Years back, while in Puebla, Mexico, we were able to visit the Great Pyramid of Cholula, the largest known pyramid in the world today.  From a distance, it appears to be a large natural hill.  The Church of Our Lady of Remedies sits on top of the pyramid ‘hill’ built in the 16^th century by the Spanish.  Because of the church, the pyramid has not been excavated; however, 5 miles of tunnels within the great pyramid have been.  One piece of a tunnel about 80 meters long is accessible for tourists.  Unfortunately, my inadequate grasp of the Spanish language prevented me from understanding this as the guide pointed the way in to the dark, narrow, and quite claustrophobic tunnel.  As we walked through the dimly lit tunnel along with a long line of other tourists, the walls of the tunnel were very close on all sides of us.   The most unnerving part of walking through the tunnel, which seemed to go on forever, was that we frequently stopped.  The narrowness of the passageway meant that when we stopped we had to just wait until the line started moving, since returning to the entrance was not an option.

During those pauses in the great pyramid tunnel, I couldn’t help but think about the possibility of an earthquake and how in that scenario we would all be buried within the tomb of this pyramid, sitting beneath the beautiful church of “Our Lady of Remedies” 150 feet above our heads.  Add to this, that I was recovering from a back injury and my mobility was compromised as well.  The air in the tunnel was heavy and the close proximity of so many other bodies gave me a sense of wonder, fear, and vulnerability.  There was a powerful sense that we were all just one moment away from an impending death.    After several minutes in the tunnel and several intermittent pauses along the way, we finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel and gladly walked out of the earth-covered pyramid and into the dazzling sunlight.

Many of us may be feeling this same sense in the pandemic of sickness and death in our world today.  The uncertainty of when the pandemic numbers will halt and subside along with the disruption of our lives deeply reveals the fragility of life.  It is something of a tunnel experience.  In our normal everyday lives, we don’t think about these things; however, now it seems to come at us from all angles.  The mystery of death itself comes to us in sickness, disease, natural disasters and daily accidents.  The lives of loved ones are taken from us.  Our failure to know exactly what lies beyond the doors of death cause us fear, concern, denial, and in the case when someone we know and love being taken from us, even anger emerges!  What is death and why must it seem to rob us of something?

In John’s Gospel today (JN 8: 51-59), Jesus is confronting the Jews on their understanding of death.

Jesus said to the Jews: “Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever keeps my word will never see death.”
So the Jews said to him, “Now we are sure that you are possessed.
Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say,
‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’
Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died?
Or the prophets, who died? Who do you make yourself out to be?”

This is the moment that Jesus seizes to really challenge them on the misunderstanding of death and its seeming finality.

“…Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”
So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”
So they picked up stones to throw at him…

The Jews think that Jesus is indeed a lunatic and a blasphemer here as he is essentially saying that their Father in Faith, Abraham has seen Jesus.  Not only has Jesus audaciously placed himself within the historic context of the Jewish people and the inception of their faith, but he goes so far to say that “before Abraham…I AM!”  The Life of Christ includes and precedes Abraham.  This is WHO he makes himself out to be!

This  I AM flies in the face of all of our sentiments about death and its seeming finality.  The life that we can no longer see when something or someone dies has an even greater context than we can possibly even imagine.  As the Christ of the Universe and Creation, Jesus is proclaiming that His Presence, the Presence of God, is the greater context for death.  This reaches its historical zenith in Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection, which Christians around the world will celebrate next week!  Could it be that this greater context, which really has no name other than THAT IT IS – as Jesus says I AM – is Love itself?

The evangelist John tells us over and over again how God IS Love.  If this is so, then death itself lies within love, but only insofar as it is bracketed by life – between life and NEW life.   Life flows (sometimes turbulently) into New Life, as death marks mysteriously the transformative passage (or pause) that we must undertake as we move in Love.  If we truly can share in the Life of God, then this Great Flow of Love does sometimes have traumatic pauses or moments of death that somehow accomplish the healing transformation that Love demands.  If Jesus’ Word is Life and Love, then might this be what Jesus means when he says “whoever keeps my word will never see death?”

The question then becomes, can we stand in death together, and move through it amidst all of its mystery and grief, moving toward the Light that appears as a tiny speck at first and then grows in brilliance as WE approach it, like emerging from a tunnel.  Can or will we allow ourselves to grieve together?

Grieving is a natural process, but it demands community or it mutates into isolation, resentment, and possibly even violence.  When grieving becomes resentment, this is a denial of death, which ultimately is a denial of life.  This denial is how we, like the Jews in today’s Gospel, pick up stones to throw at the CHRIST, Who is Life!

When we do this, we participate in the culture of death in our world – in the terrible wars, genocides, environmental plundering, cultural bigotry, racial violence and killing that mark the absolute denial of death by devaluing life.  When we deny death this way, we make it into something greater than it can be and the result is death as separation from life and love, from God and each other.  The remedy for death is Life, simply because Life itself is the greater context.  Death lies within LIFE – it is not an end to Life.  The key is to allow our grief to mysteriously lead us into a deeper and newer experience of Life.  This can happen when we reach out to give and receive this gift from each other.  Indeed, it would seem that this is the only way to really participate in the Life of Love, Who is GOD! 

More than simply a symbol of the violent destruction of an indigenous culture, perhaps the Church of Our Lady of Remedies, which sits on top of the great pyramid in Cholula, can also symbolize the vulnerability that we attempt to hide or deny, but that must be excavated in order for the New Light of shared Life to take its rightful place as the ONLY reality in which death can be embraced in a transformative way.  Even the coronavirus pandemic in all its death and disruption could be one of those turbulent and transformative pauses where Love itself can find a new light way.  Here and now all these deaths can be seen as simply  brief pauses in the Loving Flow of God’s own Life.

 Peace,

Thomas

(written April 6, 2017)