Much of Holy Week, especially Passion (Palm) Sunday and Good Friday, is overwhelming about death—the final suffering and death of Jesus.
Much of recent weeks for all of us has been overwhelmingly about death—the danger of death from the rapidly spreading Coronavirus.
These days we can’t help but think about the possibility our own death or that of family and friends; it’s not quite like our familiar and somewhat accustomed reflection about the death of the Lord.
We believe, we know that Holy Week has a happy ending, that Jesus triumphed over sin and death, and was resurrected—and that he opened a way to the fulness of life for all of us.
We know that, we believe that, we’re consoled by that—and, to be honest, deadly honest, even so we’re still scared.
You know, if you could have been conscious and reflective in the first stage of your life—in your mother’s womb—it might well have been the same:
Imagine, the only world you know is the womb: you’re comfortable, secure, warm, nourished, and loved—but you’re growing and developing, outgrowing the comfortable but increasingly more confining place where you live.
Then a terrible, disruptive, and painful process begins—you’re being forced out of the only world you know, and you had no experience of anything “outside” this comfortable world of yours.
You’re being born!
In this second stage of our lives, we’re somewhat like the story of the two caterpillars comfortably munching on a leaf of their tree as a beautiful butterfly flew very close to where they were. One said to the other, “You’ll never get me up in one of those things!”
Like it or not, sooner or later we must face another birth-like change in our lives—another disruptive, and painful process of being forced out of the world we know, with no experience of anything “outside” of it.
In faith, this experience isn’t a termination, but a transition. It’s a doorway; it’s a pass that lets us cross the mountain chain; it’s being born again—this time into eternal life.
In Medieval Europe, a popular theme of sermons and illustrations was the Dance of Death. Death was personified as a grim reaper, scythe in hand, who called high and low, rich and poor, to their fate.
I remember seeing a cartoon-like version of this in a magazine. Death was portrayed as skeleton-like dark figure. Each page was Death coming for a different kind of person.
For example, the farmer begged him to wait, so he could first harvest his crops—the lawyer urged him to delay, till his last case was tried—the blacksmith asked for time to finish his last forging.
The last visit was entitled, “Death Comes for the Little Child.” It showed the ominous figure of death reaching out toward the child—who gleefully ran towards him, shouting, “I know you!”
The following page showed the child ripping away what turned out to be a mask from the face of death to reveal his true identity. It was the Lord!
We believe that facing death is not facing destruction and total termination—it’s about facing the ultimate stage of our lives.
How do we know that? We don’t “know” it; we trust! We entrust ourselves to the loving God who made us, is always with us, guides us, and invites us to the fulness of life.
5 April 2020