O death

Recently I was listening to a song-- a hymn I think-- talking about how Christ's sacrifice has conquered death. And for a moment it was hard for me to relate to. I am not accustomed to thinking of death as a bad thing. Death, for us, is a release, it's going home. "To die is gain." I understood, of course, that it would not be that way unless Jesus had died and come to life again... that death is, inherently, an abomination. But the sting of death being removed, I found it hard for a moment to receive as a present comfort the reminder that Christ has conquered death.

Then I thought some more, as is my wont. And this hit me: death-- literal, physical death-- is only the culmination of the lifelong process of dying which we all undergo. We are dying every day, you and I. It was the truth, when God said to Adam, "On the day you eat that fruit you will surely die." They died that day, and every day afterward, for hundreds of years, until the final death came upon them.

It was death to feel shame in their nakedness. It was death, a terrible death, to hear the footsteps of their Lord and maker and be afraid. It was death to be driven from the garden. All these deaths they died then and there... and then went out into the world outside the garden, where death was ever-present.

It was death to me to leave my beloved friends in Atlanta. It was death, when I was five years old, when I left a beloved stuffed raccoon at a park and never found it again (I still remember the grief, and my mother's inability to comfort me.) Everywhere around us, beloved, beautiful things are being lost or destroyed. Loss, great and small, is so common that we even forget that it was never meant to be. We say "that's the way life is." But it's not. That's the way death is, and we live in a world which is ruled by death.

But Christ has conquered death. Not only the last death, but all the smaller deaths that we die before it. Even the ones that we force ourselves to accept because they're "the right thing." They're not the right thing... the best of all possible evils is still an evil. They may be absolutely necessary... they may be the best thing to do... but they're still deaths.

I've just finished listening through the Chronicles of Narnia. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep goes off at the very end to seek the utter East. And it's a good thing-- it's his dream and his destiny, and he rejoices to do it. But it means leaving his friends and traveling companions. And we miss him! It's the right thing to happen, but it's sad. Literature is full of this sort of thing. Every good story (give me a counterexample if you can) features at least one death, in this sense. Often it's a "good death." It's the right thing to happen in the story... but it's still a death.

C. S. Lewis takes us a little further than most literature, though. He takes us beyond death. In The Last Battle, our friends Peter and Edmund and Lucy (who were previously told they could never go back to Narnia... another death) and the other friends of Narnia are walking through Aslan's country. And who walks out of the gate to meet them... Reepicheep! And all the other heroes of Narnia who died, of old age or in battle. Death is undone, even the so-called "good deaths." All is made right, right in a way our death-accustomed minds can barely imagine. Blessing is poured on blessing. There are no mixed joys, no bittersweet victories.

"And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."