Never Taste Death
PASSION SUNDAY, THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
The season of Lent is filled with the most vibrant and imaginative themes. Wilderness and stark deserts paint the landscape of the soul. Bareness and suffering, along with fasting and weakness, all serve as thematic foundations upon which Christian, lenten spirituality is experienced. And, perhaps, the most poignant of all Lenten themes is mortality.
Lent, whether you're prepared for it or not, eventually comes around. Year after year, Christmas is followed by Epiphanytide, which leads us into the forty days of Lenten preparation. Ready or not... Lent shows up on Ash Wednesday and confronts us with our mortality. As the ashes mark the head, so these words mark the conscience with this stark reminder: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust, you shall return."
Our prayer book doesn't allow us to avoid mortality either. This theme lingers in the daily prayers of the church as we pray to spend our life on this earth "in rest and quietness," for we know life is temporal. The General Thanksgiving prayed every Morning and Evening, reminds us of the fleeting nature of our lives, and so we pray for God to give us a "due sense of all [His] mercies." That in the days we are Divinely appointed, we might please God. We hear this great theme as well in the daily reading of the psalms and, of course, when praying the Litany, we beseech our Father to deliver us "in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment" (BCP, 55).
To be human means that one must die. It means we are a creature of contradictions: on the one hand, we know through the sciences that dying is as natural and necessary as the setting of the sun, but, on the other hand, death is unnatural in that it was not meant for man to taste. But in the Garden, fidelity gave way to temptation. Willful disobedience of God's word expelled humanity from the realm of love, bringing death into the human condition. And from that day forward, their days were numbered; their lives shortened.
Their bodies, now, withering away, moment by moment, year after year, living and yet dying. But the reaches of death went far beyond the physical and into the realm of spirit. Adam and Eve suffered an internal wound as well: they experienced guilt. Sin introduced guilt into their consciences, which was alien to their former state of perfection. Death is always both natural and spiritual because man is a spiritual being who experiences death in every possible sense of the word.
And our Lenten pilgrimage is, in a real sense, a march into death. You see, we are not in the wilderness alone but have joined Christ in his fast, in his desert journey. We are being led by him, following him to his destination. Now you might immediately think: "hey, I know where Jesus is going, he's moving towards the joy, hope, and happiness of Easter morning!" Yes, in the fullest understanding of this Lenten journey. True, Lent is bookended by sorrow and joy. But Jesus' glorious exodus from the grave on Easter morning first terminates at Golgotha's Cross.
This fifth Sunday in Lent is commonly called Passion Sunday. Passion Sunday signals the coming of Holy Week, the events surrounding the Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, as he will enter into the Holy City a week from today, seated upon a donkey, warmly welcomed with the triumphal waving of palms and shouts of praise, "Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord." But just a few days later, Jesus will be arrested, falsely accused, beaten like a common criminal, unjustly sentenced, tortured, and crucified: hung upon a cross.
Good Friday. This is where our Lenten journey has been leading and is heading. Passion Sunday really is the first real Lenten signpost, which tells us that "our Lord is drawing near to Jerusalem. He is drawing nearer and nearer to the hour of death. The hour of mortality." See how the Lenten Purple has given way to the Red of the martyr's. Red adorns the church; her altar and chalice, even her ministers.
The altar cross is draped and veiled as a widow mourning her beloved; and will remain so as an outward sign of the inward sorrow provoked by the very word 'passion.' Veiled too is the brilliant gold processional cross which has no corpus Christi, recalling for us the death sentence under which Jesus lived until it was executed upon him so terribly at Calvary. And so, today, we begin preparing for the days when the Bridegroom shall be taken away.
There is a lament coming. The daily readings will move from Jeremiah to Lamentations during Holy Week. We will begin to sense a gradual cessation of joy over the coming days as we move forward in this Passiontide towards an unavoidable confrontation with our Lord's death. The very idea and reality of what our Lord suffered, which is recapitulated during Holy Week, is nothing short of a mental melee and emotional assault upon us as well. For in contemplating his death, we wrestle with our own mortality, our consciences, and temporality.
Even the most fleeting thought of Good Friday makes us uncomfortable. It stirs within us a concoction mixed of sorrow and bewilderment, then shame and guilt. The remembrance of it profoundly affects us because, first, we again become acutely aware of just how terrible a thing that fateful Friday afternoon was, and second, (if we're honest), we know (in the depths of the heart) that we're complicit in the thing: would you have been the nobler Roman? Or you the believing Israelite? Or perhaps the loyal Disciple? Saying, "Lord, I will lay down my life for you," and "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee." Or, (and I fear this is much closer to the truth) would we have denied our Lord and cowered away in tears at the sounding of the crow. Even now, the thought and remembrance of Good Friday haunts the corridors of the soul and disturbs the conscience.
And yet, Mother Church has declared the dark climax of our Lord's Passion to be good. We observe "Good Friday." Not, "Bad Friday." Because, on that good day, the once-for-all, full, perfect, and sufficient Sacrifice was offered by Jesus Christ, our great High Priest to atone for the sins of the whole world. You see, in his death, Jesus was both the perfect Sacrifice and the perfect Sacrificer!
All of the sacrifices for sin in the Old Testament had a single purpose: to point to Jesus Christ on the Cross, whose one oblation of himself, once offered, he took into the holiest place of all—the presence of his Father in heaven. Jesus Christ on the Cross is not only a sacrificial victim, but he is also the one and only High Priest who, raised from the dead, was able to offer the perfect Sacrifice to satisfy the Father's demand and to redeem us from eternal death. A complete and final sacrifice. One that reverses the effects of death, both in the outward body and inwardly as well,
"For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:13-14).
The answer, of course, is that the Blood of Christ has accomplished what no animal sacrifice ever could—to cleanse us forever from the stain of sin and release us from death's grip. Christ's High-Priestly, all-sufficient Sacrifice goes well beyond ritual cleaning, it washes away the stain of guilt upon the conscience. It liberates us from the tyranny of the self, the barrage of despair and discouragement a guilty conscience that whispers condemnation and shame into the ear of the soul.
For an unclean conscience is infested with dead works. There is a reason why it is dirty. It is littered with "dead works." But understand what the author of Hebrews means by dead works. He's not speaking of "works" as in the working of the Old Testament Law. He's not creating an artificial opposition between legalism and grace (which is a tendency in much of present-day evangelical spirituality).
Instead, by dead works, he is talking about the sins we commit, both by commission and omission, which defile and pollute the conscience. And these are in direct opposition to "good works," which every Christian is called to perform. "Good work" is the opposite of sinning. It lives to please God, to serve Him, willingly and obediently. The washing of the conscience is to unburden the soul, but the Lord has a higher purpose in it as well: for us to serve Him.
This we learn from today's epistle to the Hebrews, which says that "Jesus offered himself without spot to God, to purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." To serve is to love, and this we know from our Lord's example. His very life was a work of love. You see, love and good works are two sides of the same coin. Love moves; it acts; it does. Love necessarily manifests itself, incarnates if you will. It does that which it is commanded to do.
In responding to the Jews, Jesus said, "but I know [the Father], and keep his saying." Jesus always obeyed His Father. In fact, did he not say that "I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father who hath sent Me?" (Jn 5:30). He was the obedient Son, the archetype of perfected humanity. He was spotless, and so was his conscience. Did he not ask, "Who of you can convict me of any sin?" Well, of course, no one! He was of a pure conscience because he was sinless, pure as the driven snow. His conscience was clean, for he was clean.
Thereby he is able to cleanse our consciences in the waters of baptism as St. Peter tells us (1 Pt 3:21). And we know from St. John that as baptized Christians, "If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 Jn 1:9). Friends, in Jesus, we not only find the Divine pattern worthy of emulation but the remedy for a soiled conscience and liberation to serve our Savior.
Jesus said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keeps my saying, he shall never see death." The Sacrifice of Christ not only has the power to clear the conscience, but it also offers eternal life. But we must hear and obey the word, the good word of the Gospel, the Divine command to love. To love God enough to trust him with your very life, to believe in Him, and His promises. If we abide in Christ and trust him enough to do what he says, we shall never see death.
Please understand who it is that promises! It is none other than the eternal God, the Second person of the Trinity who offers eternal life ""Before Abraham was, I am." This isn't merely a good and virtuous man, but the very "I AM": the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus is the God of the burning bush who, by the incarnation, was forever wed to our humanity. On the day in which our Lord declared himself to be the God of Abraham, his enemies simply would not believe. They sought to kill him, not obey him. And so they remained in the death of their unbelief. Beloved, without faith, we will not follow, neither will we love.
You see, unbelief kills. Faith loves. Without faith, without covenant trust, love cannot abide and certainly will not flourish. Therefore, today we are being challenged to embrace the promise of eternal life by faithfully obeying the words of Jesus. Know then, in whom it is you believe. Look into the face of Christ. Risk everything upon Him. Let go of fear and cast aside any and all trepidation… he will not reject nor ridicule, belittle or devalue. He will not abandon nor forsake, for he loves you with unending and perfect love. Do you doubt what I say? Well, then I direct your attention to Good Friday, which is more than ample proof of God's love towards you.
On that fateful Friday, the eternal Son of heaven made man gladly obeyed the Father's will. Jesus believed and trusted his Father, who out of love, sent Him to die for the sins of the world, and not an ordinary death as most will experience, but an excruciating death on a Roman Cross. And, "through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God" to purge our consciences, to make us clean, and overcomers of the grave.
Our great High Priest passed through the heavenly tabernacle carrying not the blood of bulls and goats, but his own perfect and precious blood. This Priest, and He alone, has redeemed you from death by death. His body broken for you, his blood poured out for you. It is glorious, lovely, and good.
Passion Sunday is a mile marker on the road to Golgotha that alerts us to sorrow, mortality, and death. But it is the pathway unto life because with the Cross comes the shedding of blood, and it is the precious blood of Christ that covers us in the day of vengeance and redeems us from the tyranny of conscience and death.
Therefore, keep this in mind: as we contemplate the death of Jesus Christ throughout this Passiontide, we are at the same time contemplating our life. I would submit to you, that the most beneficial use of these final weeks of Lent is to become so filled with the contemplation of Christ's death and its great benefits, that we overflow with the exuberance of the new life we have obtained by his obedient Sacrifice.
As the sorrows of Good Friday and the seeming hopelessness of Holy Saturday draw near, let us ever hold fast to this truth: our death is finally understood in light of the death of Christ. Apart from the suffering and death which Jesus endured, and the Divine reasoning for it, our death is meaningless, it's absurd. It's downright cruel. Holy Week is the logic and reasoning for all of human suffering, death, and pain. In contemplating Christ's sacrificial death, we learn that suffering is not without its reward. And that death does not end in death.
Christ did not remain in the grave, but ascended from death and entered into the presence of the Father into the holy of holies. The first fruits of the resurrection. The First Man, Jesus Christ, passed into the heavenly courts so that all who believe might follow his glorious procession. Remember this, Jesus attained glory through suffering and was rewarded for his loving obedience, back to the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.
And we by faith have inherited the promise of eternal life with Christ. For it is promised to all who, by grace, keep the word of God. Remember, he who promises eternal life also pledges to abide with you. He is with his people. He is with you. And this must be the comfort we seek in the trials of this life. Especially in these days of sickness, grief, and worry.
Good Christian trust in the Lord. In your time of illness, he will comfort you. And in the hour of death, should mortality catch you tomorrow, next week, or several years from now, he will raise you from the slumber of death unto eternal life. Because life is the promise of God. Not merely an allotment of time here on earth, but for those who heed his word and believe, the happy estate of eternal life in union with himself forever and ever. Amen+
