Pastor Ethan Boese
Death Is Killed
There is a Netflix TV Series that is incredibly popular and fantastically addictive called Black Mirror. Think of it as Twilight Zone 2.0 or Tales from the Darkside Part Two Electric Boogaloo. Some of my favorite episodes deal with people “evolving” or improving past the point of death. No need for death when your conscience is uploading into an updated version of Amazon Echo. Death is defeated as people replace flesh and neurons for metal and code. Here is the catch, with every “improvement” a piece of humanity is lost. This is the part where the Twilight music comes in as the show makes its potent point. Mankind is worse off in the cold eternal world they created than they were when they just lived with death. We can’t kill death.
Sure, we can be clever in holding it off, after all we have some very incredible blessings in nurses, doctors, and technology. And, yes, in some situations, we might even be able to delay death for a few months or years. Some daredevils make it a career to dodge and duck out of the way of death as they pull off the impossible.
Yet death comes for all. Its hunger is never satisfied, its thirst never quenched. It stalks the young and old alike and it will come, and it will claim your loved ones and one day you yourself. Worse yet, physical death leads to eternal death. Because of our sins we should expect to close our eyes in death and open our eyes in Hell, separated from God’s love and goodness forever.
Yet, Christ did what we cannot do. Christ killed death. On Good Friday Jesus offers his perfect life upon the cross as the perfect sacrifice shedding his perfect blood and suffering the perfect wrath of God that was meant for us and our sins – all so that we would belong to our perfect God once again. Your sins are forgiven. Still, Jesus laid down his life and three days later took it back up again. Jesus killed death.
Because he lives you also will live. Death is no longer something that we need to live in fear of or obsession over. There is no need
to “evolve” or improve our biology to destroy death. Christ took care of that for us. Death is for the child of God a change of address or a doorway to the eternal life that Christ has prepared for his brothers and sisters he redeemed.
He Is Risen!
Pastor Ethan Boese
CHILDREN’S MESSAGE
On each non-communion Sunday, Pastor Boese will invite children of all ages forward for the Children’s Message before the Hymn of the Day. Parents with young children may join them as they desire.
