Yeah. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this might be the most incredible poetry you’ll hear all year. David Bowden does an unbelievable job.

Just hit play. You’ll be impressed at the 2:50 mark. Or at least I was.

And I saw him: Death, with his mighty sting, exhaling in every breath the plight he brings. To the grave he gave victory…

Triumphing over life with the fear of endless sleep. Endlessly, we hide from our mortality. Mortally wounded from birth

We lie to ourselves from infancy, infinitely investing time in a life that will inevitably be taken by this incredible creature that stands before me:

Death

He manifests himself on ordinary days. His 6-foot stomach growls with hunger pangs.

For his meal, he cannot wait. So we are forced to taste him even before the grave.

We are all dying, there is no other way. I see him in Haitian and Japanese earthquakes. He’s hating the escapees of his cruel wakes.

I see him in poverty impoverishing the quality of life for regions that are reachable, and in those with the

reach who find reason not to reach out to treat what is treatable. I see him in disease taking life out of uninfected yet affected families.

I see him in oppression, pressing down on the oppressed and the oppressor.

I see him in depression, in Prozac and pain pills, in razor blades and bed-side wills. I see him in abuse: physical, mental, emotional misuse.

I see him in spiritual confusion, material obsession, physical possessions. I see him in marital transgressions, childhood remorse from an ugly divorce.

I see him in our slavery to appearances, appearing to care more about our images than those in dying villages.

I see him in our ignorance, ignoring truth for some comfortable inference.

I see his emergence in our churches as we pull out emergency verses as deterrents to religious differences, going on the defensive, defending our way of worship, making community worthless.

Death is killing us before we even enter the surface of the earth. We are in the service of his words, “It is finished”; the end of our birth.

We cannot hide from his wretched curse. For death and his grave we constantly rehearse.

Even God himself was coerced. Divinity immersed itself in humanity, humbly taking on flesh, scorning vanity.

The world saw his way of life as insanity. Insisting he cease speaking of his radical Christianity. But Man found him guilty, accusing God of blasphemy.

Performing the ultimate usurpation by slaying Christ on Calvary.

But through their cowardly cross, Jesus embossed mankind with amnesty, championing over death with the beauty of his fatal injury.

And I know, many still doubt, and rightfully so, bringing up this inquiry? What does that poor Jewish man dying on a Roman tree 2,000 years ago have to do with me?

I reply simply: Christ came and died to marry his bride to be.

And though death could kill the groom, it could not kill the ring. God made us one with Christ and life in matrimony’s cling.

Now, the undying church, his ever-living wife can sing.

Oh Death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where is your victory? For we have risen above your misery! We will not succumb to your finality!

We have overcome your infamous mystery! In the infinite reign of Christ’s ministry! For we are the resurrection!

The insurrection of fatality! We are the risen deity, the intersection of a dead yet living body! We live through imperfections, for we died to become holy!

We cannot be contained by the mouth of the grave. We are the willing slaves to the one who rose from the garden cave.

We have passed through death to new birth.

We gave the grave to the earth, and we claim today the cross’ worth! The body of his rising!

We are the risen church.

Christ is Risen. Amen?