Death Cannot Stop Love
Matthew 28:1-10
This week carried incredibly horrifying news of a heinous law passed by the state of Israel that makes death by hanging the default sentence for any Palestinian convicted in military courts of murdering Israelis. This law does not apply to Israelis who have committed the same crime.
It’s is a shining example of what apartheid looks like. It is almost as shiny as the golden lapel pins shaped like nooses that far-right Israeli politicians wore as they celebrated the passage of this law with cheers and the drinking of champagne on the floor of the Knesset.
The timing of this—the week of Holy Week where we Christians remember a story of a Palestinian Jew named Jesus who was unjustly killed by the state—brings sighs too deep for words for this Pastor.
The hate underneath all of this is breath taking. And as we look ahead to the Passion of Christ and the story of his crucifixion we remember on Good Friday, we can have a fresh example of the hate underneath the shouts of “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” when bearing witness to the hatred of Israeli apartheid and the passage of this law.
Honestly the hate feels like it is everywhere. I grew up with the indoctrination of Islamophobia either because of my father’s experience in multiple conflicts our nation engaged with in the Middle East, or the rise of Islamophobia writ large after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. I’ve learned since then, but I have become sensitive to when I notice that Islamophobia lurking everywhere in our culture and especially our nation’s politics. It is bipartisan, and it is a distraction.
Hate is something we feed. And hate is a force of death. And there is only one thing that can truly stop death in its tracks: Love. Not that love keeps us from dying, but love does keep death from winning.
How does it do this? Primarily by eradicating our fear of it. Death itself is a part of life. But Death as a source of fear and a tool for domination is defeated by Love. Not Hallmark Card “Love,” but instead the kind of love a mother has for her child. The kind of love God had for us when “he gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believeth in him will not perish” (John 3:16 KJV).
Our story of Easter is not a promise that we will not die. It is a story that death cannot stop love. Even death is not powerful enough to change how God loves us!
We are living in bleak times, and this week is the bleakest story for us Christians. But in the worst of things, Love grounds us in the truth that Death is not as powerful as we think it is. We might only hear of the worst violence the state of Israel can commit against the Palestinian people, but there are stories of love, like the work of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus which brings together Israeli and Palestinian Children to sing one another’s songs and be in dialogue.
There will always be stories of Love to undermine the power of death. This is as true amidst the genocidal efforts of the state of Israel as it was in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Love always wins. That’s what Easter is about.
