CT - Catholic Telegraph

Jesus, the dominator of death

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24.

The Book of Wisdom is a theologically sophisticated work that seems to have been written in Greek in Alexandria, Egypt, about 100 years before Christ. It was written to encourage the author's co-religionists to be faithful to their religious heritage in the context of pagan secularism.

Wisdom opens with an exhortation to righteousness, a righteousness that brings immortality. In speaking about death, the author seems to envision it more as a separation from God than as a mere biological fact, as a spiritual reality rather than an exclusively physical one. Biological death, the death of the body, is presented as a sign of human alienation from God.

This Sunday's reading is from these opening chapters of Wisdom. The Lectionary presents us with two small selections of verses. The first selection is about the relationship of death and creation. The second is about the relationship of death and humanity.

God's creation is good. Death was not intended to be part of it. God made things to be. He didn't make them for death. Moreover, no part of the world was created to be harmful to any other part. It was all meant to exist together in harmony. "The netherworld," i.e., the dominion of death, has no natural place in the world. The world was made to be like God, and godliness is undying.

Man was made in the image of God and therefore was made to be imperishable. If death is in the world, it is "by the envy of the devil," and those who belong to the company of the evil one experience the final, ultimate death of the spirit.

There are two principles inherent in these verses. The first is that God's creation is a good creation, made to be one harmonious whole in which no one part would be harmful or deadly to any other. The second principle is that the real evil and death that we experience in the world is not God's doing but is the result of the incursion of malice into the context of God's good creation, an incursion that has been welcomed and accepted by human beings. Human beings may not be the immediate cause of all that is destructive and inharmonious in the world, but human beings are responsible for allowing the forces of evil to gain a toehold in God's good creation.

These verses also suggest that bodily death may not be the last word. If the world reflects the goodness of God, if God formed humanity to be imperishable, if God made human beings in the image of His own nature, and if justice (i.e., godliness) is undying, then it seems reasonable to conclude that evil will not triumph in the end. The revelation of personal immortality after physical death is a truth that God gave us only gradually. But it seems that by the first century B.C., the idea was becoming more clear and was widely accepted, thanks to texts like this Sunday's reading.
This reading is obviously meant to prepare us for the gospel reading (Mark 5:21-43) where we see Jesus raising the daughter of Jairus from the dead. Again there seem to be at least two lessons for us here. The first is that there is something above and beyond physical death; there is a realm from which this young girl could be recalled. The second lesson is that Jesus has power over death. He shares the creative might of the Father to restore creatures to the state that God meant for them from the beginning.

Death impinges on our life from every side. Our misuse of the good things of creation can harm and even destroy us. Our willingness to do violence to what we do not understand or appreciate can turn our world away from wholesomeness and harmony to a state of ongoing hostility. Our openness to selfishness and arrogance can lead us into a state of self-destruction that will render us simply incapable of sharing in the joy and harmony of the life of God. None of this is God's will for us. It's all the result of our acceptance of the powers of evil that are alien to what God had in mind for us from the beginning. It's all death in various guises.

Into this context comes Jesus, restorer of harmony, liberator of sinners, bringer of life, dominator of death. God hasn't abandoned His good world. He restores it in Jesus and offers life in Jesus to all who are willing to accept it.

For reflection and discussion

How/when/where have I experienced death?

In what ways does our world espouse a culture of death?