Death Meets The Lord
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle B
Object:
The writer quoted in Isaiah 25 promises that an unlikely victory will occur. An unlikely victory had already occurred in his tradition when Goliath, the hero of the Philistine army confronted David, a young sheepherder. It didn't look like an even match. Goliath was a seasoned warrior, six cubits and a span tall, covered with a coat of mail and bronze helmet, and armed with a shaft with an iron spearhead that weighted six hundred shekels. He taunted the Israelites for forty days before David asked Saul to let him give it a try. Saul didn't have any better idea so he said to David, "Go for it!" David's first, smooth stone, launched from a sling, sank into Goliath's forehead, and Goliath fell face down dead (1 Samuel 17).
David was lucky. A comedian who thought that wrestling was a hoax lasted only a few seconds in the first round. Boxers and kickboxers who are evenly matched last longer.
The unknown writer, whose poetic eschatological thoughts are injected into the book of Isaiah (according to most scholars), predicts the death of death. "[the Lord] will swallow up death forever." The death of death is only a part of God's plan to usher in God's universal kingdom. The new earthly headquarters of the kingdom will be Jerusalem, a new center for peace and harmony between Jews and the Gentiles. The united peoples of earth will sit together in fellowship at a heavenly feast featuring the best wine imaginable and choice fatty meat usually reserved only for the gods.
Easter is the time to celebrate the fulfillment of that part of the prophecy that envisions the victory of life in God over its archenemy, Death (with a capital "D").
Martin Luther said it well in his hymn, "Christ Jesus Lay In Death's Strong Bands":
It was a strange and dreadful strife
When life and death contended;
The victory remained with life,
The reign of death was ended.
Holy Scripture plainly said
That death is swallowed up by death,
Its sting is lost forever.1
C.S. Lewis put the thought in modern language when he noted that Jesus is the David who knocked the wind out of the greater Goliath, Death. "[Jesus] is the 'first fruits,' the 'pioneer of life.' He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death ... This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened."2
The American culture works overtime to sanitize the reality of death. People don't die anymore; they just "pass" and they are not dead; they're just "gone" and one imagines they'll be back soon. Our funeral directors use a whole new vocabulary to soften the blow when they meet with survivors. The funeral staff member who does the cosmetic work happily stands in the wings to listen as the visitors exclaim, "Why, it looks like Harry is just sleeping!" or "Doesn't she look great!" That's why many clergy prefer that the coffin be closed before the funeral service begins so that the worshipers can better focus upon the hope of the resurrection. Many members of the family dread that moment when the coffin is closed because they are unwilling to accept the finality it signals.
A German theology professor once wrote a letter to a gifted student snatched by the Nazis out of the classroom to serve as a pilot in the Mediterranean. The young man had shared in a letter his fear of certain impending death. The mentor wrote:
Death is in fact an enemy, a contradiction ... Does it not sever and destroy the bonds of life and friendship? Does it not take away the best of our youth and shatter the lives of thousands of others? Is it not really an unnatural disorder, as the Bible portrays it? ... In death I am really and irretrievably and in actual fact at my end.3
No Christian can begin to win the struggle against death without first realizing the finality of death. A curious friend of a deceased man was invited by the mortician to linger after the funeral service to view the embalming process in the back room. To his horror, the friend recognized the remains on the embalming table. He didn't even know that his friend, Gus, had passed away earlier that day.
As he watched the embalming process, the friend realized that Gus' sleeping days were over! He was really dead. His spirit, his soul, his body, his mind, his memory, all of it! His life was gone. Gus was not immortal. He had really come to the end of his rope. There could only be one hope.
Back to Isaiah 25 -- "... he will swallow up death forever." It appeared that poor Gus was the loser in the bout against Death. So was the flyer on the Mediterranean front. He was shot down but not before he read the rest of the letter from his professor.
In death I am really ... at my end. But at the same time I am one whose history with God cannot stop, since I am called by my name and I am the friend of Jesus. The Resurrected One is victorious and I stand within his sphere of power. [He] receives me on the other side of the gloomy grave.4
We can't hope to win any fights against Mr. Death. Gus lost out. So will all of us. Someone was victorious in our stead. There is only one who went up against Death and won the match. We can, in faith, take his extended hand and rise up victorious with him who, at our baptisms, called us by name. He never forgets that name! That name, on God's list, becomes our ticket out of the land of Death.
Christ has taken the sting out of death. A man went to his pastor, time after time, and promised that he would never drink again. The pastor said that he would accept the pledge only one more time. The vow was made. In the late evening the man appeared and said that he must be allowed to have a drink or he would die. The pastor quietly told him to go home and die. The next morning the man came with a brightness in his face and said, "I died last night." He who was raised into new life from the grave on Easter is available to help us die in many circumstances. That is the glory of the resurrection.
The Berlin Wall was a horrific barrier. It separated Germans from Germans, brothers and sisters, children and parents. It was in place long enough for one culture to be divided into two cultures. After it came down during those dramatic days in November 1989, people from both sides who spoke the same language painfully realized in the ensuing months that they had become different. On one side was wealth, democracy, and materialism; on the other side was a people who had learned to live unto themselves into their private lives with far less material resources, and, perhaps an intensity of faith and a desire for peace that left the free world behind in the dust.
But the wall came down! In the years since the "fall," the two peoples have become one again. The incarceration is a memory that belongs to the past.
A rebirth, of sorts, has occurred. In Christ, a rebirth has already begun to turn the world into a future to which Christ calls and pulls us.
After the devastating fires of the summer of 1988, many Americans thought that Yellowstone National Park would never be the same again. In spite of the expenditure of millions of dollars and the efforts of 25,000 firefighters, the fire raged on and the whole nation began to lose hope. Finally, it ended in smoldering blackened ruination.
The serious observer, however, noted that a resurrection began to occur within days of the end of the fire. It was observed, for example, that only a few animal inhabitants, relatively speaking, perished; within days, there was luscious grass to eat in burned out regions and by spring, the new meadows created by the fire were ablaze with new vegetation that could have never discovered the light of day had the fire not destroyed competing vegetation. In other words, the Yellowstone disaster was really only nature at work, thinning out the herds, giving new seeds a chance to do their thing, renewing and continuing the process of creation. The death of Yellowstone turned out to be the birth of Yellowstone.
Nature reminds us that death can lead to life: Small cedars straighten themselves after a heavy snowfall; the daffodils and the tulips spring from the ground out of the melting snow in the spring; the butterfly breaks forth from its coffin, the cocoon; the human body mends itself unceasingly and only reluctantly falls to the mat when, in many instances, we abuse it with junk food, lack of exercise, or cigarettes.
The benefits of God's decisive action in Christ abound. He who died on the cross and rose from the grave encourages us to seek new life and reach for the ring of hope in all circumstances.
In the movie, Empire of the Sun, young Jimmy Graham was living in Singapore with his parents when the Japanese suddenly took the city while Jimmy was at boys' choir practice in the church. When the confusion of the attack began, he ran home to find that his parents were already gone. He was taken by the Japanese to an internment camp in Japan. There he modeled the life of Christ as he ran errands between the American and English prisoners, kept hopes up with his cheerful demeanor, and befriended a Japanese boy stationed at the air base next to the compound who met Jimmy at the fence. He was well treated by the Japanese and the English prisoners, and he was badly treated by the Japanese and the English captors. He confided to the chaplain through tears that he could no longer remember the faces of his parents. He witnessed the beheading of his Japanese friend, accused of fraternizing with the enemy. He found his surrogate mother deceased in bed. He saw a bright flash of light on the horizon one day.
Soon thereafter, the Japanese guards abandoned the camp and the surviving prisoners, while moving in caravan away from the camp, were overtaken by the American liberators. Jimmy and the other orphaned children were placed in a makeshift orphanage. One day a group of hopeful parents came to find their children. Jimmy's parents saw him in the assembled crowd. He stood listless, inanimate, empty, looking but not seeing, with a 1,000-yard stare. His mother came up from behind him and rested her hand on his left shoulder and whispered, "Jimmy?" Jimmy had become Jim, a man, but he was like a dead man. His mother passed around him to his front; she looked into his gray eyes and slowly hugged him, only as a mother could. The camera zoomed in for a close-up. The viewer sees a tear run down his cheek. Jimmy is alive; he has been reborn. He is resurrected.
What does the prophet say? "Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces" (v. 8). "And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever" (v. 7).
The tears were taken from those who rejoiced on the first Easter morning. Their friend, their teacher, their Savior, was raised from the dead. But it was only the beginning. There is still the feast to come. Amen.
____________
1. Martin Luther, "Christ Jesus Lay In Death's Strong Bands," Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1978), p. 134.
2. C.S. Lewis, The Joyful Christian (New York: Touchstone, 1977), p. 65.
3. Helmut Thielicke, Death and Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), pp. xxi, xxii, and xxv.
4. Ibid, pp. xxv-xxvi.
David was lucky. A comedian who thought that wrestling was a hoax lasted only a few seconds in the first round. Boxers and kickboxers who are evenly matched last longer.
The unknown writer, whose poetic eschatological thoughts are injected into the book of Isaiah (according to most scholars), predicts the death of death. "[the Lord] will swallow up death forever." The death of death is only a part of God's plan to usher in God's universal kingdom. The new earthly headquarters of the kingdom will be Jerusalem, a new center for peace and harmony between Jews and the Gentiles. The united peoples of earth will sit together in fellowship at a heavenly feast featuring the best wine imaginable and choice fatty meat usually reserved only for the gods.
Easter is the time to celebrate the fulfillment of that part of the prophecy that envisions the victory of life in God over its archenemy, Death (with a capital "D").
Martin Luther said it well in his hymn, "Christ Jesus Lay In Death's Strong Bands":
It was a strange and dreadful strife
When life and death contended;
The victory remained with life,
The reign of death was ended.
Holy Scripture plainly said
That death is swallowed up by death,
Its sting is lost forever.1
C.S. Lewis put the thought in modern language when he noted that Jesus is the David who knocked the wind out of the greater Goliath, Death. "[Jesus] is the 'first fruits,' the 'pioneer of life.' He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death ... This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened."2
The American culture works overtime to sanitize the reality of death. People don't die anymore; they just "pass" and they are not dead; they're just "gone" and one imagines they'll be back soon. Our funeral directors use a whole new vocabulary to soften the blow when they meet with survivors. The funeral staff member who does the cosmetic work happily stands in the wings to listen as the visitors exclaim, "Why, it looks like Harry is just sleeping!" or "Doesn't she look great!" That's why many clergy prefer that the coffin be closed before the funeral service begins so that the worshipers can better focus upon the hope of the resurrection. Many members of the family dread that moment when the coffin is closed because they are unwilling to accept the finality it signals.
A German theology professor once wrote a letter to a gifted student snatched by the Nazis out of the classroom to serve as a pilot in the Mediterranean. The young man had shared in a letter his fear of certain impending death. The mentor wrote:
Death is in fact an enemy, a contradiction ... Does it not sever and destroy the bonds of life and friendship? Does it not take away the best of our youth and shatter the lives of thousands of others? Is it not really an unnatural disorder, as the Bible portrays it? ... In death I am really and irretrievably and in actual fact at my end.3
No Christian can begin to win the struggle against death without first realizing the finality of death. A curious friend of a deceased man was invited by the mortician to linger after the funeral service to view the embalming process in the back room. To his horror, the friend recognized the remains on the embalming table. He didn't even know that his friend, Gus, had passed away earlier that day.
As he watched the embalming process, the friend realized that Gus' sleeping days were over! He was really dead. His spirit, his soul, his body, his mind, his memory, all of it! His life was gone. Gus was not immortal. He had really come to the end of his rope. There could only be one hope.
Back to Isaiah 25 -- "... he will swallow up death forever." It appeared that poor Gus was the loser in the bout against Death. So was the flyer on the Mediterranean front. He was shot down but not before he read the rest of the letter from his professor.
In death I am really ... at my end. But at the same time I am one whose history with God cannot stop, since I am called by my name and I am the friend of Jesus. The Resurrected One is victorious and I stand within his sphere of power. [He] receives me on the other side of the gloomy grave.4
We can't hope to win any fights against Mr. Death. Gus lost out. So will all of us. Someone was victorious in our stead. There is only one who went up against Death and won the match. We can, in faith, take his extended hand and rise up victorious with him who, at our baptisms, called us by name. He never forgets that name! That name, on God's list, becomes our ticket out of the land of Death.
Christ has taken the sting out of death. A man went to his pastor, time after time, and promised that he would never drink again. The pastor said that he would accept the pledge only one more time. The vow was made. In the late evening the man appeared and said that he must be allowed to have a drink or he would die. The pastor quietly told him to go home and die. The next morning the man came with a brightness in his face and said, "I died last night." He who was raised into new life from the grave on Easter is available to help us die in many circumstances. That is the glory of the resurrection.
The Berlin Wall was a horrific barrier. It separated Germans from Germans, brothers and sisters, children and parents. It was in place long enough for one culture to be divided into two cultures. After it came down during those dramatic days in November 1989, people from both sides who spoke the same language painfully realized in the ensuing months that they had become different. On one side was wealth, democracy, and materialism; on the other side was a people who had learned to live unto themselves into their private lives with far less material resources, and, perhaps an intensity of faith and a desire for peace that left the free world behind in the dust.
But the wall came down! In the years since the "fall," the two peoples have become one again. The incarceration is a memory that belongs to the past.
A rebirth, of sorts, has occurred. In Christ, a rebirth has already begun to turn the world into a future to which Christ calls and pulls us.
After the devastating fires of the summer of 1988, many Americans thought that Yellowstone National Park would never be the same again. In spite of the expenditure of millions of dollars and the efforts of 25,000 firefighters, the fire raged on and the whole nation began to lose hope. Finally, it ended in smoldering blackened ruination.
The serious observer, however, noted that a resurrection began to occur within days of the end of the fire. It was observed, for example, that only a few animal inhabitants, relatively speaking, perished; within days, there was luscious grass to eat in burned out regions and by spring, the new meadows created by the fire were ablaze with new vegetation that could have never discovered the light of day had the fire not destroyed competing vegetation. In other words, the Yellowstone disaster was really only nature at work, thinning out the herds, giving new seeds a chance to do their thing, renewing and continuing the process of creation. The death of Yellowstone turned out to be the birth of Yellowstone.
Nature reminds us that death can lead to life: Small cedars straighten themselves after a heavy snowfall; the daffodils and the tulips spring from the ground out of the melting snow in the spring; the butterfly breaks forth from its coffin, the cocoon; the human body mends itself unceasingly and only reluctantly falls to the mat when, in many instances, we abuse it with junk food, lack of exercise, or cigarettes.
The benefits of God's decisive action in Christ abound. He who died on the cross and rose from the grave encourages us to seek new life and reach for the ring of hope in all circumstances.
In the movie, Empire of the Sun, young Jimmy Graham was living in Singapore with his parents when the Japanese suddenly took the city while Jimmy was at boys' choir practice in the church. When the confusion of the attack began, he ran home to find that his parents were already gone. He was taken by the Japanese to an internment camp in Japan. There he modeled the life of Christ as he ran errands between the American and English prisoners, kept hopes up with his cheerful demeanor, and befriended a Japanese boy stationed at the air base next to the compound who met Jimmy at the fence. He was well treated by the Japanese and the English prisoners, and he was badly treated by the Japanese and the English captors. He confided to the chaplain through tears that he could no longer remember the faces of his parents. He witnessed the beheading of his Japanese friend, accused of fraternizing with the enemy. He found his surrogate mother deceased in bed. He saw a bright flash of light on the horizon one day.
Soon thereafter, the Japanese guards abandoned the camp and the surviving prisoners, while moving in caravan away from the camp, were overtaken by the American liberators. Jimmy and the other orphaned children were placed in a makeshift orphanage. One day a group of hopeful parents came to find their children. Jimmy's parents saw him in the assembled crowd. He stood listless, inanimate, empty, looking but not seeing, with a 1,000-yard stare. His mother came up from behind him and rested her hand on his left shoulder and whispered, "Jimmy?" Jimmy had become Jim, a man, but he was like a dead man. His mother passed around him to his front; she looked into his gray eyes and slowly hugged him, only as a mother could. The camera zoomed in for a close-up. The viewer sees a tear run down his cheek. Jimmy is alive; he has been reborn. He is resurrected.
What does the prophet say? "Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces" (v. 8). "And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever" (v. 7).
The tears were taken from those who rejoiced on the first Easter morning. Their friend, their teacher, their Savior, was raised from the dead. But it was only the beginning. There is still the feast to come. Amen.
____________
1. Martin Luther, "Christ Jesus Lay In Death's Strong Bands," Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1978), p. 134.
2. C.S. Lewis, The Joyful Christian (New York: Touchstone, 1977), p. 65.
3. Helmut Thielicke, Death and Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), pp. xxi, xxii, and xxv.
4. Ibid, pp. xxv-xxvi.
