Church of St Michael at the North Gate, Oxford

The Church of St Michael at the North Gate in Oxford claims to be the oldest building in the city. Its tower dates to 1040, which makes it unusual, as few Saxon buildings have survived the thousand years since they were constructed. It is famous for having a fifteenth-century pulpit from which John Wesley preached, as well as possessing the cell door from the now demolished Bocardo prison which secured the noble Archbishop Cranmer as he awaited his fiery death sentence in the city’s streets, beyond.

One feature that particular struck me was a sixteenth-century wall memorial. It appears to show a well-dressed couple sitting in comfortable chairs while death, a skeleton, stands in their midst holding a pair of objects (they resemble a rattle and a ping-pong bat but I’m sure they aren’t). I have no doubt that five hundred years of Oxford’s scholarly gaze can explain the origin and meaning of the carving, though I cannot find it. I suspect that it communicates to us that death appears at times and places which we neither expect nor desire -interrupting, curtailing, disturbing. Sometimes, it gives no warning nor introduction and never offers apology. We are best to ready for it before it comes. Knowing Jesus Christ, the Conqueror of the grave and the Victor over death, is the best way to prepare and be ready. Death might be an enemy, but for the Christian, he is but a begrudging chauffeur come to escort us to the palace. Just imagine all the dead folk whose eyes beheld St Michael's tower and whose feet took them into this church. Death came for them all, and it is coming, also, for you. 

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Revelation 1:18

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