Since my Mom’s death in January, Sherrylee and I have spent five weeks in Europe, doing what we call site visits for the Let’s Start Talking Ministry
I think you will understand if I share with you that much of my thinking since January has been about death and dying. I consciously decided not to write about it then because we Americans just don’t want to be reminded about our mortality too often. We like happy endings.
The Germans even have the word Happy-end to describe American culture. We like that—but they don’t really mean it as a compliment. They use that word more to describe Pollyannaism or a naïve positive bias toward life.
However, . . . .
Here we are just a few days from Easter, moving rapidly towards the Cross and the Tomb on Friday, so I suppose we must talk about death and dying.
The TV version of Bill O’Reilly’s book Killing Jesus was shown last Sunday. I didn’t watch it. I still haven’t recovered from Jim Bishop’s The Day Christ Died (1957) that preachers used over and over again to describe in lurid detail the horrors of the crucifixion. You certainly haven’t forgotten the images of the savagely beaten and crucified Christ from Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2005).
But here is what I’ve been thinking: the horrible physical suffering of Jesus was not the death that Jesus pled with His Father about in Gethsemane. Other people have died more violently than Jesus did. Others have been tortured longer than the six hours that Jesus hung on the Cross.
Our fascination with the details of his physical death represent our own fears of death—especially a violent, painful death.
Three weeks ago, Sherrylee and I flew one stretch of our European trip on Germanwings, the same airline whose plane crashed in France last week. That same co-pilot who on that day killed himself and all the passengers might have been sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of our flight the week before.
Should we be afraid to fly Germanwings? Should we be afraid to fly? Should we be afraid?
Jesus was not afraid of death. He turned his face toward Jerusalem, saying “It’s time!” He rode the donkey through the gates of Jerusalem amid the Hallelujah’s and the waving palm branches, fully aware that the next crowd he saw would be calling for his crucifixion. He praised the anointing of his feet because he knew the poor would always be with them, but he would not be. He broke the bread and drank the cup of Passover with his closest followers, knowing that his next drink would be vinegar.
Jesus was not afraid of death. He went to his death, not because of the scheming of the Jews, not because of the callousness of Pilate, not because of the cold-bloodedness of the Roman soldiers, but because He was obedient: by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:8)
Jesus was not afraid of death. He knew that Friday must come before Sunday, so every day of his ministry, really every day of his life, he walked deliberately toward Friday, not rushing, but at the appointed pace, and when the Friday had come, Jesus was there.
We should not be afraid of death. We have the same promise of Life that Jesus had, but as with Him, so with us, Friday must come before Sunday. To walk in His steps means to walk deliberately toward Friday, not rushing, but at the appointed pace.
There is no promise of eighty years, no promise of a peaceful passing, no promise that we won’t die before or after someone we love, no promise of anything but that our Father will receive our spirits and keep us until Sunday morning when the dead in Christ will rise!
Life is more certain than death! Don’t be afraid of death.
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