lifeasmission

Jesus Dies?

April 14, 2006

Last evening I attended a Maundy Thursday
service with some friends.  We visited All Saints Episcopal Church just a few blocks from campus. 
The service was very liturgical and formal and centered around the ceremonies of foot washing and eucharist – each very powerful in their own right.  The service concluded with a very dramatic chorus of guys and girls alternating verses as they chanted Psalm 22 and the lights dimmed to black – the service ended in darkness and silence.  It was all very powerful.

But for me, the most significant element of the service was completely unplanned.  During one of the readings, one of the priests was reading the passion narrative.  In the middle of one of her sentences she said, “Jesus died.”  A few rows in front of me was this girl who couldn’t have been more then 6 or 7.  She seemed relatively uninterested in everything that was happening and even a bit restless.  But her head jerked up when the priest said that and she turned to her mother, and asked in amazement, “Jesus dies?”  The quizical look on her face will stay with me for a long, long time.  Her mother promptly shushed her, but she queried all the louder, “Jesus dies?”  She was shushed again, but I was moved to tears.

It is so easy to gloss over.  Jesus dies.  I don’t mean it’s easy to gloss over because, after all, Christians are resurrection people.  I mean it is easy to gloss over because we want to.  We don’t want suffering, pain, scorn, and mockery.  We want resurrection.  And we are right to want resurrection – but perhaps not for the reasons we often think.  I have heard it uttered on more than one ocassion, “The cross is meaningless without the resurrection.”  It seems better to conclude, however, that in God’s economy it is the cross, the death of Jesus, that gives the resurrection its ultimate meaning.

Jesus was not resurrected despite his death, he was resurrected because of it.  The resurrection exhibits not just God’s victory over death, but also the way in which he is glorified though servanthood, sacrifice, and love.  Jesus did not just die, he died on behalf of others.  Thus, he was not merely resurrected, but resurrected that he might continue the same ministry – on behalf of others.  How amazing are the implication for the Church as Jesus’ bride, his very body! 

I pray that as this Holy Week comes to a close, those of us who have been in any way touched by the love of God will be given the grace to freshly ponder the question and implications of my young friend —

“Jesus dies?”

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