Faith Meets Life: Defining death
Starting this coming Sunday the churches in London will be focusing on the last week of the life of Jesus some 2,000 years ago. There are four accounts of that week in the Christian Bible and, although the stories are told from different perspectives, they yield a remarkably coherent account.
Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem as a very popular figure, celebrated for his teaching and healing. He spent time at the temple, an ornate structure, 15-storeys high, surrounded by courtyards and long, colonnaded buildings. The Roman authorities, to appease the strict religious expectations of the Jewish people of that time, built it. It was a centre of religious authority, but the religious leaders were not ignorant of its political importance. The Jewish people and the Romans who occupied their land maintained a delicate co-existence.
Jesus' popularity had grown without him deriving any authority from the religious leaders of his time. This was a threat to their religious leadership, their stewardship of the religious and historical heritage passed on to them by their “fathers.”
At the same time, his popularity was a political danger. A recurring expectation among the Jewish people was that God would send a messiah to bring freedom from their oppressors. The leaders saw that many were expecting Jesus to fulfill that role. They feared, rightly so, because it had happened before, that a popular uprising would come about, inviting a brutal and devastating response from the Roman authorities.
It is for these reasons -Jesus' success, and therefore, his being a threat to the religious and political status quo - that those leaders sought his death. His biographies often mention that they were conspiring to kill him. Eventually they succeeded, thus the accounts of his life include the stories of his crucifixion.
None of this would matter much today if it weren't for the fact that the followers of Jesus claimed that he was raised from the dead. This is either one of the greatest instances of bad reporting the planet has ever seen, or it is the best news imaginable. I want to write more about that in my next column.
For now, though, consider the claim that Jesus did rise from the dead, and especially the corroborating claim that he is God. What could it mean that God died?
There are two things at least about this that are worth thinking about.
First, it could mean (as the first Christians — almost all of them Jewish by the way — uniformly thought it did) that God had found a way to absorb his own anger against human sin, freeing human beings from that. That might sound odd on some levels, but I wonder if it needs to. A viewing of “Cold Case Files,” “Judge Judy,” Inconvenient Truth, the stories of cash grabs by Canadian political leaders, the killing of the Beothuk, or a reflection on the deceptions we ourselves are a part of might convince us otherwise. If there is a creator who intends for our lives to reflect love for others, truthfulness, and care for his world, haven't we given that creator many reasons to be angry and grieved?
But then there is something else too. We all need to see an end to death. I realize that people like Richard Dawkins counsel us to accept death as the necessary and inescapable outcome for each person, for the human race, and indeed, for all the exits. But what if there is a creator who has made everything and who does not allow death to have the last word? Jesus absorbed death showing that its power is, surprisingly, limited. But that gets me to Jesus' rising from death and I'll try to say something about that next week.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem as a very popular figure, celebrated for his teaching and healing. He spent time at the temple, an ornate structure, 15-storeys high, surrounded by courtyards and long, colonnaded buildings. The Roman authorities, to appease the strict religious expectations of the Jewish people of that time, built it. It was a centre of religious authority, but the religious leaders were not ignorant of its political importance. The Jewish people and the Romans who occupied their land maintained a delicate co-existence.
Jesus' popularity had grown without him deriving any authority from the religious leaders of his time. This was a threat to their religious leadership, their stewardship of the religious and historical heritage passed on to them by their “fathers.”
At the same time, his popularity was a political danger. A recurring expectation among the Jewish people was that God would send a messiah to bring freedom from their oppressors. The leaders saw that many were expecting Jesus to fulfill that role. They feared, rightly so, because it had happened before, that a popular uprising would come about, inviting a brutal and devastating response from the Roman authorities.
It is for these reasons -Jesus' success, and therefore, his being a threat to the religious and political status quo - that those leaders sought his death. His biographies often mention that they were conspiring to kill him. Eventually they succeeded, thus the accounts of his life include the stories of his crucifixion.
None of this would matter much today if it weren't for the fact that the followers of Jesus claimed that he was raised from the dead. This is either one of the greatest instances of bad reporting the planet has ever seen, or it is the best news imaginable. I want to write more about that in my next column.
For now, though, consider the claim that Jesus did rise from the dead, and especially the corroborating claim that he is God. What could it mean that God died?
There are two things at least about this that are worth thinking about.
First, it could mean (as the first Christians — almost all of them Jewish by the way — uniformly thought it did) that God had found a way to absorb his own anger against human sin, freeing human beings from that. That might sound odd on some levels, but I wonder if it needs to. A viewing of “Cold Case Files,” “Judge Judy,” Inconvenient Truth, the stories of cash grabs by Canadian political leaders, the killing of the Beothuk, or a reflection on the deceptions we ourselves are a part of might convince us otherwise. If there is a creator who intends for our lives to reflect love for others, truthfulness, and care for his world, haven't we given that creator many reasons to be angry and grieved?
But then there is something else too. We all need to see an end to death. I realize that people like Richard Dawkins counsel us to accept death as the necessary and inescapable outcome for each person, for the human race, and indeed, for all the exits. But what if there is a creator who has made everything and who does not allow death to have the last word? Jesus absorbed death showing that its power is, surprisingly, limited. But that gets me to Jesus' rising from death and I'll try to say something about that next week.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
