Easter Sermon

The following is largely inspired by Jon D. Levenson’s Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel .

In his novel, The Death of Ivan Illych, Leo Tolstoy tells the story of the life and death of his title character. Ivan Illych is a government lawyer who has devoted his life to advancing his career. He lives, he thinks, just as he should, doing everything that he is supposed to do, living life correctly. That doesn’t mean he’s happy. He’s not. He married in order to advance socially and vocationally, but soon after his wedding virtually abandoned his wife for work. As his wife became irritable and demanding, he made his work more and more the center of gravity in his life. But he still believes he is doing everything just the way it should be done – devoting himself to work, pursuing a prestigious transfer to St Petersburg, periodically redecorating his home.

The redecorating is his undoing. One day he is hanging draperies in his house, and makes a misstep on the ladder. Tolstoy writes, “he missed a step and fell, but being a strong and agile man, he held on to the ladder and merely banged his side against the knob of the window frame. The bruise hurt for a while, but the pain soon disappeared.” But the fall is more serious than he realizes, and a doctor tells him he suffering from what Tolstoy calls a “floating kidney.” He continues to worsen and eventually dies horribly of the complications of the fall.

What makes Tolstoy’s short novel so haunting is the fact that Ivan Illych’s death is so absurd. There is nothing heroic, nothing great about his death. He falls from a ladder hanging draperies, and spends the last week of his life screaming from his bed. Tolstoy’s novel so haunting also because of Ivan Illych’s growing realization, and the reader’s growing realization, that Ivan’s life was throughout a kind of living death. His death is absurd, stupid; but his absurd death makes his whole life absurd. His death is meaningless, pointless, fruitless.

Easter is a celebration of new life, of resurrection life through the resurrection of Jesus. But we can only plumb the depths of Easter if we have some idea of what Jesus’ resurrection rescues us from. Easter is about new life; but it inevitably, and rightly, provokes meditations on death. Psalm 16 is a guide for both themes of Easter – both the resurrection of Jesus and the death from which He rescues us. Psalm 16 is an Easter Psalm. Twice in Acts, an apostle uses Psalm 16 as a proof text for showing that David predicted the resurrection of Jesus.

The apostles say that David wasn’t talking about himself. He was speaking “prophetically. On the day of Pentecost, Peter reminds the Jews that they put to death “Jesus the Nazarene,” but announces that “God has raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held by it.” After quoting the final verses of the Psalm, Peter says “I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day” (Acts 2:29; cf. 13:36). Applied to David himself, the Psalm is false because he did die and decay. Rather, David, being a “prophet,” “looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay” (Acts 2:30-31). Psalm 16 is most directly about David’s greater Son.

Paul says much the same in his first recorded sermon: “As for the fact that God raised Him from the dead, no more to return to decay, He has spoken in this way: ‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.’ Therefore He also says in another Psalm, ‘You will not allow Your holy one to undergo decay. For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers, and underwent decay; but he whom God raised did not undergo decay” (Acts 13). Paul then announces that through the risen Jesus, “everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.”

Psalm 16 is an Easter Psalm. It is literally about Jesus, because Jesus is the one who has not been given over to decay, who has not been left in Sheol.

SHEOL
The Psalm also, however, refers to those threats from which the resurrection of Jesus delivers us. The Psalm describes David’s confidence that the Lord will rescue him, and in this David is speaking prophetically about Jesus. What is “Sheol”? Sheol is grim, dim, gloomy, and apparently hopeless. It is a place or condition of silence and shame: “Let the wicked be put to shame,” David prays, “let them be silent in Sheol” (Psalm 31:17). No one in Sheol praises God or gives Him thanks. When Sheol opens its mouth and swallows down the living, it destroys all merriment and joy. Because of Israel’s sins, Isaiah says, Sheol has “enlarged its throat and opened its mouth without measure; and Jerusalem’s splendor, her multitude, her din of revelry, and the jubilant within her, descend into it” (Isaiah 5:14). The dead in Sheol are covered with maggots and worms. Of the king of Babylon Isaiah writes, “Your pomp and the music of your harps have been brought down to Sheol; maggots are spread out as your bed beneath you, and worms are your covering” (Isaiah 14:11).

The Bible pictures Sheol in a number of ways. At times, going down to Sheol is being swallowed by the earth. This happens literally in the case of Korah, who rebelled against Moses and Aaron and who was swallowed by the earth. Numbers tells us that “the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up and their households,” so that “they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly” (Numbers 16:32-33). In Psalm 55, David alludes to this incident as he asks Yahweh to make his enemies like Korah: “Let death come deceitfully upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol, for evil is in their dwelling, in their midst.” The wicked in Proverbs 1 want to prey on the innocent, and say they will swallow the innocent alive as Sheol does (v. 12).

In other places, Sheol is described as encompassing, overwhelming waters. David cries out to the Lord because “the waves of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me; the cords of Sheol surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me” (2 Samuel 22:5-6). Jonah is literally thrown into the sea, and from the sea he cries out to the Lord, but describes his condition as one of being in “Sheol”: “I called out of my distress to the LORD, And He answered me I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice. For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me All Your breakers and billows passed over me.”

Psalm 107 brings together a number of the images associated with Sheol. The Psalmist describes those who are in “deepest darkness.” They are imprisoned, fettered, and caught: “bound in cruel irons,” confined by “gates of bronze” and “iron bars.” Death is pictured as a city, with gates and an entry way, and is also described as being a pit. The Psalmist’s afflictions are described as sickness, as He cries out for healing.

For the Psalmists, falling into Sheol means falling into darkness, being confined, being overwhelmed by waters, being swallowed by the earth, falling into a pit.

Sometimes when the Bible speaks of people in Sheol, the earth really does open; sometimes the Psalmist or prophet really is on the verge of drowning.
But not always. Sometimes these descriptions of Sheol are metaphorical. What’s behind these metaphors? What literal reality is being described by darkness, the devouring earth, the encompassing waters? What experience is behind the notion of Sheol as a pit or a city of Death? We might instinctively think that Sheol means “hell,” but that doesn’t fit the way the Bible uses the word. When David, or Jonah, or Jacob think they are heading to Sheol, they do not think they are heading to a place of eternal torment. They know that God is their God, and that’s why they continue to pray to Him even as they are slipping toward Sheol.

In some passages, it appears to be a synonym for physical death or the grave. In Psalm 16, going down to Sheol is parallel to undergoing decay, and elsewhere Old Testament writers equate Sheol with the “snares of death.” -“The cords of Sheol surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me,” David says in Psalm 18. And in another, “O Lord, Thou has brought up my soul from Sheol; thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit” (Psalm 30:3). “What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol” (Psalm 89:48). Solomon encourages his readers, “Whatever your hand finds to do, verily, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or wisdom in Sheol where you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

In the Bible, though, death takes many forms. Death is not only physical and biological. In biblical perspective, you can be in a state of death even while you’re living. We think of people who are distressed, sick, oppressed, afflicted, persecuted as “alive.” But in the Bible, these experiences are often described as a foretaste of death. For the Biblical writers, distress, affliction, sickness, friendlessness, exile, childlessness, infertility, separation from Yahweh or His house, famine persecution, defeat in battle, are all proleptic experiences of death. They are forms of death in the midst of life, and the biblical writers sometimes describe these experiences in life with the word “Sheol.” Those who are separated from the presence of God in His temple, alienated from friends, surrounded by oppressive hostile enemies, are sometimes on the verge of Sheol. Other times, they think they are already in Sheol

Psalm 88 is among the most dramatic of these. Though he is alive enough to talk and pray, the Psalmist describes himself as being “at the bottom of the pit” and on the edge of Sheol. His soul has had enough troubles,” and he feels that he is “drawn near to Sheol.” But it’s worse than that. He doesn’t only say he is “near” Sheol. Those around him already consider him “among those who go down to the pit.” He is “among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave.” Because the Lord is angry with him, he considers himself as already in the pit of Sheol, and he draws on the imagery of Sheol to describe his current condition: “You have put me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the depths. Your wrath has rested upon me, and You have afflicted me with all Your waves. You have removed my acquaintances far from me; You have made me an object of loathing to them; I am shut up and cannot go out.”In short, this Psalmist doesn’t think of himself as being near death. He considers himself as being dead, being in Sheol, being in the pit, the dark, the prison house. In our modern sense, he is alive, but since he is cut off from friends, under the wrath of God, without strength and vigor and vitality, he is in a real sense dead. He is already in Sheol.

Likewise, when David complains that the “cords of Sheol surrounded me,” he is talking about being surrounded by enemies. That line comes from Psalm 18, and earlier David has cried out to the Lord to be “saved from my enemies”; when the Lord appears to rescue Him, the Lord “drew me out of many waters, He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.” He is threatened with physical death at the hands of his enemies, but the way he describes it, he is already experiencing death, and he calls on the Lord not only to rescue but to resurrect him. Jonah is saying the same thing in his prayer from the belly of the fish. He is swallowed by the waters, his life threatened, almost drowned. He is not in our sense dead, but he is experiencing a foretaste of death, a foretaste he describes as Sheol: “I cried for help from the depths of Sheol,” he says.

Sheol, in short, can describe experiences we have in life, experiences of oppression, defeat, illness, isolation, separation from God, exile. All of these are forms of death, and are Sheol in life. But descending to Sheol can describe the condition of physical death. When it does, it’s not describing death or the grave as such, but a particular kind of death. Not all deaths, after all, are described as a descent to Sheol. In fact, nowhere in the historical narratives of the Old Testament is a faithful man said to go down to “Sheol” at his death. When the faithful die, they are “gathered to their people (Genesis 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:29, 33). The Bible shows that some have fortunate deaths; not everyone who dies dies in desperation or fear. When the righteous die full of years, surrounded by family and troops of friends, satisfied that their life is complete and their work finished, they are never said to “descend to Sheol.” When Sheol is used in connection with physical death, it describes the deaths of those who have died violently, prematurely, without a seed to carry on their name. Sheol is the condition of the dead who have died before life has fully ripened. When David is hounded by enemies, defeated, on the run, he fears that he will die and go to Sheol. If David were to die at that point, without his life being fulfilled, without God’s promises realized, cut down in midlife, that death would be described as a “descent to Sheol.

DELIVERED FROM SHEOL
All this makes it clear how Jesus was delivered from Sheol, how Psalm 16 is an Easter Psalm. Jesus did die, and in the biblical usage, His death appears to be a perfect example of a descent into Sheol. Jesus came announcing the kingdom of God, preaching that God was going to exert His authority and rescue His people. He healed the sick, exorcized demons, raised the dead. He preached and taught to the multitudes. But then He was crucified, His disciples were scattered, the movement He began in disarray. His crucifixion seemed to end His hopes, and those of His followers. He was cut down in mid-life, His plans apparently frustrated by the cross, His announcement of the kingdom apparently falsified by His death. A dead Messiah is a failed Messiah, and a Messiah humiliated by the death of a cross is the biggest failure of all. If any death was fruitless, shameful, premature, violent, it is the death of Jesus on the cross. In itself, this death is thoroughly tragic, pointless, stupid, futile, senseless, worthless, meaningless. Ivan Illych’s death is pathetic; Jesus’ is tragic. But they both seem equally absurd.

Yet, like David, God rescued Jesus from Sheol, delivered from fruitless and premature death, brought back from the grave. His resurrection is not only a recovery from the grave, from literal biological death. His resurrection is a deliverance from Sheol, from fruitless, pointless, useless death. His resurrection is a deliverance from a particular kind of death. Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t cancel His death. But His resurrection transforms His death into a fruitful death. His resurrection means that He is rescued from Sheol, from pointless death. Because of the resurrection, Jesus’ death can be seen as a fruitful one. He is the se
ed that goes into the earth and dies, in order to bear much fruit. He is no failed Messiah; instead, His death becomes the most fruitful death that will ever occur in all of human history.

This gives us considerable insight into the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection for us. By His resurrection, Jesus delivers us from Sheol in every sense. Insofar as Sheol is an experience of THIS life, He delivers us from all the deaths that we might suffer. The resurrection of Jesus not only delivers us from physical death, but from all the threats, distresses, assaults, fears, illnesses that frustrate life. Like the Psalmist, we face sickness, enemies, isolation, rejection, persecution, loss. Like the Psalmist, we may be exiled, enslaved, oppressed, under the wrath of God, cut off. There may be times when we seem contemned to a frustrated, fruitless existence. But through the resurrection of Jesus, we know that God will not abandon our soul to Sheol. He will not leave us in exile; He will make the infertile fruitful; He will open the womb of the barren.

But what if we don’t survive these threats? We all know Christians who experience what appears to be permanent fruitlessness and frustration. What if the barren do not become fertile? Has God abandoned them to Sheol? We also know Christians who die early, who die violently, and they are not brought back from the dead as Jesus was. What if sickness does cut us down in our youth, before we have ripened, before we have completed our life’s projects? What do we say about Christians who die prematurely? What about Christians who suffer failure in a career, in marriage, with children? Has the resurrection failed for them? Has God abandoned them in Sheol. The resurrection of Jesus also contains a promise for them. The resurrection of Jesus means that even if we are cut down “before our time,” we can be like seed dying in the ground to bear much fruit. Even if your life seems fruitless and absurd, even if you are frustrated and defeated, your dying is fruitful in Christ. No Christian is ever abandoned to Sheol. No Christian ever suffers death-in-life without fruit. No Christian ever suffers premature physical death without being a seed planted. Even the apparent defeats and failures of life are transformed into victory.

When Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery, they bring back his coat dipped in the blood of a goat. Jacob is convinced that Joseph, his beloved son, is dead, and he says that he will go to Sheol mourning for his son. This has often been taken as evidence that the Old Testament teaches that Sheol is the end of all people, including the faithful and righteous. But that is not what Jacob is saying. Jacob feels that he will go to Sheol because he is already in Sheol, already experiencing death because he experiences the death of his son. He is saying he will go to death unfulfilled; because of the loss of Joseph, he will not have a fortunate death but a death infused with sorrow.

But that is not how things turn out for Jacob. Many years later, Jacob hears the good news that his son, who was dead, is alive again. He hears the astonishing announcement that Yahweh preserved Joseph from the pit, from the prison, from death, from Sheol, and is now made ruler in Egypt. And when Jacob hears that, he is revived. No longer does he speak of going to Sheol in mourning; he doesn’t speak of going to Sheol at all. Jacob, who was on the brink of the pit, who knew only darkness for years, whose life seemed fruitless and frustrated, lives to see Joseph’s children to the third generation. And when he comes to the end, the Scriptures tell us not that he descended into Sheol but that “he drew his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people” (Genesis 49:33).

That is the good news of Easter, and of the Easter Psalm 16. The good news that Jesus is risen, risen indeed. The good news that the Lord has not abandoned His holy, nor any of His holy ones, to Sheol. The good news that, in life and in death, we have hope that we will be rescued from Sheol. We have hope that God will rescue us from all the deaths that threaten us in life, and turn all those deaths into life. The good news is that at the end of our lives we will not descend to Sheol, to the condition of fruitless, unfulfilled death.

Death comes in many forms, but the God of life triumphs over them all. Christians never suffer pointlessly. Christian death is never senseless. Christian suffering is never meaningless. Christian death is never the absurd death of an Ivan Illych. Because He is risen, He is risen indeed.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.