Death Is no Longer Our Enemy

	President Kurtis D. Schultz

  

"I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in Me, though he dies yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes m

Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25,26)

  

I recall a high-school friend who became a physician. Like many other doctors he was sincerely devoted to his work and would go to great lengths to save his patients from death. Death, his great enemy, had to be defeated, and he fought it with all the skill and resourses he could muster. To have a patient die was to be defeated by death, to become a failure as a doctor. Much present day medical research seems to be motivated by this same intention. I haven't seen my friend in many years. I wonder as he gets older if he is still in a struggle to defeat death. More to the present point, do you and I feel that we must battle death on our own or put our hope in medical research to overcome death?

  

In our passage from the Gospel of St. John, both Mary and Martha still saw death as an undefeated enemy, an enemy which Jesus, if He had been there, could have defeated. The shortest of all Bible verses, "Jesus wept." (John 11:35) says to me that Jesus' sadness was for Mary and Martha and all those gathered at Lazarus' tomb, because they did not yet believe what He had been telling them. They still had not grasped who He was.

  

But who among us does not have some fear of death? Few indeed, I suspect, though for some it may be the unknown that is feared more than death. It seem to take a lot of living, a lot of Easters, for most us to celebrate Jesus' resurrection with all our hearts, to have it worked into our spirits the truth that our Savior Jesus Christ has "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.' (2 Tim. 1:10)

  

If our hearts do not receive Jesus' proclamation then we are doomed to defeat, for the truth is that we all die. If death is not a toothless enemy we cannot know the peace of Psalm 23:4, "Even thought I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me." We must live in its threatening shadows, without the full light of life. Our lives are consumed in dealing with the many faces of doubt and fear that will inevitably plague us. Our lives will be harried and stunned, and the joy for which God created us will go unrealized, unfulfilled. That's why St. Paul warned the Corinthians, "If for this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied." (1 Cor. 15:19)

  

Speaking of Jesus' proclamation that He is the resurrection and the life, a friend once said to me, "There are those who think so, those who hope so and those who know so; for me this is a know so." For this man death had lost its sting; he was living a new and ever greater life with Jesus. He had been set free from the anxiety of fearing death, free to live this earthly life in the purpose and peace God had for him, free to take up his cross and follow Jesus into that immortality which reveals the fullness of God's love for us. This is what Jesus wants for us. He is still asking, "Do you believe this?"

  

Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Strengthen in us your assurance that with You death is no longer to be feared, that by your passing through death to resurrection life has opened our way to everlasting life. Amen