{"id":111285,"date":"2021-09-23T15:34:17","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T22:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=111285"},"modified":"2021-10-12T16:08:03","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T23:08:03","slug":"bringing-the-death-tape-to-life-a-homily","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=111285","title":{"rendered":"Bringing the Death Tape to Life: A Homily"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><i>Death is the will \u2014 it\u2019s the will of the Sovereign Being.\u00a0 But to me, death is not \u2014 uh, death is not a fearful thing.\u00a0 Death is laying down your burdens.\u00a0 Death is just going to sleep\u2026\u00a0 Moving from death to life.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Often, our words in times of death sound very similar to the final words of Jim Jones <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=29079\">on the death tape<\/a>.\u00a0 While they are intended to be words of assurance, they are words that ultimately push people towards death.\u00a0 Jim Jones knew what he was doing.\u00a0 So often, I don\u2019t think we do.\u00a0 Surely, words of life could have served the people of Jonestown better than what they heard, and now those words can serve us better too.\u00a0 Think about if the people of Jonestown had heard this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Life is the will \u2014 it\u2019s the will of the Sovereign Being.\u00a0 But to me, life is not \u2014 uh, life is not a fearful thing.\u00a0 Life is laying down your burdens.\u00a0 Life is just waking up\u2026\u00a0 Moving from death to life.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Listen.\u00a0 Instead of focusing on bringing about the death of life, we should always focus on bringing life to death. Life depends on it.<\/p>\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n<p><em>(<\/em><strong><i>Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood<\/i><\/strong><span class=\"apple-converted-space\"><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/span><em>is a Baptist pastor, theologian and activist living and working in Arkansas. He writes regularly at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jeffhood\/\">https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jeffhood\/<\/a>. His other article for this edition of the jonestown report is <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=111229\">Clarity: A Dense Personal\/Theological Interaction with Rev. John Moore\u2019s \u201cWitness to Tragedy and Resurrection\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>(Jeff&#8217;s other article in this edition of <\/em>the jonestown report<em> is <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=111229\">Clarity: A Dense Personal\/Theological Interaction with Rev. John Moore\u2019s \u201cWitness to Tragedy and Resurrection\u201d<\/a>. His complete works for this site may be found <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=82993\">here<\/a>. He can be reached at <a href=\"mailto:jeffrey.k.hood@gmail.com\">jeffrey.k.hood@gmail.com<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Death is the will \u2014 it\u2019s the will of the Sovereign Being.\u00a0 But to me, death is not \u2014 uh, death is not a fearful thing.\u00a0 Death is laying down your burdens.\u00a0 Death is just going to sleep\u2026\u00a0 Moving from death to life. Often, our words in times of death sound very similar to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":111220,"menu_order":27,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-111285","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/111285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111285"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/111285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111510,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/111285\/revisions\/111510"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/111220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}