Strange as it may sound, Easter is the perfect time to use the pulpit and other forums for preparing people to die.
Two young boys, Peter and Jacob, were riding in the car with their Dad when a report of the death of a famous athlete came over the car radio. The younger, Peter, moaned, “I don’t want to die.” Jacob replied, “Peter, you are going to die.” Peter was certain, “I don’t want to die!” Jacob repeated, “Peter, you are going to die.” After his little brother’s third protest, Jacob said, “Peter, you are going to die, but it will be alright. Jesus died and rose, and you will rise from death, too.” Death may seem like a strange subject to bring up in the Easter season, but our celebration of Easter presumes we will die. Even (or perhaps especially) in this season we should recognize that death afflicts us all, despite our society’s efforts to deny or hide this simple fact of life.
After the Black Death had ravaged much of Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, Church leaders fashioned a new genre of pious literature, the ars moriendi, “art or skill of dying,” manuals which provided the dying and those ministering to them with aids in directing their thoughts in the godly preparation for departure from this life. The death rate has not changed since the thirteenth century. Over time, there is roughly one death for each birth some years earlier. Today, Christians still need help in preparing for death. Some of a pastor’s most challenging and yet satisfying moments of ministry come as we accompany the dying and the grieving on the path we know will lead to the end of earthly life. All Christians will walk this way with others as well as traverse it themselves.
Easter is the perfect time to use the pulpit and other forums for preparing people to die. Our hymns provide us with good focal points for thinking of what death means in the shadow of the stone that rolled from the tomb, letting the Messiah, our deliverer, back into life. For just as life is different because Jesus returned to life from the grave, so also death looks different because He conquered it, defanged it, choked it, deposited it in its own tomb.
Among Scripture’s most dramatic confessions of the hope of life after death is that of Job, recorded in Job 19:25-27. Despite his despair over his suffering and the alienation from God which he believed his circumstances indicated, Job confessed that his go-el, his nearest relative who was charged with rescuing him and righting his wrongs, was alive and well. This deliverer or rescuer would be there for Job in the end, he was certain. His disease-ravaged skin would perish, but in his flesh, he would see God at his side. In the joyful Easter hymn “I Know that My Redeemer Lives,” Samuel Medley (1738-1799), an English Baptist preacher, captured the significance of Job’s confidence that, contrary to every appearance at the time, he would not only escape death but would be in the company of his Creator in the end. Medley has led Christians for over two hundred years in celebrating with Job the fact our go-el lives and His resurrected life mean new life for us today as well as in eternity. Medley let poetics govern as he found one word after another to give us comfort from Job’s confession that the once-dead redeemer lives as our everlasting head. Medley assures us our redeemer is present with us, guiding us to a new kind of life which bestows peace, joy, and the desire to demonstrate His life of love for our neighbors; right here and now.
For just as life is different because Jesus returned to life from the grave, so also death looks different because He conquered it, defanged it, choked it, deposited it in its own tomb.
Jesus’ triumph over the grave issued in life for those who had chosen the path of death and were heading down its path until the resurrected Man from Nazareth met them and said, “Peace be with you.” His glory demonstrated itself in His ascension as He left the company of the apostles for His place at the right hand of the Father. His love blesses as He intercedes for us and argues the case that, since we have been joined with His death in our baptisms, we have joined Him as those who leave death behind. On the path toward the fullness of life which passes through death, Jesus is there, as He was with His disciples at the lakeshore of the Sea of Tiberius, to feed us what we need for living in the shadow of death.
Jesus not only supplies our needs, but He also guides us, comforts us, and listens to our laments. He quiets fears, wipes away tears, as He calms our distresses with the proclamation of His victory over every enemy that threatens us. For in His promise to be with us to the end of this age (and implicitly far beyond) He puts our daily living back on a firm foundation, the foundation of His resurrection. For through our Lord’s resurrection, He has proven Himself to also be our friend, whose kindness never ends. He lives as the prophet who proclaims each day that death has lost its sting, and the grave has no victory. He lives as the priest who serves as our advocate, our defense attorney, and pleads for us in the face of Satan’s accusations. He is the king, who rules over the realm of His grace and counters every deception of the deceiver, the murderer’s every attempt to snatch the life Jesus has given us away from us.
The risen Lord is present giving us daily breath, as He did when, on Easter evening, He came to breathe on the disciples and give them new life in the Holy Spirit. So, he also breathes new life on us through the forgiveness the Holy Spirit delivers as we pray for His pardon and the peace it brings. Because He shares His conquering victory over death with us, we can rest assured He is preparing an eternal place of peace and joy for us in our eternal dwelling.
Samuel Medley has given us stimulation for thinking on the Lord’s good plans for us, on the days of health and vigor and, particularly, on the days in which strength is ebbing away. In the times when the light of the eye is growing dim and the words we hear most clearly are those which echo from Sunday School lessons and sermons of the past, from singing hymns and sharing insights into Scripture in good old days, these little catchwords, like triumphant from the grave, eternally to save, silence my fears, and wipe away tears, will calm my troubled heart. That is the way our Savior continues to impart the blessing of His presence, through the presence, the speaking, the singing, the praying of my pastor and other fellow believers in the One who has come back from death. For our redeemer lives. Our go-el is interceding for us at the Father’s right hand. We are confident of this as we have His triumph proclaimed from the pulpit, encounter it in Christian conversation with others, and taste it in the body and blood of our resurrected Lord. All of these things prepare us for the day of our dying, on which the Goel will stand by us, scrap our tired old skin, and meet our glance as we gaze upon the Redeemer who has made the art of dying the path into life without end.
