DEAR DIARY...

D’you like reading diaries? I got hold of an interesting one the other day. I thought you might like to hear a bit of it. It’s called ‘A week in the life of death’. This is how it goes:

Monday.

Dear Diary: It’s me again - Death. The big D. What a day! Busy, busy, busy. Bit like yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. Tragic cases really. Some so beautiful. Some so young. Oh, I nearly wept, you know – but in the end I didn’t bother.
Well, must finish. Busy evening ahead.

Tuesday.

Dear Diary: I suppose you think it’s a bit soft, Death writing a diary. But I don’t really get to stop and meet anyone to chat. Oh, I meet people. I meet everyone. Met them all, the great philosophers, the great religious leaders. Great wits, great thinkers. (Great twits, great stinkers.) But it’s all so brief and to the point. Always. ALWAYS!

Wednesday.

Dear Diary: Two big battles fought today. One in, oh – Er, thingamy and another in, Wherever-it-is. Now myself, I prefer famines and plagues – then you get a good steady business over a period. Battles – well, you’re rushed off your feet! D’you know, diary. I can’t understand these people. They spend half their time scared stiff of me and trying to avoid me, and then they have a battle! Tuh!

Thursday.

Dear Diary: Death. The final frontier where Captain James T. Kirk must boldly go! I’m pretty impressive really, don’t you think? It’s the ultimate statistic, you know: one in one die. … Yes, I like that – the ultimate. THE ULTIMATE.

Friday.

Dear Diary: The ultimate here. Interesting day today. A carpenter’s son from Nazareth. Been a lot of fuss about him. Died well (Thoughtful – then snaps out of it) if you can die well! A bit like saying, ‘I failed well’. A bit like saying, ‘I swallow dived off a 100 foot cliff into the yawning mouth of a great white shark and got full marks for style’. Huh!

Saturday.

Dear Diary (Slower): Funny feeling today. Like when you’ve eaten something that doesn’t agree with you. Still, death must go on! Yes, that’s a much more sensible saying: ‘Life must go on’ – that’s drivel! Not in my experience. Life must – life must grovel! (Pause) But I do feel strange.

Sunday - Easter Sunday – AD 30.

(As if sick) : Dear Diary: (Looks straight ahead shocked and as if swearing) JESUS CHRIST!

Death of death, and Hell’s destruction!

Who on earth was this Jesus of Nazareth, then? How come we make such world-shattering claims about him?

At first sight, he was no more than a wandering preacher – perhaps a prophet like the prophets of old; calling people to take God more seriously than they’d been used to; gathering a little band of followers – but nobody to be taken very seriously, certainly no threat to the authorities. 

But then, some odd stories started circulating. Healing people. Healing them even on the Sabbath – when the religious leaders told everyone that doing things like that on the Sabbath wasn’t allowed for human beings. Why, even God himself had rested on the seventh day! And then he started telling people that their sins were forgiven. Who did he think he was? Surely he knew that only God could forgive sins?

No wonder his little band of followers started asking who he was. Who he really was, that is. He must be someone very special.

There was a moment of insight once, early in the morning on the top of a mountain, when three of them had an unearthly experience and seen him enveloped in a superhuman glory. After that, they really did begin to think that something was afoot.

But then, it had begun to go wrong.

He came into Jerusalem at the head of a demonstration. He challenged the Temple authorities and trashed their money-tables. And that really did start the opposition going. At supper on the Thursday evening, he talked about spilling his blood, but being remembered for ever because of it. That night, one of his own group led the police to where he was, and it was clear that the net was tightening round him.

The disciples began to think that, after all, they had been fooled. Peter may have seen the glory on the Mount of the Transfiguration, but in the courtyard that Thursday night he lost his nerve completely, and swore he had never known the man from Nazareth.

And the Temple authorities knew all along that they had a trouble-maker to get rid of, or else there might be a riot.

They didn’t recognise who he was. As he was being killed, Jesus was heard to pray for his executioners - ‘Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.’ As St Paul was to say a few years later, the rulers of this present world didn’t know the hidden wisdom of God. If they had, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of Glory. The disciples didn’t know, either, or they wouldn’t have scattered. And Thomas certainly didn’t know, or he’d have believed the others when they told him what they’d seen on the first Easter evening.

It took a long time for the message of Easter to strike home. For forty days the disciples were huddled together, waiting for the tap on the door that’d tell them they were under arrest, like Jesus’d been under arrest. They needed to be visited by the risen Jesus – not once, not twice, but many times – before the implications of what’d happened were obvious enough for them to go out onto the streets and tell everyone about it.

But in the end they were convinced; so convinced, that nothing could stop them. It was true that Jesus was the death of death and hell’s destruction. His death on the Cross wasn’t the end of everything, but the beginning. When he’d said that the bread and the wine were his body and his blood, he meant that his life would go on for ever, and those who ate the bread and drank the wine in remembrance of him would be part of that life for ever.

‘I am convinced’, said St Paul, ‘that nothing can separate us from the love of God – not death, nor life, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation.’ Death cannot separate us from the love of God. Oh, yes; death still happens – and for some people, it will be harder than for others. The Resurrection of Jesus doesn’t stop us dying. But death can’t any longer separate us from the love of God. Because of the Resurrection, we know that the way to death is no longer a one-way street – Jesus has come back. And it is no longer a dead end – we go on from death to life eternal.

Death of death, and hell’s destruction.

Do we recognise that? Or are we like Thomas, thinking that the Good News of the Gospel is just too good to be true? Or like Peter in the High Priest’s courtyard, ready to be embarrassed if there’s any danger of being recognised as a follower of Jesus?

Pray God to give you the conviction to believe that Jesus really is the death of death and hell’s destruction; pray that he may give you the courage to act on that conviction when the time comes to bear witness to the truth of the Resurrection.

Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Thanks be to God. Amen.

(A Week in the life of Death was written by David Gavin and came to me via the Bishop of Jarrow who has printed it in one of his recent books. It is used by permission.)

Picture credits on this page: The Bible Revival

Fr. Michael Perry
Visiting St Johns