![]() ![]() While death had swallowed up all who came before Him, Jesus was too much for death, He was bigger than death. Christ stripped death of its final say in human life. He gave Himself to death and when death took Him, death began to die. He did not avoid it, he did not pretend at it. But on that cross hangs the one through whom all things were made, the lord of life. We hold up as the symbol of our entire faith and religion a cross, a thing that produces death. This is why the focal point of our church is the image of Jesus Christ on the Cross. We must not deny it, we cannot defy it.ĭeath is real. Christians do not get out of death we do not pretend at it. We do not treat death as something we can cheat or evade death is not something that we can get out of or sidestep. It has neither bias for persons nor concern for how much it disturbs us. We do not stop at phrases like “passing on” or “gone to a better place.” Death is purely unsentimental. We do not deny that death is real, that when a person dies they really die and there is a real experience of loss, of grief, of pain. Christians do not deny death, do not defy death. Christianity from the very beginning has been defined by its understanding of death it is our bedrock principle. For all of our sense of grandeur, death reminds us that at the end of the day we are made of dust, and to dust we shall all return.Īnd this is why being here together today is the best possible way to experience the death of our dear friend. Death makes us feel small and inarticulate, powerless and fragile. All of our philosophies, theologies, spiritualities, feelings warm and cold only get us so far and then each of us has to confront the fact that we don’t really know how to feel or what to think. When we have to describe its meaning, its effects-we are left speaking in partial phrases and incomplete thoughts. Death remains that part of the human story that resists our attempts to control, our attempts to understand. Even though it may come after a long season of illness, even though there may be a sense of its closeness, death always catches us off guard, always comes as a surprise. ![]()
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