- Christ has swallowed up death by dying for us.
- I don’t know about you but I find that hard to believe.
- Both my parents and Claire’s parents are now long dead.
- Last year my sister Ruth and my brother Vernon died
- Early this year Susanne Lante, a long-standing member of our congregation, died rather suddenly.
- Then in early March Claire’s best friend died after a long battle with cancer, even though we kept on praying for her and hoping for a miracle.
- What’s even worse than that, I know that my days are numbered too: death is out to get me and al my whole family.
- It’s only a matter of time before the gobbler gobbles us all up.
Yet despite all that we have this wonderful promise from the prophet Isaiah: The Lord will swallow up death for ever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.
- Even better than that God has kept this promise.
- That’s the message of Easter.
- The gobbler has been gobbled up forever and ever.
- He’s done for! Conquered! Finished!
- We have nothing to fear from death any longer.
- The Canaanites believed that life on earth was dominated by two main gods:
- Baal, the life giver, who lived in the sky
- Death, the killer of life, the monster who lived in the underworld together with all the other powers of darkness and disorder.
- These two gods were always at war with each: neither ever got the upper hand
- Baal ruled the earth for 6 months: rainy season.
- Death ruled the earth during the dry season: that lasted for most of the year when there was a drought.
- The Canaanites pictured Death as monster with a large mouth, like a huge crocodile, and even larger belly, like a big toad.
- He kept his mouth open to gulp down every living creature.
- He grew fat by eating people and animals and plants.
- Yet no matter how much ate he was never satisfied
- His appetite was as ravenous as his stomach was cavernous.
- The prophecy of Isaiah shows us that the Canaanites got it partly right.
- Death is our last, worst enemy, the terrible tyrant that seems to govern our life from the cradle to the grave.
- He is the greedy monster that gobbles up everything that we cherish.
- Death robs us of our friends and relatives.
- It saps our health and energy, vitality and zest, long before we die.
- Bit by bit he eats us up until at last he takes our life away from us.
- So death intimidates and frightens us.
- It casts its dark shadow over all human life and fills us with grief and sorrow, heartache and pain, as we mourn the loss of life.
- It is no wonder that there is little that we fear more than death.
- Yet, with the eyes of God, Isaiah does not just see us as people who are doomed to die, but as people who are already as good as dead.
- We have the sentence of death on our heads ever since our original parents sinned.
- Our sin, our rebellion against God and rejection of him, is our disgrace, for the wages of sin are death.
- And so inspired by God’s Spirit, Isaiah divides all people on earth into two classes.
- On the one hand, there are those who are bereaved.
- In keeping with ancient custom, they veil their faces as they grieve their loss and mourn for those who have died.
- That veil covers all nations.
- They don’t just cry for those who have died; they cry for themselves, since they too are doomed to die.
- In fact, they are already dying.
- On the oher hand, you are those who are already dead.
- Their corpses are wrapped in a shroud as they wait to be buried.
- That shroud enfolds all people.
- There is no hope of life for them.
- No one can undo what has happened to them.
- They have come to the end of the road, a dead end with no way out from it.
- The story of human life here on earth is the story of those two classes, those who have died and those who are dying.
- But that’s not the end of the story, because God promises a radical, new beginning through Isaiah
- In his vision Isaiah foresees and foretells a new beginning:: The Lord will swallow up death forever.
- He explains that this will happen in Jerusalem, the holy city, the place where Jesus was crucified and was raised from the dead.
- So we celebrate the death of death this Easter season with its fifty days of rejoicing that culminate in the Feast of Pentecost.
- Jesus has gobbled up the gobbler by his death and resurrection.
- By his dying he has overcome death.
- By his rising he has turned the dead end of death into an open road that leads to abundant life.
- He uses death to kill off death and give us eternal life through his death.
- That does not just happen at the end of our lives on earth.
- It begins right now in this life as our risen Lord Jesus takes our little
deaths, our guilt and shame, our heartache and pain, our grief and loss, our ailments and failures, our knockbacks and setbacks, and uses them to make us more alive than ever before, alive with the Holy Spirit and the eternal life that comes from God.
- Yet, even though we see our physical dying all too clearly, we can’t actually see how we are being made more and more spiritually alive, because, as St. Paul says in Colossians 3:2, our life is now hidden with Christ in God.
- Isaiah also says: On this mountain the Lord Almighty will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the veil that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
- God does not just undo death; he deals with the cause of death, and its effect on us.
- The cause of death is sin, disgrace of humanity, the reason for mortality.
- By his death Christ makes up for our sin and gains forgiveness to all the doomed children of Adam and Eve.
- He removes our guilt and shame.
- So we who put their trust in Jesus are no longer under disgrace.
- We have nothing to be ashamed of any longer.
- We are not sentenced to eternal death but to eternal life.
- We no longer end up in a shroud and stuck in a coffin.
- We need now no longer go through life mourning like oriental women dressed in black with black veils on their faces.
- We have comfort even in the face of death and earthly loss, for Jesus himself wipes away the tears from their faces.
- But it does not end there. Isaiah adds: On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines.
- What a wonderful reversal!
- You, who were once doomed to be eaten up by death, eat the bread and drink the wine that God provides in a feast that celebrates the death of death, the feast of victory for our God
- So your Easter celebration culminates in a feast, the meal that Jesus hosts for you on his holy mountain, the place where heaven meets with earth, New Jerusalem, the assembly of the saints.
- In Holy Communion Jesus provides the best food and finest wine for you to eat and drink.
- Here he gives you own body, his flesh, as life-giving food.
- His flesh has a reverse effect on you.
- When you eat the meat from a sheep, the flesh of the sheep becomes your flesh: it becomes part of your body.
- But when you eat the flesh of Jesus, your flesh is changed into his flesh.
- You don’t assimilate the body of Jesus into your dying bodies.
- The opposite happens: it assimilates you to itself.
- His life-giving body changes your bodies, so that you become like his glorious, resurrected body.
- So, already now, your mortal bodies are gradually changed into his immortal body, like grubs in a butterfly.
- That change will be complete when he raises your bodies from death.
- The gift of his body is his guarantee for your bodily resurrection.
- Here he also gives you his life-giving blood to drink.
- He transfuses his blood into your bodies in Holy Communion.
- His blood is far better than best wine.
- It is far better than any bottle of Grange Hermitage, because it does not inebriate and intoxicate you with alcohol, but exhilarates and elates you with his Holy Spirit.
- As your drink his blood, Jesus fills you with his life-giving Spirit, the Spirit that fills you with vitality and health, vigor and zest, joy and delight.
- So here today we join in the feast that celebrates Christ’s victory over death.
- It’s an international feast because we join with people all over the world as we come forward to receive the body and blood of Jesus.
- We rejoice because we celebrate the greatest event in human history.
- Jesus has swallowed up death for us by his death.
- The gobbler has been gobbled up once and for all.
- So we have good reason to join with all God’s people as they say:
Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the Lord, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.
