Death Swallowed in Victory

Henry Lyte preached his last sermon to his congregation at Brixham in the autumn of 1847, already dying, and left for the south of France a few weeks later. What he left behind was Abide with Me, and the verse people sing least is the one doing the work: I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless; ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness. Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?

He was not asking rhetorically. He was quoting, and he knew exactly where the question came from.

So look at what Isaiah is describing, because the setting is a meal. A feast on the mountain, fat things and wine on the lees, made for all people. And then, at that table, the thing that gets destroyed first is a piece of cloth: he will destroy the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. It is a shroud. The image is of the burial cloth being taken off the whole human race in the middle of a banquet.

Look at the verbs. He will swallow up death in victory, which is a strange and physical way to say it: death is not negotiated with, or explained, or made meaningful. It is consumed, the way it has consumed everybody else. Paul reaches for this exact line centuries later when he needs something to say about resurrection, because there is nothing stronger available. And the LORD God will wipe away tears from off all faces, which concedes that the tears are running, and puts the wiping in his own hand rather than in the passage of time. Then the last thing removed is the rebuke, the reproach, the shame that trails behind long suffering and that nobody ever quite says out loud.

All of it is future tense, and pretending otherwise helps nobody standing next to a chair that is empty.

What is settled is not the timing. It is whose hand does the wiping, and that it will be a hand and not a process. For the LORD hath spoken it.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 363 is A New Song (Psalm 98:1).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna