Is Death the End?

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Is Death the End?

Is that all life is—a failed attempt to stave off our inevitable death? If there is a God, is he inactive—immune to our struggle for meaning?

But God was not inactive. The Teacher, a descendant of David, looked back at the glory days of his ancestors, but I wish he could have looked forward towards one of his later descendants—

the even more impressive, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was also a descendant of David. Like his forebear, the Teacher, Jesus did not enjoy the corridors of power. Despite this, he outdid all his royal ancestors put together. How?

Jesus dealt with death. That’s how.

You see, many called Jesus “teacher,” because he had students (disciples) and would go from place to place teaching people. But he was more than just a teacher. He would go about bringing people from illness and the edge of death back to health and full life. But he was more than just a healer. If all we see in He exposed the corruption Jesus is a good of the authorities of his day, person with challenging them to amend good intentions, their ways. But he was more then we will than just an activist. If all we have missed the see in Jesus is a good person most impressive with good intentions, then thing about him. we will have missed the most impressive thing about him.

Jesus dealt with death.

Jesus was executed in the first century for challenging the authorities and institutions of the day. He was beaten, publicly stripped naked, strung up and nailed by his limbs to the timbers of a Roman cross, and left to die a most horrid death. For all the good he had done, he was abandoned by everyone and everything. Like his ancestor, the Teacher, before him, he wondered why God did nothing to change the situation. “My God! My God!” he cried, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). And so it seemed that, like everyone else in human history, Jesus’ life was a zero-sum-game.

Except it wasn’t.

For, although Jesus died, and was buried in a tomb late on a Friday, on the Sunday morning his tomb was found open and emptied. The linen sheets in which his corpse had been wrapped were still there, but he himself was not. Later that day, and for many days after, his followers claimed to have seen him alive. And not just to have seen him, but to have spoken with him, interacted with him, touched him, and shared meals with him. And this was not just

an isolated experience of one or two people, but the consistent experience of entire groups of people— over five hundred of them, in fact. These were not gullible people, either. These were people who knew that dead men did not come back to life. They knew full well what crucifixion did. They lived in a world that lacked the kinds of medical advances that help us today to prolong our lives. Their life was lived even more fully in the shadow of death than our own. And yet, these men and women were utterly transformed by the experience of interacting with a man who had indeed come back to life—never to die again. These were men and women who would go on to devote their lives to telling others about this most astounding reality, and many of them surrendered their lives in this pursuit.

Why? Because they knew that life now had meaning.

Death no longer has the final word. Jesus had shown that. God had bestowed meaning on life. And they wanted others to know it, too.