Reflection - Death

By Steve Hall

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041820.cfm
Acts 4:13-21
Mark 16:9-15

I grew up in a neighborhood with few children and even fewer who were close to my age. Adding to that particular circumstance was the fact that those who did live in the area attended the local public school and not the Catholic school where I went. The upshot of all this (which I only realized later in life) was a serious deficiency in peer education. Moreover, I never knew of anyone who had been raised from the dead. Whether or not these facts are related, I cannot tell.

This deficiency from my early years has bequeathed an uncomfortable sense of disparity. When I read the Gospel passage from Mark, however, it felt comfortably familiar. Apparently, the disciples, like me, never knew of anyone who had returned from the dead — spirits don’t count. The disciples playbook on life, like mine, had always had an abrupt ending. The old, the sick, the seriously injured, the battlefield casualty — all came to the same anticipated conclusion: They died. In fact, on occasion someone apparently healthy would join them. Such has been the common narrative throughout human history. All the true stories ended, or will end, the same: They died. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that any announcements to the contrary would prompt a response that was, at best, indifferent.

“When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.” and continued eating their breakfast.

Yeh! Sure! Tell us more!

Or

“They returned and told the others; but they did not believe them either.” because they were deep in discussion about narrow-minded Jewish authorities.

How would you have liked being one of the bug-eyed women still shaken by the events of the previous hour; or one of the two gasping for breath from their marathon run between Emmaus and Jerusalem. But then, any other reaction than that offered by the disciples could hardly have been expected. He died. We saw him die. We put him in the tomb. He was dead dead. Resistance to the facts are futile.

Still, the disciples would come to believe. They too, like the women at the tomb and the travelers on the road to Emmaus, were confronted with a simple fact that confounded the reality of the tomb. It was true. They saw him die. They put him the tomb. He was dead dead. And then . . . They saw him alive. Resistance to the fact was futile.

The mystery of the Resurrection continues to defy the reality we live with daily: men die. And, as a counter to the truth that we know, that mystery proclaims its own contrary reality: men may still live. But why? Why was this true for Jesus? And how can it be true for us?
There is an interesting line in the Acts of the Apostles which deserves our attention and reflection. It is the only Scripture line I know of that offers even the semblance of an explanation for why Jesus rose from the dead.

“But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” (Acts 2:24)
It was “not possible” for death to hold him.

“Not possible” for him to remain dead.

“Not possible”

Why was it “not possible”?

What was so antithetical between Jesus and death?

The search for an answer to these questions requires acceptance of the fact that a common, normal, even frequent event is, by its very character, an aberration. Death is not a natural phenomena. In spite of what we witness as a commonplace event, death is, and will remain, a deviant phenomenon. Yet it has become so expected in our lives that even when it is unpredicted it is still quickly relegated to the predictable. Nevertheless, death is still not normal.

A glimmer of clarity seems to enter the picture.

It was precisely because Jesus was totally obedient to the will of the Father that death could not retain a hold on him. Death was and is a consequence of separation from God. If such separation does not occur because the will of the Father is realized in the lived existence of His creation, then death can have no hold.

God is good. God is holy. God is perfect. God is love. The actualization of these in our lives diminishes death. That is why it is imperative that we unite ourselves to Christ.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21)