The Smell of Death

It was a while ago now that Ben Myers made youtube videos of his lectures on the Apostle's Creed. They are very good though. He is very easy to listen to, and litters his talks with fascinating glimpses of early church beliefs and practices.

It was lecture 6 and his treatment of the credal statement "He descended into Hell" which has remained the most with me since I listened to them. I have tried to do a rough transcription of some of it here:

"If you were a good Roman Pagan, one of the things that was most offensive to you about Christians was their horrible affection towards the dead.

When early Christians had a prayer meeting their favourite place to pray was often not a church but down in the tombs,standing among the bones of the dead. They would light the Christ Candle and pray - surrounded by the bodies.

And when someone was martyred, the Christians would grab the body and raise it into the air and parade it in the streets. And the all the saints would come out to catch a glimpse of the faithful witness. There are even stories of Christians kissing the bodies of the dead with gratitude and gladness."

Myers also goes on to explain that this is why Christians developed a tradition of building churches on the bones of saints, and happily incorporating tombs into their church architecture. It was a vast departure from the general view of the time which saw death as a contamination and a corpse was something to dispose of outside the city walls. But Christians believed that Christ had broken the power of death, and removed the boundary between death and life. Death to them was a reminder to them of what Christ had accomplished.

Even without this fresh insight from Myers, I used to love pouring over the graves and tombs in churches. But now I see, a little more poignantly, what a statement we are making by having our dead bodies so close to us in a church. Death really has lost it's sting.  And whilst the world without Christ still seems so afraid of death, we have an opportunity to proclaim that we have a radically different opinion. We who are assured of Christ's triumph must have an attitude towards death that is startlingly different to those who don't know him. I am not saying that Christians should not feel sad when someone dies, or that we should talk about death all the time! But what I am saying is that Christ's victory over death is an integral part of the Gospel proclamation. Very often what I hear preached today is forgiveness of sins for a transformed life now. A new relationship with God that will last forever maybe. But rarely do I hear of people proclaiming a freedom from the chains of death.

Perhaps Paul was referring to something more than metaphorical when he wrote about the smell of the knowledge of Jesus, actually smelling like death to some people. (2 Cor 2:14-16)

And perhaps 'becoming like Him [Christ] in His death' (Phi 3:10-11) is more profound then it first seems.

All of this leaves me with a lot of questions but only one overarching conclusion. The story of Jesus is a lot more about death then I usually acknowledge.

And on a side note, this also helped to solidify my preference for burial rather than cremation. But maybe I'll speak about that another time!

Oh so here is Ben Myer's talk on "He descended into Hell"