Death and Resurrection, the story of Holy Week, is everyone’s story, a universal story. It is a story at all because Jesus, truly God and truly man, died to deliver from their sinfulness all those who would come to believe in him, and win for them eternal life. Our death will probably not be like Jesus’ death; crucifixion is no longer used to impose the death penalty, which, thank God, is now abandoned in Illinois and more and more rarely imposed anywhere. Our resurrection, however, will be very like his, although delayed until he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was hanged for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, preached, 12 years before he was killed: “No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour — waiting and looking forward to being released from bodily existence. … How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether in our human fear and anguish, we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly blessed event in the world? Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But this is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.”
Read Full Article »