[AI translation] Two thousand years ago, news of an incredible event broke in one part of our old Earth and has been spreading around the world ever since: Jesus is risen! Someone who bled on the cross, who died a real death, who was buried in the proper way, who was mourned by his relatives, who was already written off by the society of that time: he is risen. He has truly and actually risen from the dead. Even today, this is the greatest news on earth that most people are amazed to hear again: Jesus is risen! From the loudspeakers of radios, from the columns of newspapers, from the pulpits of churches, from the lips of the most diverse people, perhaps even at this very hour, in every human language, despite all efforts to deny it, the great Easter message continues to be heard: Jesus is risen! This news, among many others, is the solution to a universal human problem that is equally relevant to all: the fear of death.The resurrection of Jesus is truly good news for those who, in the words of the passage read, "would be prisoners all their lives for fear of death", that is, for all people living on earth without exception. For there is no other thing in the world which, despite all differences of race, language, ethnicity, gender, temperament, education, etc., makes the whole of humanity so united as the fear of death. It is the eternal and inevitable fate of all to die. In this respect, no one has an advantage over the other. There is really no difference between one man and another. To the king and the beggar, to the God-believer and the God-denier, the measured supply of the hourglass runs out with equal mysterious rapidity and regularity, until at last there is nothing left but a yawning emptiness. The candle of a doctor, a factory worker, a peasant, a pastor's life is equally quick to burn out, if a sudden wind does not extinguish it first. The graves of grey-haired old men and smiling children ring the same cemetery bell. Many a pretty flower that blossoms today may be cut down tomorrow by the scythe of death. However beautiful or ugly life may be, the author of Psalm 90 is right: "It fades fast as if we were flying."
Every night that falls upon us is a great warning of the coming night of our lives. Every sickness is a harbinger of the final, fatal illness. Does not every old, wrinkled face, broken eye, speak of the beauty and strength of the young body, of which so many men are proud, that it will not last for ever. The endless gravestones in the cemeteries of the big cities also remind us that we have no city to stay. Our whole existence is a life constantly challenged by death. Like a skilful player who has been given chess and tries everything, sacrificing pieces, positioning himself, moving back, dodging to ward off an attack by his dangerous opponent, the man threatened with death tries to defeat the great enemy in every possible way, to hold him back somehow, and yet in the end he loses the game. He gives him mate. Even if we don't want to think about it, it is true, as the Scripture says: because of the fear of death, we are prisoners all our lives! How true this is is shown by the many and varied escape manoeuvres people use to evade the unquestioning gaze of death. The latest laboratories are constantly producing new drugs, neuroleptics, injections, pastilles, in order to better protect the health and longevity of life. And that is a good thing. It may slow down the running of the hourglass, but it will not stop it.
Fear of death is also the reason why there have always been, and still are, people who take refuge in the belief in transmigration. A doctrine which, from ancient Greek philosophy to spiritualism to modern anthroposophy, tries to find an answer to the problem of death with the most fantastic ideas. It is as if the hourglass is always being turned over by a mysterious hand. As if everything that passes away always returns. As if the wheel of existence would go on turning forever. As if everything that dies will bloom again. As if the same house of existence would be built forever. But still, on the eve of life, the alarming question arises: from where can we draw absolute and credible testimony that the game is really being repeated, that the river is really returning to its source? What is the guarantee? I have known spiritualists and anthroposophists who, at the end of their lives, felt themselves terribly miserable prisoners for fear of death.
Fear of death is also the spiritual basis of the materialist reassurance theory that the soul is the product of the development of the brain, just as muscular activity is the product of the development of the muscles. And when the material structure breaks down, so does the soul, just as a lamp goes out when the oil runs out. And it is just as well, because the whole past is buried forever. No one will ever again be held accountable for what we have done wrong on the stage of life. Sleep, just sleep, and never wake up again. Will this thought really free us from the fear of death? Maybe we will wake up, maybe we will still have a self left for some kind of reckoning! Some people say: 'I don't think about passing away. The body returns to earth, the soul lives on in history. Or in my children, my descendants. But is this thought really comforting, does it really free us from the fear of death? Will I be able to cling to it when the final hour comes?
Surely, my brethren, these are all faltering human attempts, but none of them can change the fact that we are prisoners for our entire lives for fear of death. Death is a much harsher reality than we can get over with nice or optimistic or simply denialist explanations. Job and the Psalms, the apostle Paul and the preacher Solomon, Bach's music and Dürer's paintings, and our own consciences all speak of the terrible judgment death brings on us. It is a judgment that not only afflicts the body, but in the agony of which all the self-confidence, all the supposed richness, all the conceited grandeur of our souls, of our being, of our self, is submerged. Look, if even Jesus was in such agony, sweating so much blood, suffering with such a sad soul, when he was dying in the Garden of Gethsemane, then every death-glorifying explanation is a false self-deception.
What then is the sting, the power of death? In God's word: sin. Because our whole life is an uninterrupted rebellion, a resistance against the will of God. It is in the hour of death that one feels the full weight of how truly it is. That is why we are under sentence of death. Because Adam said no, and Adam always says no to God's order, the divine "no" is imposed on our fate. The action of sin to rob itself of life triggers God's reaction in death. This is what the Apostle Paul says in Romans: 'The wages of sin is death' (Rom 6:23).
But that's why the resurrection of Jesus is such a joyful, great, powerful fact! What does our Word say? He also became partaker of our flesh and blood, "that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were captives all their lives". He lived on earth as a real man of flesh and blood, like any of us, but with the great difference that he had no sin in him. In him there was no rebellion, no opposition to the will of God. No "no", just an absolute "yes"! Perfect obedience and holiness. For the love of God, the goodness of God, was embodied in him. And yet when he died, it was not his own sins that he paid for, it was not the wages of his sin that he paid for - so he could not remain the prey of death forever! It was the death of this absolutely innocent life that broke the very power of death. This victory over death is proclaimed in the happy Easter news that Jesus is risen! He broke death, broke through it, made a way through it to eternal life. I cannot, I do not want to explain this miracle, that Jesus has solved the problem of death, that he has overcome this formidable power. However we explain this mysterious news, one thing we can learn from it with absolute certainty is that death no longer has the last word over our lives, but the risen Jesus does. Death is not the final reality of our life, but the resurrection. Death is not the end of life, but only the end of transience, of weakness, of a sinful, helpless state. Life itself goes on, and even unfolds there in all its richness!
On the basis of Jesus' resurrection, we can hope for eternal life in spite of death, for a new, lasting and more powerful communion with God than death. Jesus will draw all those who truly belong to him, who have entrusted themselves completely to him, to himself through death and to share in his victory. The fellowship of life which is established by faith between a mortal man and the risen Jesus cannot be broken even by death. After death, the same Jesus will be waiting there on the other side in all His divine glory, whom on the inside you have accepted or rejected, served or betrayed, confessed or denied. Whose name your life has glorified or denied. Jesus is risen! This is the only news that can free you from the fear of death. The resurrection of Jesus, his victory over death, is not a philosophical theory, not a human invention, not a false self-expression: it is a historical fact, a reality that happened at a point in our earthly space and time. You can cling to it with courage, with confidence, with authenticity, with the arm of your soul, with your faith. And then you can look upon the evening of your life as a prodigal son returning home to the opened gates of the father's house: freed from the bondage of fear of death.
This is a great thing if only because all of life on earth is full of terrors, mysteries, incomprehensible events, which can be confused without faith in eternal life. The life beyond death is all confusion without the certainty of life beyond death. He who has lost his faith in eternal life slowly loses all faith in this worldly life. Out of balance, everything is upset. Because turning away from the eternal always implies a wrong attitude, a false attitude towards the ephemeral, the futile. He who does not feel himself belonging in spirit to that invisible world, does not really find his place in this visible world either. Jesus, when he sets free those who have been prisoners all their lives for fear of death, also helps them to live free.
For one can be dead even if one is alive. Alive dead. Moving, speaking, acting, rejoicing or grieving, working or resting, yet dead. Have you never felt that your hand is dead? Unable to make a loving gesture, unable to caress, unable to give. Or like your heart is dead? All the enthusiasm, the joy, the goodness is gone. Unable to forgive, forget, or filled with hopelessness, a sense of life's meaninglessness. Or as if your eyes were dead: unable to see with them what your spouse or colleague is hurting or missing.
Well, let me proclaim also to such dead lives that Jesus is risen and can save those who are in the bondage of moral death, the death of helplessness, anger, sadness, hopelessness! Because the resurrection of Jesus is not only a miracle that happened to Him once upon a time, but there begins a process, a process of resurrection from the dead, by which the undead can also be brought back to life. That is the wonder of it, that the risen Jesus also transforms the believer in him into a man in whom the powers of death have already been overcome by resurrection. To believe in the risen Christ is to enter into a dimension of God's world with special powers, where Jesus is Lord even over death.
Amen
Date: 29 March 1964 (Easter).
Lesson
Mk 16,1-8