Hiding from Death

Recently I was on a Ravelry chat board that was talking not about over-protective parents, but over-protective schools that want to take words such disease, divorce and birthday banned from standardized test because the words might offend or bring up painful memories.  This lead to various people discussing how either disease and death has been hidden from children by parents and the various repercussions.

And it is easy to knock parents who want to hid death from their kids - the ones who tell them that their dog ran away or that grandpa has gone away for awhile. But really these parents hid death out of love.  They fear that their children won't completely understand or that they will ask questions that they are not able to answer.  And because they love their children, they don't want them to hurt, and so they tell lies and half-truths.

But we can't knock these parents and not see it also in ourselves. This is Holy Week, the week when we walk with Jesus towards the cross.  Yesterday in worship we heard not just of the day when Jesus was celebrated as he came into Jerusalem but also we heard the entire passion narrative as Jesus was anointed before his death, had his last meal with his friends, was betrayed, arrested, put on trial, denied, sentenced to death, died and was buried.  We read the entire passion because many people do not come to the other worship services this week and therefore go straight from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem to his resurrection and they miss hearing about his death, which is where the gospel really lies.

I love Maundy Thursday and Good Friday worship services.  I have often thought that you really can't celebrate Easter unless you have first shared in Jesus' last meal and witness his death.  Yes they are full of sorrow, yes sometimes there are tears.  These are emotions that we may not want to bear witness to, but they are part of the human story, they are part of the emotion spectrum that we as human have been given. And yet I don't know of a single congregation that has double, triple or quadruple the attendance on Palm Sunday or Easter than they will have on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday combined.  Because we want to hid from death, just like those parents who do not tell their children about death.

We can't live Sunday to Sunday - the parade to the empty tomb.  We would be missing an important part to the story.


The story is not that Jesus was loved by the people of Jerusalem and a week later something miraculous happen as a tomb was empty.


The story is that Jesus was loved by the people of Jerusalem, who quickly changed their ways as even one of Jesus' closest friends betrayed him and handed him over to authorities.  Once arrested Jesus was put on trial and the crowds who just a few days before hailed him as king were now shouting for his death.  Jesus then was put to death on a cross and his body was buried as those friends and family were left to celebrate one of the holiest days of the year without the one they loved.

But that is not were the story ends.  Jesus overcame death. Jesus rose from the death.  His body was not there where they had laid him.  He was alive again.

We try to hid death, but we can't.  Eventually children will learn the truth about their dog or grandpa and they might feel betrayed.  Or ideas of zombies or the un-dead develop, but we know those are just stories.  We can however celebrate death, and more importantly celebrate that death has no power over Jesus.  We can realize that death does happen, that regardless of who we are, someday we will die, along with our loved ones and our pets.  Even Jesus died!

But that is not the end of the story, it is just the beginning.