Good Friday Reflection: Dead. Just Dead. Very Dead.

Dead.

Just dead.

Very dead.

Whatever dead is, that.

And completely so.

All the way.

When people ask me what the line in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus “descended to the dead” means, that is generally my response.

We have this habit of sentimentalizing death. Of making it softer. Gentler. Kinder.

I suspect this is because even as a people who claim resurrection, we still doubt its power.

We still cannot find the patience for it.

Dead must mean something other than, well, dead.

Just dead.

Very dead.

Whatever dead is, that.

And completely so.

All the way.

Death is such a powerless and powerful thing.

It is powerless because it leaves us that way—the “us” that is left behind.

It is powerful because, well, it is death. And death has a power we cower before.

Some years during Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, I sympathize with the disciples.

Lost.

Depairing.

Facing a world that is not what I expected, and frozen in the face of it.

Some years I feel drawn to the example of Peter. Fervent in my faith at one time, tempted and even found denying it at others—when it all becomes too much.

This year, I feel drawn to the women. The women who in the coming days and hours will tend to stuff that needs done when there is a death. Not the hopeful stuff, just the tending to, the things to be done, to mark a death.

An actual death.

Not a pretend one, or a death pregnant with hope or meaning.

Just death.

This past weekend, I stood beside my colleague Deb Scott as she presented some legislation to the Baltimore-Washington Conference Connectional Table in preparation for this year’s Annual Conference session.

It was legislation about death. Real death.

In particular, legislation about how we approach the death of an active clergy person. Deb has followed my father (and a subsequent interim) at Mill Creek Parish. She knows that such a loss means for a faith community and their pastors.

I had a chance to speak briefly, and when I did I introduced myself by explaining that I am the current expert in the conference on the family end of the death of an active clergy person.

Such is a distinction I would give a great deal to not have.

But the experience has given me some insight about the stuff that needs to and should be done after death—and this very particular type of death.

There is lots to be done.

And I know the women who followed Jesus knew all too well about death too. Indeed, the fact that they had the freedom to traipse around the countryside with Jesus and his followers tells me they were without some very key social connections (and constraints). I suspect they knew all too well and personally about death.

And all that needed to be done.

So they did it.

I suspect not because they had some great hope—if they did, why do those things?

Rather, I suspect they knew death all too well. And they knew you can’t move on without tending to the stuff well.

They were beginning the work of helping themselves and the disciples say goodbye and move on.

No sentimental poems.

No cute sayings or pie in the sky dreams.

Jesus was, after all, dead.

Just dead.

Very dead.

Whatever dead is, that.

And completely so.

All the way.

The difference was not how they saw death.

The difference, in this one amazing and life-shattering and renewing event was not that death wasn’t really death.

It was that death was all of that.

All they’d always believed it to be.

Death was all of that. Fully, totally and completely.

But God was no longer willing for the story to end there.

God wanted us back. From a very real death.

God didn’t want to soften death or make it easier for us.

Goodness knows Jesus’ death was neither soft nor easy.

No, God wanted to break the power of death.

End it.

Completely.

Totally.

And the only way to do that was to journey to it and through it.

To do so, then to come out the other side.

We never realized there was another side.

And till Jesus, there wasn’t.

These coming days, we journey with the women not to hope, but to loss.

To death.

Real death.

That is as far as we, they, or any human can journey on our own.

All our journeys end there.

Sentimentalities be damned, it is, after all, just death.

But here’s the thing: the worst thing is never the last thing.

We claim this because God comes and pulls us beyond the places our stories end.

Beyond defeats.

Beyond ends.

Beyond deaths.

Wait for it…

Just wait for it…!