The end of the Easter season is a good time to remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit kindly stops by because the Messiah has triumphed over the Murderer.
The grim reaper is a well-known figure in popular art. The medieval genre called “The Dance of Death” presented a skeleton dancing with queens and servant girls, with popes and peasants, all of whom share the same fate of meeting up with Death. Albrecht Dürer’s depiction of the knight, a symbol of power, being accompanied on his path through life by the Devil and his agent, death, echoes that theme. In my youth, Pablo Picasso’s twisted depiction reflected the misshapen wreckage of the Spanish village of Guernica, devastated by German bombers supporting Francisco Franco’s Fascist rebels. His portrayal still drives home, in Picasso’s unique way, the grim reality of the power of the Murderer as he spews death upon the earth.
Death commands the attention not only of graphic artists but also those who pen great literature. Emily Dickinson’s casual meditation from the other side begins, “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me,” and ends with her realization out of eternity that, “Since then ‘tis centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses’ heads Were toward eternity.”
Easter is a time for remembering that the blood of Christ protects us also in the hour when death is sweeping through the land. For the Holy Spirit is tailing it close behind, bringing the message that death’s boss, the Devil, has lost the fight with his enemy, the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Where death cuts its path into life, the Holy Spirit is present, cleaning up the mess and restoring the child of God to the resurrected life. On the other hand, John Updike reminds Christians how on Easter morning “amino acids rekindle” and “molecules reknit,” in “Seven Stanzas at Easter.” Updike was cultivating the ability to think on other things in the face of death, on the coming together of dust and breath which marks the resurrection.
The end of the Easter season is a good time to remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit kindly stops by because the Messiah has triumphed over the Murderer. He comes this very day with life because our Deliverer has packed death into its own coffin. The Holy Spirit has taken as His mission to pick us up for the journey into life eternal. He accompanies us each day of our lives as we walk through life and contend with the crumbs of death and sin left in our lives.
John’s gospel concludes with an everyday scene of sorts, seven disciples of Jesus fishing on the Sea of Tiberias. The resurrected Lord dropped by, popping up in the midst life for these men who had taken three years out of their lives to follow Him. On this morning, they were still trying to reorganize life on a new basis. We can only speculate what their daily activities and the state of their mind and emotions were after having experienced Jesus with His five piercings fully alive. They had not yet received their commission to go into all the world, although they had been given the Holy Spirit with the Edenic breathing which sent them forth to forgive and retain sins.
Easter is a time for remembering that the blood of Christ protects us also in the hour when death is sweeping through the land.
Timothy Dudley-Smith caught the atmosphere of that morning in Galilee. Dawn was breaking through morning mists, “Long Before the World is Waking,” in the words of Bishop Dudley-Smith. As the disciples moved toward shore after a night of fishing in which they caught only tired muscles, suddenly, a visitor stood there on the shore. He bade the weary men to throw out their nets again. Jesus was there, on the shore of the Lake of Tiberius, giving His rich blessing, feeding them, and reconciling poor Peter. Much like us, Peter had trouble getting it right; apart from the time he knew that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:16). On this particular morning, the eager and impetuous Peter again jumped ship and hastened to the Lord from whom he had turned away just weeks before.
Jesus was there in the midst of what they had thought would be an ordinary day, and it was with charcoal preparing bread and fish for an ordinary breakfast, but with an extraordinary cook. His presence in the midst of the ordinary confronted their sins and their sorrows, their fears and their failures, their doubt and denying. The storm clouds which had beset their perception of themselves and their world as they wept before His cross parted and disappeared. The breath of the Spirit had scattered those clouds. So, it is in our lives. The morning breaks with resurrected freshness as the Holy Spirit delivers the risen Lord to us afresh each day. The Grim Reaper has been sent scurrying back to his master, the Murderer, as Jesus feeds and comforts, bestowing His pardon for our weakness of faith and obedience on another day. He is ours and we are His forevermore.
Walking the path from the empty tomb to heavenly throne, we encounter moments of wondering why God has forsaken us, just as He did. But Jesus the Messiah always turns up to raise us up, in hope, in joy, and in peace. The Holy Spirit hauls us out of the debilitating, eviscerating shadow cast by the Grim Reaper over our lives. Ernest Becker’s sociological study, The Denial of Death (1973), demonstrated how even when we suppress thoughts of our demise, death twists life, whether we try to compensate by getting all the gusto we can or, instead, edge so cautiously through our days that we die of boredom. Fifty years after its appearance, Becker’s study still depicts quite accurately the pressure of death’s pall that the Holy Spirit rips to threads by placing our risen Lord squarely in the center of our daily life from the mists of each dawn and its breakfast to the evening in which He breaks through even closed doors to say, “Peace be with you.”
For the risen Christ is present by the power of the Holy Spirit and the breath of life He renews in us through daily repentance and the liberating absolution it brings. We are freed through Christ’s death and resurrection from sin, death, God’s wrath, the Law’s condemnation, and the lying, murdering Devil to be free for service to God through carrying out His commissions to bring His life and love to all with our reach, all within earshot.
Therefore, we joyfully sing with C. F. W. Walther, “He’s risen, He’s risen, He’s opened death’s prison as the incarnate true Word.” Walther echoed Luther’s portrayal of the great battle, which is now behind us, the battle where the initial jubilation in Satan’s camp quickly turned from triumph to bitter terror in the face of the vanquishing, conquering Lord of life. This turns our lives into songs of hosanna that express and proclaim our gladness and bring laud, honor, and praise to Christ and peace and joy to us, His people. For we live not in anticipation of the Grim Reaper, but in the real presence of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
