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I wonder if you've come across the story about a man who came home and heard noises in his garden. Looking out, he saw that there was a burglar in the garden shed. So he phoned the police for help. 'I'm sorry' came the reply, ' we don't have any officers available to help.' 10 minutes later he phoned again: 'Don't worry about the burglar; I got my gun out and shot him dead.' Within 5 minutes a police car, helicopter, and squad of armed police arrived at the house. When they found the burglar in the shed, alive and well, the commanding officer went to the householder 'I thought you said you had shot the burglar!'
To which he replied: 'I thought you said there were no officers available.' If nothing else, that true story - reported in a local paper in America - is a reminder that death certainly has a way of focussing attention, and of ordering priorities!
During the season of Advent, Christian attention has traditionally been focussed on the Four Last Things - Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. And so over the next four weeks - this morning and next Sunday morning, and then on the two following Sunday evenings - we shall be reflecting on what we say in the Creeds about Jesus Christ and the Four Last Things. And considering how, in the light of Jesus Christ, we are given hope - hope that is rooted and grounded in the steadfast love and faithfulness of God. Today, we begin by reflecting on death, and what we shall say in the Apostles' Creed about Christ's own death: "He was crucified, died, and was buried."
Everyone approaches death with certain beliefs. Some believe that death really does mark the end of life. When we die, the lights go out, and our lives end in oblivion. Others believe in some sort of afterlife - that the human personality or soul survives the death of the body - a belief that is, in some form or another, almost universal in the various world religions. Even for those who reject any particular religious approach, other factors point to the possibility of life beyond death - e.g. the many recorded cases of 'out-of-body' experiences. Or again, there is the argument that our unfulfilled desires and potential are trustworthy pointers to life beyond death.
How, then, do you and I view the prospect of death? When Pope John XXIII was told that he was going to die he remarked, "My bags are packed, I am ready to leave!" If you or I were told that today would be our last day, I wonder whether we could say the same? Perhaps we might find ourselves echoing the sentiments of Woody Allen who said, "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens." Yet, deep down, we know that death is the only certainty we have in this life. You and I are born to die. Our biological clock is ticking away and, one day, sooner or later, we must all face the reality of our own death. How prepared are we for that day? For example, have you and I made our wills, or left instructions about what type of funeral service we would like? This may sound rather morbid, but isn't it simply facing up to reality?
Perhaps you've heard the story of a minister who waited in a long queue to have his car filled with petrol before a bank holiday weekend. Finally the attendant motioned him toward a vacant pump. "Reverend, sorry about the delay. It seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip." The minister chuckled, "I know what you mean. It's the same in my business."
When it comes to death, we don't need to wait until the last minute. We are invited to view death in a new light, here and now - the light of Jesus Christ. What, then, does Jesus show us about death? First, Jesus shows us that death is not something to make light of, to try to brush aside with pious platitudes. Death involves grief, and loss, and pain, which everyone - whatever their attitude to death - has to face. In John's Gospel, you may recall how Jesus Himself wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus. And how, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the prospect of His own suffering and death caused Jesus such agony of body, mind, and spirit. Jesus was totally honest about His emotions in the face of the terrible prospect of His death, the bitter reality of human mortality whose cup He would have to drink to the dregs. Death was clearly in no sense a trivial or an easy matter for Jesus.
However Jesus was also convinced that death is not the end. John's Gospel tells us how Jesus spoke these words of assurance to His followers on the night of His betrayal and arrest: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" (John 14: 1-3). Jesus knew how they must have been feeling about the prospect of His impending death. Yet He was sure that for Him death was not a tragic ending, but rather a homecoming. Jesus was going home to His Father, and He Himself would then be waiting to greet His friends, and make them at home in His Father's dwelling place. Jesus trusted that God would raise Him to life beyond death, and He invited His followers to share that trust.
Shortly after saying these things, Jesus "was crucified, died, and was buried." At first, His distraught followers were utterly grief stricken. Their hope lay dead and buried. It was only later that they could begin to grasp the full extent of the truth, how the death of Jesus on a cross was part of God's saving purposes. For - as Paul put it in the reading we heard from Colossians - "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things … by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross"(Col. 1 : 19,20).
Many words and images are used in the New Testament to try to describe how Jesus's death has, in fact, put us right with God. Perhaps, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, suggests in his recent book Tokens of Trust : "(What) we need to know is that whatever it took - and takes - for us to be set free from our destructive and deceitful traps has been done through what happened on Good Friday. Jesus has plumbed the depths of human experience, including the terrible sense of abandonment by God that he endured on the cross … He has travelled to the outermost limit of what our sin and untruthfulness produce - to the edges of hell."
And today's Gospel reading set for Christ the King leads us to the cross in all its awfulness. There we can discover the wellspring of Christian hope. Hope that is to be found in a crucified figure, hanging dying on a cross. For as we contemplate Christ crucified, we are invited to glimpse the foolishness of God, and the wisdom of God. Christ crucified, the suffering and the glory of God. Christ crucified, the King who is crowned with thorns and enthroned on a cross.
In Luke's account of the Passion, we're told how Jesus was hanging on the cross between two criminals. And how one of them said this: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Here was someone who knew that he was being punished justly. Yet, in Jesus, he glimpsed a new possibility, even at the very end - the possibility of a mercy he could never earn. So he said "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And we're told that Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
The crucified criminal threw himself upon the mercy of God he had come to glimpse in Jesus. The same Jesus who had prayed, even as the soldiers nailed Him to the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." The mercy of God embodied once and for all, pointing us to the One who is not out to condemn us, but rather to save us. For the witness of the Bible is clear : God shows His mercy in always making the first move, reaching out in love, seeking to rescue the lost, to bring home the wayward, to heal and restore the suffering. And in Jesus Christ, the compassionate, gracious, forgiving, merciful heart of God's love is embodied. And never more so then it once was on the cross at Calvary.
"He was crucified, died, and was buried." At the heart of the Gospel, is the Good News that, in Jesus Christ, God has come to embrace us with His mercy, and to welcome us home to be with Him, now and through death's gateway. And the One who was crucified, died, and was buried, is God's very own flesh and blood assurance - and channel - of that amazing grace.
How can we know this to be true? Because of what happened on the third day, the earth-shattering event of Easter. "When we celebrate Easter - writes Rowan Williams in Tokens of Trust - we are really standing in the middle of a second 'Big Bang', a tumultuous surge of divine energy as fiery and intense as the very beginning of the universe."
The earliest written account we have of the resurrection is in chapter 15 of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. "What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also" (1 Corinthians 15 : 3-8).
For followers of Jesus then, and since, His resurrection lies at the very heart of the Christian faith, and it informs our hope of life beyond death. Without the Easter event, there would be no Gospel to proclaim, no Church, and no Christian hope beyond death. You and I are frail flesh and blood. We are not immortal beings, but frail finite creatures who are born to die. Yet in Jesus Christ, God holds out a wonderful promise that is written in Christ's own flesh and blood. The promise that, one day, what is already true for Jesus will also be true for us.
We don't know how this new life, this new creation, will happen. We don't know when it will happen. There is still so much we don't know, and so many questions that cannot be answered. Even Paul himself was reticent in describing the nature of this life beyond death, this mystery of how the perishable is clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. Yet what we are given is the clear assurance that death is not the end. And that, one day, death itself will be destroyed. On that day - as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 - "when the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15 : 54-57).)
God gives us the victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. At the heart of that victory lies the cross, which is the key to our hope. Because of Christ's obedience unto death, you and I can experience the transforming power of His cross. For the cross of Jesus Christ is a picture of violence, yet the key to peace; a picture of suffering, yet the key to healing; a picture of capital punishment, yet the key to mercy and forgiveness; a picture of vicious hatred, yet the key to love; and a picture of death, yet the key to life. Thanks be to God!
John Barr
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