The Shadow of Death

Scriptures: The Fourth Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Perhaps the most shocking statement in the Bible, for me at least, comes from the first chapter of Wisdom, which states baldly: “God did not make death, and He does not delight in the death of the living.” God did not make death? How can that be? Death is everywhere in this world. We’re surrounded by it. Death is how we eat. Death is how we fight off pathogens. Death is how we deal with criminals and enemies. Death is how we end our stories, shuffling off this mortal coil. Here in the West we shelter ourselves from the worst of it. Famine, pestilence, raiders, war: none of them are serious concerns these days. But we still cannot imagine a world without death. We are hemmed in by it on all sides. Death is our reality.

But if God did not make death, that means that death is like evil or sin. They have no substance, no being in and of themselves. As shadows are a lack of light, and cold the lack of heat, so evil is but a lack of good and sin a lack of proper relationship with God. Death is not a thing; it’s just a lack of life. Life is what’s real. Life is what God creates and sustains and in which He takes delight. As nature abhors a vacuum, so God abhors death, and He is determined to do something about it, to conquer it, to burn it up so that death is no more. He needs to fill that gap with something, to seal the chasm torn through His creation. And what can fill up the emptiness of death but the superabundance of God’s own life?

Look at our readings this morning. In Acts, Peter prays to God in Jesus’ Name, and by the power of the Holy Spirit he raises up a woman’s corpse back to life from her very deathbed. God will not let her story end like this, and so He fills her with the Holy Spirit, who is the very life and breath of God. In his twenty-third psalm, David sings of God preserving him in the valley of the shadow of death, setting a luxurious table overflowing with oil and wine even in the midst of his foes. God enters with us into death, and there He defiantly spreads out His everlasting feast of new life.

In Revelation, John the Divine is drawn up into a vision of heavenly bliss in the eternal presence of Almighty God, and what does he see? He “looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white.” And the angel says to John, “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their Shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” It is unspeakably beautiful.

John sees Heaven full of life, overflowing, populated by more people than he could possibly count, people from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, and they will never hunger nor thirst, they will drink waters of pure life, and God Himself will wipe away their every tear. Jesus was right: He is God of the living, not of the dead, for to Him all are alive. “My sheep hear My voice,” Jesus promises. “I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of My hand.”

Time and again in today’s readings, the Easter promise is hammered home: Christ has conquered. Death is defeated. The gates of hell are battered down. And life will rise and rise and rise until one day the harvest shall come in full. Then shall death and hell be no more, mourning and weeping and crying shall be no more, and God will be all in all. No more chasms. No more gaps.

On that day, everything shall be made right. There will be a new Heaven and a new earth. And the dead will rise, and their stories will continue, and every wound will be healed and every division sealed up and the grave shall evaporate like shadows before the dawn, because nothing can stop the Risen Christ! Nothing! Not death or hell or sickness or despair or loss or tragedy—nothing can stop Him from rising, nothing can stop Him from forgiving, nothing can stop Him from healing this world and raising every mother’s son up from the loamy depths of the earth!

And no one will ever suffer alone. And no one will ever lose a child. And no one will ever despair and cry to God for succor, because God will be right there, everywhere, in us and around us. He will be the Sun above us and the breath in our lungs and the blood in our veins. And He will not stop, He will not stop, until every wayward sheep has been gathered home in Him.

We live now in the between-time, the time between the coming of Christ, Firstfruits of the Resurrection, and the final harvest at the end of the age. It is a time fraught with fear and uncertainty and, yes, plenty of death. But we have something that no one else has. We have Christ, who has conquered death. Christ, who has promised to raise us up as He is Risen. Christ, who is even now at work redeeming and renewing and resurrecting this world. Death has no dominion here! Hell has no dominion here! For Christ is Lord, and He has bought us with a price, and He will brook no rivals to His claim. This is a war between death and life, and death doesn’t have a prayer.

There are some tragedies, brothers and sisters, so senseless and so overwhelming that it seems they can never be set right in this world. But we belong to a new world. And when it comes, there will be a tidal wave of life the likes of which has not been seen since the beginning of time. And then, brothers and sisters—then death shall die.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.