What Was Jesus Doing When He Was Dead?

In Jesus's Death, the Judas in Judas ... The Gospel According to Judas

What Was Jesus Doing When He Was Dead?

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The theologian Chris E.W. Green jokes about how not long ago, someone asked him what he thought Jesus was doing while he was dead. “I knew what the questioner expected me to say,” Chris writes, “of course I knew the answer he wanted to hear. But the right answer is that Jesus wasn’t doing anything while he was dead. That’s what it means to say he was dead!”

“…he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried,” the creed puts the particulars plainly.

Make no mistake, Jesus’s story ends on Good Friday.He is dead.He is every bit as dead as you will be dead one day.His death was final, conclusive, definitive—as yours will be, and mine.This is good news.

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While it’s certainly true that the Gospels’s passion stories are so long because Christ’s passion was primarily a problem for which the Church had to take account, it’s nevertheless the case that dying and its antecedent despair, fear, and suffering are a part of living.

Our dying is a part of our living.

Dying is an unavoidable, universal part of living.

That Christ’s passion comprises no less than a sixth of the Gospel’s narrative means, perhaps fortuitously, that Jesus displays how to negotiate that part of our living that we call dying.This is good news.

As Jesus’s moments become memories, he takes the time to forgive those who have trespassed against him, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” He does not pretend that everything’s alright, “My God, my God” he cries, “Why have you forsaken me?” In so doing, the dying Jesus frees those terrified at the prospect of his death by giving voice to his own anguish. Jesus shows forth how to live the part of our living that we call dying. He provides for his family’s care in his absence, “Behold,” he says to his beloved disciple, “Here is your mother.” “And from that hour,” John reports, “the disciple took Mary to his own home.” The night before—rather than waste time trying to stay alive at any cost, Jesus took care to hand over his unfinished work to his friends, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Jesus exemplifies how to live the part of our living that we call dying.No, Jesus does more than exemplify the living we call dying.He transfigures it.

In his letter to Cledonius, the ancient church father, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, formulates one of the most famous and critical maxims of the Christian faith,

“That which is not assumed is not healed.”

The full citation reads:

“That which is not assumed is not healed. That which is united to God, that will be saved. If half of Adam fell, also half will be taken up and healed. But if all of Adam fell, all of his nature will be united to God, and all of it will be saved.”

This is good news.

Gregory reminds us that the God-who-is-human has come to hallow the entirety of us, including our dying and death. There is no part of us, there is no part of our living, he does not assume in order to heal.

As the theologian Karl Rahner puts it,

“Jesus has accepted death. Therefore, this must be more than merely a descent into empty meaninglessness. He has accepted the state of being forsaken. Therefore, the overpowering sense of loneliness must still contain hidden within itself the promise of God’s blessed nearness. He has accepted total failure. Therefore, defeat can be a victory. He has accepted abandonment by God. Therefore, God is near even when we believe ourselves to have been abandoned by him. He has accepted all things. Therefore, all things are redeemed.”

One of my least favorite hymns sings, ““Because he lives, I can face tomorrow; because he lives, all fear is gone.” I dislike the hymn because it is closer to the true mystery of the incarnation to say that I can face tomorrow, with all its attendant fears, because he died.

That really, after all, is the charge I’ve offered at so many deathbeds.

I offer the assurance not simply that the Lord Jesus is for you.I offer the assurance that the Lord Jesus is before you.

You are safe in Christ’s death, to be sure, his sins forgiven.

But even more so, you will be safe in death because Christ had entered death.

And even there, Christ had hallowed out a place where he may be found.