Where, O Death, is Your Victory?
As we make our way deeper into the Great Week, the single greatest week in the history of the universe, I for one find it challenging to focus. There’s just too much. Too much to think about. Too much to pray about. With each passing year, I find myself trying to linger on just one dimension of all we’re celebrating and calling to mind. Sometimes, it’s the glance of Jesus towards Peter right after he denies the Lord (cf. Luke 22:54-62). Sometimes, it’s trying to picture in my imagination what it must have been like when Jesus was washing Judas’ feet, how Judas must have done all he could to avoid eye contact with his master, and how the Lord must have tried to communicate to Judas that he didn’t have to do what he was about to do (cf. John 13:1-5). Sometimes, it’s the agony in the garden, and Jesus’ steeling Himself not simply to die but to enter into battle alone against the powers of Sin and Death and Hell (cf. Luke 22:39-46).
This year, however, I find myself lingering over Jesus’ liberation of hell, and especially on the eastern icon known as the anastasis. Anastasis is Greek for “raise up,” or resurrection, and whereas the western Church usually focuses on the crucifix, many of our the eastern brothers and sisters focus on this extraordinary icon.
The icon is not a picture, but a mysterious, sacramental glimpse into this real event. Jesus is in the center, with light bursting from inside of Him. He’s standing on the gates of hell, and underneath His feet is “the strong man,” the devil, bound and defeated (cf.Luke 11:22). In His hands are a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, and behind them, a long line of those who had been held bound by the power of Death. But now they are liberated! Jesus is leading them out of captivity and into abundant life.
These past few years have had a devastating impact not only on our country as a whole but on many of us individually. Anxiety, fear and depression are through the roof — just ask any therapist or pastor. A crisis of trust is one of the greatest fallouts from the pandemic we’ve been enduring since the early spring of 2020. Health care professionals, politicians, Church leaders, the media, and so many others are seen and heard through suspicious eyes and ears by so many, it seems.
In light of all this, where can we find hope? Who can we trust?
Ultimately, only in the One who became Man for us, to show us the Father’s love, to make it possible for us to begin again through forgiveness, and who engaged in battle against nothing less than Death…and won!
More than any time I can remember, we need not only reasons to hope but someone to hope in. That Someone is God, who is not absent, not far off, not uninterested, not uncaring. Rather, He is love, which is so much more than saying “He loves.” And this love is made manifest most powerfully, most undeniably, on the cross, which He willingly embraced for us, for you and for me, by name. And in Jesus we come to see and understand that to say “Love is stronger than death” is not just a beautiful sentiment for a greeting card; it’s really true. God has destroyed the power of Death. It does not have the last word. It cannot hold me, though I will pass through it, as will you. And this truth transforms all of life. The ground we stand on as disciples of Jesus is firm, solid, immovable, for our lives are not in the hands of anyone or anything other than this God who is Love.
The power and majesty and Lordship of Jesus are most strikingly conveyed for me, anyway, in an Easter sermon preached more than 1800 years ago by a man named Melito of Sardis. They don’t sound like many of the Easter homilies most of us heard growing up, I would guess. They reveal an unconquerable Jesus, a Jesus who is gentle and merciful, but not just these. They reveal a Jesus who is LORD.
“But he arose from the dead and mounted up to the heights of heaven. When the Lord had clothed himself with humanity, and had suffered for the sake of the sufferer, and had been bound for the sake of the imprisoned, and had been judged for the sake of the condemned, and buried for the sake of the one who was buried,
“He rose up from the dead, and cried aloud with this voice: Who is he who contends with me? Let him stand in opposition to me. I set the condemned man free; I gave the dead man life; I raised up the one who had been entombed.
“Who is my opponent? I, he says, am the Christ. I am the one who destroyed death, and triumphed over the enemy, and trampled Hades under foot, and bound the strong one, and carried off man to the heights of heaven, I, he says, am the Christ.
“Therefore, come, all families of men, you who have been befouled with sins, and receive forgiveness for your sins. I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of your salvation, I am the lamb which was sacrificed for you, I am your ransom, I am your light, I am your saviour, I am your resurrection, I am your king, I am leading you up to the heights of heaven, I show you the eternal Father, I will raise you up by my right hand.
“This is the one who made the heavens and the earth, and who in the beginning created man, who was proclaimed through the law and prophets, who became human via the virgin, who was hanged upon a tree, who was buried in the earth, who was resurrected from the dead, and who ascended to the heights of heaven, who sits at the right hand of the Father, who has authority to judge and to save everything, through whom the Father created everything from the beginning of the world to the end of the age.
“This is the alpha and the omega. This is the beginning and the end–an indescribable beginning and an incomprehensible end. This is the Christ. This is the king. This is Jesus. This is the general. This is the Lord. This is the one who rose up from the dead. This is the one who sits at the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father, to whom be the glory and the power forever.”
Let us linger over this icon and these words in this holiest of weeks, and let us ask the Lord to take us by the hand and lead us out of whatever darkness and captivity we may find ourselves in; help us understand who He is, what He’s done; and come to know more clearly what He’s asking of us in these days in which He has chosen for us to live.