in God.
This safeguards equally the humility and realism we need for mature human life,
and the sense of a glory embodied in our mortality
…because it has been touched by God.
Death is real; death is overcome.
With our Easter hope, we are convinced we can declare to our world that renewal comes to every aspect of our humanity.
Praise be to God, for ever and ever!
Amen.