The Presentation of Our Lord, February 2, 2025
The Presentation of Our Lord, February 2, 2025
The devil, Satan, holds the power of death. The power of death binds the whole creation so tightly that it groans (Ro. 8:32). Death enslaves by fear, and death enslaves those who know they are going to die. This knowledge of death has been passed down from generation to generation ever since God announced to Adam, “In the day you eat of it (the fruit of the tree of knowledge), you shall surely die” (Ge. 2:17). This knowledge—terrible, fearsome, and enslaving—forces the descendants of Adam and Eve to seek remedies. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ernest Becker has described these human-devised remedies to avoid or deny this enslaving knowledge. They use religion, culture, family, and personal achievement (among other things) to build what Becker calls immortality projects. These projects give people a sense that they will live on even though they die (Jn. 11:25). This sense comforts them and reduces what Becker calls Generative Death Anxiety.
Applying Becker’s insights to the text today: the devil, Satan, uses Generative Death Anxiety to bind people to their immortality projects. Satan enslaves them, putting them to work through performing pious religious deeds, participating and contributing to an enduring culture, forming a family that is generations long, and establishing a life of moral beauty and good works memorialized into the future. By their very visibility, these immortality projects, helpful and beneficial in themselves, take away hope (Ro. 8:24) and replace faith (2 Cor. 5:17). Christianity becomes a religion of works, a mere series of immortality projects useful for Christians to reduce their Generative Death Anxiety.
Jesus changes all of that! Jesus is your immortality. In his death, Jesus has destroyed the power of death. In his death and resurrection, Jesus has set you free from Generative Death Anxiety. You do not need those immortality projects. They may be helpful and beneficial ways to pass the time between your sacramental death in baptism and your physical death of going down to the grave, but they do not provide immortality. Only Jesus does that. Believe it! You are set free!
Table Talk: Discuss the shadow death has cast upon humanity or your life personally.
Pray: Heavenly Father, give me such faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection that my immortality projects are exposed. Amen
Hebrews 2:14-18 (ESV)
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), 15 and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death. 16 For surely his concern is not for angels, but he is concerned for Abraham’s descendants. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 For since he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.