"I Am No Longer Afraid of Death"

An Easter sermon preached on April 20, 2003, by the Rev. Deana Frances Dudley

at Holy Fellowship Metropolitan Community Church, London, ON

and Christos Metropolitan Community Church, Toronto, ON

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Mark 16:1-8

The passage that was read from the Gospel according to Mark seems a little odd for an Easter celebration, doesn’t it? It ends with the disciples basically cowering in fear. But in most of the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel, that’s just how it ends. Everyone’s scared.

So, on this Easter Sunday, it might be good to talk a little bit about fear. There is a poem by the Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel, and it seems appropriate to read it on this Resurrection morning, as it’s from her book entitled "Threatened With Resurrection." It’s something that she wrote out of her experience living among the oppressed and war-torn and marginalized people of Central America. And it’s called I Am Not Afraid of Death. And it goes like this:

"I am no longer afraid of death." What do you suppose it would be like, how would our thoughts and our actions and our LIVES be changed, if we were no longer afraid of death? Now, I’m guessing that a few of you are about to tune me out here, because you’re saying to yourself, I’m NOT afraid of death. And if you’re not, I’m really glad, and you can feel free to take a brief nap. But if what you REALLY mean is, I deal with my fear of death by not THINKING about it, then that’s not exactly the same thing. I'm not sure that any of us realize the degree to which the fear of death is at the root of so many of the fears that sap the vitality of our lives.

What would it be like, do you suppose, if we really lost our fear of death? I’ve talked to some of you about my intense curiosity about Lazarus, the man who Jesus raised from the dead. You may remember that Lazarus was the friend that Jesus called back from the dead. He'd been buried for four whole days when Jesus came to the village of Bethany, had the stone rolled back from the tomb, and gave him back the gift of life. You can read about it later, in John 11.

And I’ve always wondered what happened to Lazarus after that. It’s a bit of an obsession or mine, actually. I’ve always wondered: What it must have been like to live on, after having been raised by Jesus? And I got a glimpse into an answer to that question some years ago by reading a very obscure play by Eugene O'Neill entitled "Lazarus Laughed." You may never have heard of it. I'm told it wasn’t a commercial success. In fact, it closed the same week it opened on Broadway in 1928. But I think it really captures the functional significance of what we celebrate today. So on this morning as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, perhaps we can shed some light on what resurrection might mean for us, by looking at Lazarus Laughed, by looking at what happens when you follow Jesus through death, into resurrection, as we are called to do.

The play picks up, where the Biblical story leaves off. As the curtain goes up, Lazarus is seen stumbling out of the tomb, blinking in the light. He’s the first human being to return from beyond the boundary that’s never supposed to be recrossed, so the crowd just hangs on his words. And what he tells them is that there is no death – there is only God’s eternal laughter.

He says, "There is no death, really. There is only life. There is only God. There is only incredible joy. Death is not the way it appears from this side. Death is not an abyss into which we go into chaos. It is, rather, a portal through which we move into everlasting growth and everlasting life. The One that meets us there is the same generosity that gave us our lives in the beginning, the One who gave us our birth. Not because we deserved it but because that generous One wanted us to be and therefore there is nothing to fear in the next realm. The grave is as empty as a doorway is empty. It is a portal through which we move into greater and finer life. Therefore, there is nothing to fear. Our great agenda is to learn to accept, to learn to trust. We are put here to learn to love more fully. There is no death. There is only life."

And then, after the grave clothes are taken off of him he begins to laugh.... a gentle, soft laugh; nothing bitter, nothing derisive, an embracing, astonishing, joyful, welcoming sound. And he just laughs and laughs and laughs. And that’s the gist of the whole play. After that, the rest of the play is a series of tests by the Jews, and the Greeks and the Romans to try Lazarus’ story and his faith. And everything else is taken from him, his home, his goods, his family, but he continues to laugh, even at the end when Emperor has him burned at the stake.

See.... apparently some people find laughter in the face of death threatening. The Roman authorities were quick to sense that one who had lost his fear of death was, in fact, a threat to the kind of control that they liked to maintain, because the key to intimidation is always that underlying fear of death. One of the cruelest of all the Roman emperors, Caligula, used to say, "Crosses are SO educational." Pour encourager les autres, n’est ce pas? And, to a certain extent, that’s why, or at least how, Jesus died as well. Because he challenged systems of power, both temporal and spiritual, that relied on a fear of death for their perpetuation.

So how do you frighten someone who’s no longer afraid of death? In the play, the Roman authorities go after Lazarus. They tell him to quit laughing, and he just laughs all the more. "The truth is," he says, "there’s nothing you can do to me. There is no death. There’s only life."

And the play ends as he stands face to face with the emperor Tiberius, who commands him "You either stop this infernal laughter right this minute or I'm going to have you put to death." And Lazarus just says it again: "Do what you will. There is no death. There’s only life."

In Julia Esquivel’s poem, she says that she fears, not death, but the suffering caused by those who live death-dealing lives, those who project death, who, in her words, "do not know where they are going, who continue clinging to what they think is life, which we know to be death!" Those who think that life can be found in consumption, or military might. Those whose fear of death keeps them from doing justice and mercy. Those who cannot live their own authentic lives, whole, before God. Those who spiritualize death rather than forge spiritual life skills, like peacemaking and helping heal the pain of the world.

That’s the bad news. And Good News isn’t nearly as compelling without a little bad news. But Easter is about Good News. And the Good News for Lazarus was that dying once, cured him of his fear of death. Dying a little bit each day – letting go of the illusion of control over death – in the words of the poem, living each day to kill death, is a path that leads THROUGH death and beyond, and into the new life God has in mind for us.

So, at the end of O’Neill’s play, a man who is no longer afraid of death is actually more powerful than the one who ruled all of the Roman empire. So it seems to me that Eugene O'Neill has put his finger here on the real significance of Easter. Because, you see, when Jesus came back from the grave he had the same message to give us as Lazarus gave when he came forth from the tomb in the play. I think Jesus, too, would say, "There is no death. There’s only life. There’s only laughter. There’s only the joy and the mercy of God."

We no longer have to be afraid of the dark at the end of the tunnel that can have such incredible impact not just on our life after death, but on our life before death, our life after birth. I'm not sure we even realize, sometimes, the degree to which the fear of death is at the root of so many of the fears that sap the vitality of our lives. But we don’t have to live in fear. Because of Easter, we can choose to live a different way. We can put down that burden of fear and go on without that particular baggage. And I finally have the answer to my obsessive question, what must it be like to live on after having been raised by the power and love of God in Jesus Christ. Because we are raised, and we CAN live on without fear.

Jesus came back from the grave on Easter Sunday so that we would know that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more than God already loves us, and nothing we can do to make God stop loving us. God’s goodness and mercy is greater than anything we have done or failed to do. Perfect love casts out fear. The sense of God’s "enoughness" is more than adequate to take away our fear of "not enoughness." Therefore the great message of Easter is that there is nothing to fear because of God’s unconditional love.

I think this is what Easter can really do for us. As O’Neill’s Lazarus puts it: the One that meets us at the portal of the grave "is the same generosity that gave us our lives in the beginning, the One who gave us our birth. Not because we deserved it but because that generous One wanted us to be and therefore there is nothing to fear in the next realm." So I hope, as you see Easter unfold about you, you will embrace that life everlasting, that unconditional love. There is no death. There’s only life.

REFERENCES

Julia Esquivel, "Threatened With Resurrection: Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan," Elgin, IL: The Brethren Press, 1982.

Eugene G. O’Neill, "Lazarus Laughed," in "Plays," Vol. 1, New York: Random House, 1951.

Rev. Dr. John Claypool, Trinity Episcopal Church, "Easter and the Fear of Death," a sermon preached March 30, 1997.

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