9th November 2024

We live in a world that is a strange mix of life and death. Both are all around us. Every night when we go to sleep, we experience a kind of death. When we’re asleep, we aren’t in control of anything; we’re basically unconscious and we even sometimes say we sleep like the dead. Waking up in the morning is like a mini resurrection. People are born every day and people die every day. We talk about the dead of winter and new life in the spring. But death isn’t something we like to think or talk about. It’s almost like we pretend it doesn’t happen – until it does.

Being a Christian is also a strange mix of life and death. Jesus talked about death a lot, mostly his own, and it figured into many of his stories and parables. We don’t know at what point he came to the understanding that his whole life was leading up to his death, but we do see him begin to talk about it more with his disciples the closer it got. Paul talked about it a lot too. 

As Christians, our life and death are deeply connected to Jesus’ life and death. When he died, we died. When he rose, we rose. We die in baptism, proclaiming that our life and death are swallowed up in his. We die daily, as Paul said, to the self, to our rights, to wanting to be in charge and even to life itself. It’s difficult to wrap our minds around, but as Robert Farrar Capon¹ suggests, Jesus’ death is the narrow door by which we gain life – in our death, we share in his death and his death is our only way to life. “By Jesus’ death in ours, and by our death in his, we have laughingly, uproariously and outrageously beaten the system.” Capon also said, “Trust Jesus and die.” It’s the only way to life – his life. 

¹ Capon, R.F., Kingdom, Grace, Judgment – Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus, pp 238, 239, 271.

First published on 23 October 2024, at www.gemsofgodsgrace.wordpress.com a personal blog which is not sponsored by Grace Communion International.

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