{"id":99258,"date":"2023-03-21T13:38:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T19:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=99258"},"modified":"2023-03-21T13:57:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T19:57:11","slug":"why-seek-ye-the-living-among-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/03\/why-seek-ye-the-living-among-the-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"“Why seek ye the living among the dead?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
An empty tomb in Jerusalem dating to the Herodian period. The photograph was taken by my friend and former BYU colleague Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick, and I use it here with his kind permission. Neither of us believes either the Garden Tomb or the Holy Sepulcher to be the right place, so this will have to represent the (in our opinion) as-yet unknown site of Christ\u2019s burial and resurrection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My sister-in-law, my brother\u2019s widow, passed away very early this morning after a fairly brief but very serious illness that cascaded into multiple crises with astonishing speed.\u00a0 If I have the time and the time zones right, she missed the eleventh anniversary of the death of her husband, my brother, by just two days.<\/p>\n

It has, for me, been an exceptionally appropriate day to visit the Garden Tomb here in Jerusalem with our group, and to think and talk about the resurrection of Christ and the hope of eternal life.<\/p>\n

For some reason, I think too of an article that I published in the Deseret News<\/em> for Christmas 2015:<\/p>\n

As I write, I\u2019ve just returned from a funeral.\u00a0 Snow covers the ground; the trees are barren, seemingly dead.\u00a0 It\u2019s the season described by Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 73,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBare ruin\u2019d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a terrible time for a funeral, and the holidays are a terrible time to associate with the death of a loved one.\u00a0 And yet, in some ways, it\u2019s the best possible time.\u00a0 For Christmas reminds us of the One who put an end to death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before his advent, death was a grim, hopeless inevitability.\u00a0 In the eleventh book of Homer\u2019s \u201cOdyssey,\u201d for example, the hero Odysseus describes his perilous journey to the underworld, to Hades, where he converses with the spirits of the dead.\u00a0 He entices them with the blood of a sacrificed animal, something earthly and physical that they crave.\u00a0 Among those he meets is the great warrior Achilles, an old friend.\u00a0 Odysseus praises Achilles for his past glory and great deeds, but Achilles responds that earthly status means nothing to him now:\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019d rather serve as another man\u2019s laborer,\u201d he says bitterly, \u201cas a poor landless peasant, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The dead, for the ancient Greeks, did live on, but only as \u201cshades,\u201d dwelling in literally Stygian darkness.\u00a0 (The term \u201cStygian\u201d derives from the River Styx, which formed the boundary, in their conception, between the Underworld and the land of the living.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the Hebrews often saw little if anything hopeful after death.\u00a0 Their appeals to God were continually for this-worldly salvation. \u00a0\u201cFor the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth\u201d (Isaiah 38:18)\u00a0 \u201cFor in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?\u201d (Psalm 6:5)\u00a0 \u201cWilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee?\u00a0 Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? Or thy faithfulness in destruction?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?\u201d (Psalm 88:10-12)<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph F. Smith, too, who saw the spirit world in a marvelous October 1918 vision, explained that, prior to Christ\u2019s arrival there, \u201cthe dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage\u201d (Doctrine and Covenants 138:50).<\/span><\/p>\n

And, for many today, the prospects are even bleaker.\u00a0 To them, only nothingness awaits us after death.\u00a0 The dead have ceased to exist.\u00a0 And all of us will soon follow them.\u00a0 Bertrand Russell, the most articulate and visible atheist of the twentieth century, strikingly expressed this viewpoint in his 1903 essay \u201cThe Free Man\u2019s Worship\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man\u2019s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins \u2014 all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul\u2019s habitation henceforth be safely built.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Christians, however, the advent of Christ marked the beginning of the end of death\u2019s dominion.\u00a0 Of all good news, this is the best news possible:\u00a0 Because of God\u2019s Word, death doesn\u2019t get the last word.\u00a0 Because he lived, we will live.<\/span><\/p>\n

Easter couldn\u2019t have happened without Christmas.\u00a0 On our own, we could never have overcome death.\u00a0 God himself needed to come among us, to become one of us, to burst through the prison gates of death as the first of our kind, before the reign of sin and mortality could end.\u00a0 And he did it.\u00a0 (See Clayton Christensen\u2019s eloquent words at http:\/\/www.mormoninterpreter.com\/he-did-it-a-christmas-message\/#comments<\/a>.)\u00a0 As it turns out, God does show wonders and declare his lovingkindness to the dead.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve also been thinking of one of the most famous of the \u201cHoly Sonnets\u201d written by John Donne (1572-1631):<\/p>\n

\n
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee<\/span><\/div>\n
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;<\/span><\/div>\n
For those whom thou think\u2019st thou dost overthrow<\/span><\/div>\n
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.<\/span><\/div>\n
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,<\/span><\/div>\n
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,<\/span><\/div>\n
And soonest our best men with thee do go,<\/span><\/div>\n
Rest of their bones, and soul\u2019s delivery.<\/span><\/div>\n
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,<\/span><\/div>\n
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,<\/span><\/div>\n
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well<\/span><\/div>\n
And better than thy stroke; why swell\u2019st thou then?<\/span><\/div>\n
One short sleep past, we wake eternally<\/span><\/div>\n
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Posted from Jerusalem, Israel<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 My sister-in-law, my brother\u2019s widow, passed away very early this morning after a fairly brief but very serious illness that cascaded into multiple crises with astonishing speed.\u00a0 If I have the time and the time zones right, she missed the eleventh anniversary of the death of her husband, my brother, by just two 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