Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may
appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and
lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish
to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but
reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of
release.
Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of
all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For
it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes
and wishes in its blighting grasp. All goals perceived but in its
sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its
image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For
it alone will surely come.
All things but death are seen to be unsure, too quickly lost however
hard to gain, uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail the hopes they
once engendered, and to leave the taste of dust and ashes in their wake
in place of aspirations and of dreams. But death is counted on. For it
will come with certain footsteps when the time has come for its arrival.
It will never fail to take all life as hostage to itself.
Would you bow down to idols such as this? Here is the strength and might
of God Himself perceived within an idol made of dust. Here is the
opposite of God proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God’s
Will for life, the endlessness of love and Heaven’s perfect, changeless
constancy. Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and
laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the
holy Son of God.
Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His
epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he
has passed to dust. It says but this: “Here lies a witness God is dead.”
And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its
worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they
whisper fearfully that it is so.
It is impossible to worship death in any form, and still select a
few you would not cherish, and would yet avoid while still believing in
the rest. For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live
and cannot die. No compromise is possible. For here again we see an
obvious position which we must accept if we be sane; what contradicts
one thought entirely can not be true unless its opposite is proven
false.
The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane
have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive
and somehow perished, killed, apparently, by those who did not want him
to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal
life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.
Death’s worshippers may be afraid. And yet can thoughts like these be
fearful? If they saw that it is only this which they believed, they
would be instantly released. And you will show them this today. There is
no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and
our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must
therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us
to look past death and see the light beyond.
Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would
look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love Which shines in
everything. We live and breathe in You alone. We are not separate from
Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we
abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with
all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept
Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is One with Yours eternally. Amen.