April 19, 2020
/Easter 2
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
“But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held by its power…”
I once read somewhere that memory lasts about four generations. Meaning that a person generally remembers or knows about or has some sense of their great-great grandparents and their generation. But beyond that, there’s really no knowledge. That is, for me at least, fairly accurate. I know something of my great-great grandparents, but beyond that the slate is blank. It is a rather sobering reminder that memory is not eternal, that, eventually, you and I – short of us becoming famous or infamous – will not be remembered. Not through the fault of any one person or family member, but simply because of the nature of human memory. But the fault doesn’t really lie with our memories – the fault lies with death. Death cuts us off living relationships and so it raises the possibility that we will be forgotten, that we will simply fade away, as though we ceased to be.
Death, as the apostle Peter reminds us today, is a powerful thing. It is an indiscriminate force taking the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad. Death, in the words of Rowan Williams, “is…a drastic severing of relations.” 1 Death ends our ability to be in relationship with others or have them be in relationship with us. With our deaths our lives, but also our stories, our gifts and abilities disappear and, eventually, so does the memory of us. Perhaps most disastrously, death forecloses the possibility of healing or reconciliation. We all know stories of people who die nursing a grudge, or without ever experiencing forgiveness. Simply put, death is the end. The end of biological life, the end of relational life, and the end of spiritual life. With death, all possibilities are shut out.
Jesus faced this, Jesus endured this. Jesus died. His friends who survived him could remember him, but they couldn’t talk with him, they couldn’t interact with him. The chances to be restored, to be forgiven, to explain why they betrayed him and abandoned him were gone forever.
But God raised Jesus from the dead and in raising Jesus from the dead, the power of death to end our lives, our relationships, our futures is overcome. Because Jesus is raised, he can return to his apostles and friends, he can offer forgiveness, relationships continue. Jesus’ life and ministry are not settled, the story isn’t finished. The resurrection opens the life of Jesus onto eternity. Jesus’ life is no longer lived with death constantly on the horizon, it is no longer lived with the understanding that it will all fade away one day. There is always a future before Jesus.
In celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, we celebrate the defeat of death. “But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held by its power…” Jesus could not be held by the power of death and through Jesus, you and I are freed from the power of death. We are baptized into his death and resurrection, and Paul says that having been baptized into a death like his, we will also participate in a resurrection like his. The resurrection of Jesus is a promise to you and me that death is not the “period” at the end of the sentence. The resurrection of Jesus is a promise that God will not allow us, our lives, our memories, our stories, our relationships to simply go away. The resurrection of Jesus means that for you and I, there is always an eternity to look forward to, always a future filled with possibilities. Of course, you and I will face death. Biological death, relational death, perhaps even spiritual death. The resurrection does not remove death from our stories, but it changes it. Death is not the end of life, but a feature of life. But we will exist on the other side of death. The Eastern Orthodox have a wonderful way of viewing this, they will often speak of folks “falling asleep in the Lord,” not dying. We fall asleep, but we will awaken.
Death may be natural, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Death ends life with each other and with God, and we weren’t made for that. We weren’t made to be forgotten after a few years. We were made to live, to live for eternity in the presence of God. Jesus in the Gospel of John says that he came that we might “have life, and have it abundantly,” (Jn 10:10). The abundant life is Jesus’ life, a life so full that death cannot contain it. Jesus shares that life with us, gifting us lives that will not be contained by the power of death. Whether we fall asleep in the Lord today, or fifty years from today our lives will not be ended. Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is always a future for us to look towards. The resurrection of Jesus promises us that death will not sever our relationships, that death will not cause us to fade into memory. Death may appear powerful, it may appear final – but that’s just an illusion. What’s powerful is the love of God, and what’s final is God’s choice to raise us from death to new life. Amen.