This year, I saw many publications about Palm Sunday on social media. Many spoke of a grandiose Jesus who came in as king into Jerusalem and our lives. Others mentioned a Jesus whose power and might is yet to be seen in the resurrection. Almost all the publications talked about a glorious entrance into the sacred city. Very few focused of Jesus’ willingness to enter the very place that would put him on the cross.
It is not surprising to see this understanding among evangelicals in my city. The whole of Christianity hinges on the resurrection and victory of Christ over death. However, we tend to miss one important element. There is no resurrection without death. The glory of God is directly connected to the death of God. This may read as pessimistic or borderline heretic. However, humans would live fuller lives if we knew how to die. I say this with caution, for I am also afraid of dying. I don’t know how to die in the literal nor the metaphorical sense.
I can track my fear of death to what I learned growing up. I was taught that death was in rivalry with life. I believed that death is the result of sin. Therefore, we die because we sinned. Yet it could be the opposite, we sin because we are dying.
I remember some of the petty theological discussions I had with some classmates as we struggled our way through systematic theology during my seminary years. We truly believed that humans would have been immortal if Adam had not sinned. We missed something deeper as we struggled through our theologizing. We did not realized that if death is the result of sin, Jesus becomes a Plan B type of figure. Therefore, death and the devil become equal forces to the incarnated God. As a result, we were taught the eternal salvation of the soul as a way out from our theological bottle neck. The soul is eternal, not our body.
I will not unpack all the implications of what I thought and believed on this essay. There is one thing, however, that shaped my life deeply. In seeing death as an enemy, as an oppositional force to life, I missed many years trying to avoid it in anyway possible until I couldn’t anymore.
I have had my fair share of death surround me. My parents and one sibling died of cancer. Dear friends were tortured and murdered by the organized crime in my city. Also, one of my sister’s old classmates died in front of me as I held his hand after he was shot by armed robbers. As I grow older, I have gathered more stories about death. Some are beautiful, others not so much.
As I think back to each one of those circumstances, I can see myself fighting death, as if I could stop or avoid her. I don’t think my struggle is related to the process of letting go of my loved ones. It is connected to my fear of death. Every time somebody dies, we are reminded of our own mortality and fragility.
This has gotten me wondering, is there anything within the Christian faith that can help me think about death in a different way? This lent, I have experienced and seen two stories from the Gospels in a completely different light. The first one is in John 12:1-8. In this passage, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet. Jesus lets her perform this act of tremendous generosity and reminds everyone present that his death is coming soon: “Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”” I don’t know much about Mary, but it seems to me that she knows something about death. Jesus also knows something about his imminent death. And, they are both very relaxed knowing that the end is coming soon. They are not afraid of death. They are receiving her with arms wide open, for they know God is not in rivalry with anything or anybody, not even death.
The second story that hit me deeply is in John 13:1-17, 31b.35, which is the text for Maundy Thursday this year. What strikes me as beautiful in this passage is Jesus’ attitude towards death: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end … Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” In other words, Jesus is so at peace with facing the end of his existence that he kept loving his disciples until the end. He knows that they are going to face a great trial. Consequently, he proceeds to wash their feet to seal his commitment, love, and faithfulness to them.
As I think of these things I wonder, if we want to follow Jesus into the resurrection, why do we want to skip death so badly? I do not have an answer to that question. I guess I will find out when the end of my time on this earth comes to an end. What makes me relax a little bit more today is knowing that Jesus did not see death as an enemy. He embraced her. In the end, our attitudes towards death will dictate the way we live our life. As I walk with Jesus to the cross, I feel more relaxed, for God is in rivalry with nothing and nobody, not even death.