O Death, where is your victory?
It was a bleak scene. The Israeli sun beat down on a motley crowd gathered round three bloody men. Whimpers and sneers intermingled with the mild clatter of bystanders as they rose, first to the ears of the criminals and then beyond, echoing like prayers and curses to the heavens above.
Between two ragged criminals, one King of the Jews propped his broken body up, painstakingly maintaining his breath one moment at a time. The 100 pounds of cedar he had carried from town now served to carry him, lifting him up in his agony.
Perhaps the most beloved of friends to the crucified King, a young son of Zebedee looked on with a deeply troubled heart. "Yeshua," he whispered, eyes full of sadness. And then there was a flicker as he remembered.
"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."
All people. Drawn to Jesus. Because of the Cross.
It would not be long before this very same John - who carefully penned his Savior's words so that we might believe in 2016 and beyond - would be chanting and singing with his fellow saints:
"O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?"
Those who live in Jesus do not ask what the sting of Death is. Any honest person knows in his or her innermost being that the sting of Death is quite simply the sin residing in their human heart. "The sting of Death is sin," writes Paul,"and the power of sin is the law."
But again, we do not ask what. No; we ask where.
You see, the sting of Death used to reside in our side, in our hands, on our cross. But when you look - and no matter how hard you look - you will not find one ounce of it there any longer. There is no trace of Death and its grip on the life of those who belong to Jesus. So where has it gone? Where is the sting of Death for us?
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed."
The sting is in his hands. His feet. His side. His cross. And there it remains.
On that Friday almost 2,000 years ago, the world saw the worst and best of human deaths. In retrospect, we see beyond the bloody pinnacle of Holy Week to the glorious climax of the Risen Savior appearing to a few women, to 11 men and then to 500 more followers before his ascension.
And yet we know that it couldn't have happened - the salvation of you and me and everyone and all things - without the gruesome suffering of the Spotless Lamb. It wasn't a deviation in the story, it wasn't an interruption in the story, it was the whole point of the story.
"Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
