Enjoying Death
Dear church,
“Are you the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on?” Every-once in a while we meet people who are blissfully removed from the chatter and chatrooms of our time, people who seem to live in their own world. A comment like, “Are you the only one?” is usually not a compliment. It makes you feel like you are missing something, that you are ignorant, uninformed or “behind the times”. But sometimes it can be a blessing, an advantage, a saving grace to not participate in the narrative that is created around us, fueled by constant repetition and regurgitation. That’s how Jesus shows up in this story: blissfully removed from what people are saying about him… And what were they saying? That the chief priests and the rulers were to blame for his death. That they handed him over to be crucified, a narrative that quickly emerged in the days after the crucifixion. It reminds me of a certain movie scene…
In the 2012 Bond movie “Skyfall” with Daniel Craig, 007 seems to have been killed by friendly fire. A shot to kill a villain on top of a train had been ordered by his boss M, but the shot took out the famous agent instead. Mortally wounded, he falls into the river below. The obituary is then written by M, unsentimentally played by Judy Dench. But of course, the hero can’t die at the beginning of a thriller; naturally, he recovers, returns to London and has a surprise encounter with his boss in her apartment in which she asks him tersely where he has been all this time. He responds, “Enjoying death. It lends you some perspective. You should try it sometime.” It’s one of the best lines in that movie and it relates to the gospel for this Sunday.
Jesus seems to be enjoying death, playing hide and seek with doubting Thomas, appearing to Cleopas and another disciple on their walk to Emmaus, enjoying grilled seafood with Peter. And everywhere he goes, he shares the peace that comes from the knowledge that nothing can separate us from God, not even death. Doesn’t it seem as though death has given Jesus additional perspective? What was his additional perspective?
The stranger who joins the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, who turns out to be the risen Lord himself, never accepts the popular narrative. His view of life is informed by the reading of the Holy Scriptures. He remains detached from the rumors, the perceptions that take hold among the group of survivors, his friends, the assignment of blame: “T’was the chief priests!” And with that, he encourages all of us today to question the echo chambers that inform our perspective of the world, which are almost always skewed and colored by personal views. We may wonder whether these old Scriptures have anything to say about contemporary issues that concern us deeply these days, the wars, the proliferation of artificial technology, the crisis of democracy, the challenges that the church faces… The gospel encourages us to read our world through the lens of the Bible as Jesus models in this story.
Now, I wish I could play Jesus for you this Sunday morning, opening the Scriptures and explaining with ease everything that you wonder about with a straight line from Genesis to Revelation, making sense of all your most pressing questions. Alas, I cannot do that. I read this story as one of the disciples walking the road to Emmaus, listening to this learned man, my Lord, who is at once detached from the noise of our world and in touch with the deeper meaning of things. What he tells me consistently is that the world is fleeting; but I am no better commentator on the things of this world just because I read the Scriptures frequently; perhaps I have become a deeper questioner, less prone to adopt our human narratives lightly. I hope I have.
Now let us take a step back from the heavy questions and simply recognize an aspect of this story that is at once overlooked and all too obvious: the importance of a walk in the outdoors. When I was young, my parents made us children walk on Sunday afternoons, a good old German tradition. I’m not going to lie it wasn’t always what I wanted to do. But the combination of oxygen, exercise and conversation can help us to be centered and curious, in touch with God’s perspective. Isn’t it interesting that one of the greatest revelations of Scripture, the encounter with the risen Lord, takes place for the most part in the outdoors?
We need to breathe oxygen into our understanding of the Bible. And of course, we don’t do that ourselves. It’s the Holy Spirit, taking Christ’s place, who helps us to read, understand, wonder, and go beyond what we always thought we knew, lending us perspective, helping us to believe even as we question, even as we face crisis and death in our lives. For beyond what we see with our eyes, there is a bigger and more mysterious world. Our journey is blessed by the one who always walks with us, who opens the Scriptures for us, who brings peace into this world: Christ our Lord.
Amen.
