The War of Life and Death

Four Horsemen, by Ben Tobitt

   

Lections: The Fifth Sunday in Lent, AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

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

Every human culture has had to come to terms with death. The grave remains our mutual destination, the debt all men must pay. And there is a sense in which it gives meaning to our lives. Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end, else we have no narrative, no moral, no value, and no purpose.

On the other hand, in order for a story to mean anything at all, there must also be something thereafter, something which follows, otherwise there’s no point to telling the tale. And the one thing that we can’t deny is purpose. We can’t deny that everything means something. Thus we must treat death not as termination but as transformation. Hence Socrates’ famous dictum that all of philosophy is but preparation for death.

I deal with dying a lot in this line of work. Not as much as I used to, back in the trauma bay, nor as much as my wife does now, in her role as an undertaker. But it has been a constant in my life. I had to come to terms with death at rather a young age. And the funny thing is that I can remember the exact moment when I first realized that everyone will die. And I cried, not because I was afraid of my own death, but of my mother’s. I didn’t want a world without her.

The Bible’s understanding of death develops over time. Early on, it hovers as a shadowy presence, not a thing in itself, but a void, an emptiness which God did not intend. The first human death occurs, in Genesis, when Cain murders his brother Abel, and Abel’s blood then cries out from the soil. How’s that for a haunting image? Even though Abel is gone, God still hears him.

Soon the Hebrew Scriptures speak of Sheol, which means “the Pit,” rather literally the grave. It’s a hole in the ground where all of us will go. But it quickly abstracts into a land of the dead, an afterlife realm, with which the Psalmists wrestle. Certain Psalms consider the Pit a place of forgetfulness and silence, where there can be no praise, and to which God pays no attention. But others sing of God rescuing people from Sheol, pulling the perished up out of the Pit.

We first see this happen with King Saul, who employs the Witch of Endor to bring up from Sheol the shade—that is, the ghost—of the prophet Samuel. Samuel, greatly disturbed at having been forced back up from the dead, wastes no time in cursing Saul. When King David loses his infant son, the firstborn to Bathsheba, he enigmatically states, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” One almost reads a longing in those lines. David hopes that his loved ones await him in Sheol.

When the Scriptures were translated into Greek, Sheol became Hades. Hades went through a similar development for the Greeks; at first a land of silence and woe, of wandering shades; but then evolving into a place of reward and punishment, where the blessed rest. You can see similar ideas in the Judaism of Jesus’ day, where the righteous dead recline in the bosom, or vale, of Abraham, and the lawless suffer justly for their deeds. Think of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

Hades was not to be confused with Tartarus, an underworld beneath the underworld, home to the Titans and the damned. The Greeks believed that if one were to fall from Hades into Tartarus, it would take nine days to hit the bottom, in a land thrice-wrapped in night. Tartarus also appears in Second Temple Judaism, and in the Christian Scriptures. There we call it the Abyss, the prison of fallen angels. Unhelpfully, English Bibles historically have translated all of these terms—Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, the Abyss—simply as Hell.

During the Exilic Period, the time of the Prophets leading up to Jesus, a new promise of prophecy arose: resurrection. We read of it in Ezekiel this morning. Here the Prophet has a vision of a valley of dry bones, warriors left unburied after some terrible conquest. And the voice of the Lord asks the Prophet, “Mortal, can these bones live?” to which Ezekiel replies, “You know, Lord, not I.” And the Lord says to him, “Prophesy to the bones,” prophesy to the dead. Can the dead hear the Word of the Lord? Can their bones?

Then the damnedest thing happens. Ezekiel prophesies to the bones, and the bones get up! They rattle together, forming into skeletons, upon which sinew and flesh and skin reform, reconstituting the corpses, making of them men. Then the Lord commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the wind, the breath, the spirit, that their spirits might return, reëntering their bodies, resurrecting them. And God says, “These are the house of Israel. I will open your graves, I will raise you up, and I will bring you home.”

Now, in context, this is a prophecy of Exile. The Jewish people have been defeated and deported from their homes, as strangers in a strange land. They think they’ve lost it all: their king, their country, their Temple, their God. As a people they have died. Yet God here says that He will bring the people back to life and restore them to their land; an impossible promise, but one which God fulfills. He resurrects the nation.

Yet almost from the get-go, the Jewish people interpreted this prophecy as far more than political. Coupled with other Prophets of the Exile, Ezekiel instilled within Israel the faith that the dead would live again—not as wispy shades in Sheol, but with a new and greater life, a spiritual life, beyond the ravages of time and the weakness of the flesh. If God did not intend for death, He one day would undo it.

And the Jewish people, returned from the Exile, coupled this prophecy of resurrection with another promise of the Prophets: that of the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ; a new Prophet, Priest, and King—not like those of old, who failed one and all—but a heavenly monarch, divine in origin, yet like unto a Son of Man. He would establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and raise up the dead from their graves! Faith in the Resurrection and faith in the Messiah were awaited as one and the same.

Enter Jesus. For some three and a half years, He travelled the Holy Land—Galilee, Judea, the Decapolis, Samaria—preaching shocking sermons, healing all who suffered, lifting up the lowly, and some even said raising the dead. He was ticking off all of our boxes. We started to think that maybe the Messiah had come at long last. But we’d been burned before. Other would-be messiahs arose, stirring up the people, only to be crushed beneath the hobnailed heels of Rome. We didn’t want another war unless we knew that we could win.

The more that Jesus taught, the more our fervor grew, thickening the air with the threat of violence; until one day, His friend died. Lazarus lived with his sisters in Bethany, just two miles from Jerusalem. Jesus stayed with them often when He came to the Holy City. Alas, Lazarus grew sick and died. His sisters sealed him in a tomb for four long days in the Mediterranean heat. Then Jesus arrived. And He saw the crowds of mourners gathered from Jerusalem, and He wept. He wept with His people, wept with His friends.

And then Jesus prophesied to the bones: “Lazarus, come forth.” And the dead man got up! Not a ghost, not a shade, not a demon in disguise, but the flesh-and-blood man Lazarus emerged from his tomb, wrapped in a shroud, before the whole assembly of Jerusalem. This was no backroom resurrection in a distant country town. This was Christ dispelling death with but a word, in the middle of Times Square, broadcast on primetime for all the world to witness. And the whole city went nuts.

This is the miracle that brings Jesus’ ministry to a head. This is the act of mercy, the show of otherworldly power, which will get Him killed. Next week, at Palm Sunday, all of Jerusalem will be frothing at the mouth, declaring Jesus as King and Son of David, despite that being a death sentence and declaration of war under the Roman auxiliaries garrisoning the gates; because Christ has thrown the gauntlet down, not against Rome, but against Hell itself, Death herself, Satan himself.

The war of life and death has been declared. Now we shall see, along with the whole world, what this Messiah and His Resurrection are worth.

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

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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