Every morning Beloved and I like to take a walk around our apartment complex after having our daily cups of coffee. Most mornings are spent in deep conversation and on a particular morning last week Beloved was trying to engage me in her thoughts about the tumbling economy, the starving children in Somalia
Death is truly the final frontier. All of the questions and notions of what happens after we die and lead us to one conclusion, that when we die we go somewhere else. Where, we don’t know. We haven’t been able to fly a human into death and have them come back to us to give us a full report of what’s out there. Other than Jesus and Lazarus and a couple of other people in the scriptures, we mortals have not been resurrected from the dead. We get hints of life after death from those who have had near death experiences but they are just that, hints.
What images come to mind when you think of the afterlife. Some of us associate heaven with clouds, harps, and streets paved in gold. We imagine that our deceased loved ones are up there (point up) dressed in white robes blissfully enjoying one another. We recall the many jokes about people waiting in line at the pearly gates with St. Peter as a heavenly bouncer deciding who gets in and who stays out. We tremble as we imagine that other place, down there, (point down) the place we call hell. It is the place where all the bad people are supposed to go to pay for their sins. This is a place that is full of fire and brimstone, where we hear people crying in agony. This place of eternal damnation is controlled by a scary looking red monster with horns and a pitchfork.
Where do these images of heaven and hell come from? Do they come from our scriptures or from other sources? Even if they are in our scriptures, are they meant to be taken literally or metaphorically? Both the Old and New Testaments speak of heaven and hell and our scriptures give us assurance of eternal life, but what is this eternal life that we keep hearing about.
It is hard for us to conceive that the life force of a person, what we call the soul ceases to exist when the body dies. Just as Einstein states “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form.” Some faith traditions believe in reincarnation, that when a body dies, its life energy is passed onto another living form being born. I tell you if that is true, I’m going to come back as a housecat, now that’s a great life! Our tradition believes that one day we will be resurrected as shown to us by the bodily resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning. In the epistle this morning we hear the Apostle Paul’s proclamation of the resurrection. Paul is assuring his listeners that because God raised Jesus from the dead that death does not have the final word. As the apostle Paul states, “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:54b-51) What Paul is saying is that because Jesus rose from the dead we can face the reality of our bodily deaths courageously and faithfully.[i] Knowing that physical death is not final, but merely changing form from this world to the next gives us the confidence to live in the ways of Jesus even if doing so leads us to suffering and even death in the hands of our persecutors.
The daunting question in this of life after death quandary is really one of salvation. How do we know if we are the ones who are going to an eternity with God or an eternity of damnation? Many Christians believe that the only way to heaven is in exclusively believing in Jesus. In the gospel we hear Jesus say, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14: 6) But Jesus did not mean to be exclusionary. He’s not saying it’s either my way or the highway. The words “I am” come from the Older Testament story where God tells Moses that his name is “I Am” thus what Jesus is doing whenever he says, “I am” such as “I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world” he is declaring the divine name of God and fusing it with a human longing. So when Jesus says, “I am the way…no one comes to the father except through me.” Jesus is joining the human longing for spiritual certainty with the name of God.[ii] He is stating that anyone could have the same close and abiding relationship that Jesus has with God if they follow the way that Jesus lived his life! Jesus lived in the way of love that embraced all of humanity as children of God. He lived in the way of generosity that knew that God has blessed all creation with abundance both in this life and the life beyond it. To live outside this way of love and generosity was to live in a state of alienation, separation from God. This is living in a state of hell. To live in a place of hate, in a place fear, in a place of perceived scarcity, in a place of harsh judgment that according to Jesus is living in hell. However, hell is neither lasting nor is it a final destination. As Jesus assures us in the gospel, “In my father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you myself. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14: 2-5)
What happens to us when we die? We don’t know, but we have faith that we will go someplace beyond this world to where God dwells. We catch a glimpse of it every time we gather around this table for the sacrament of communion. In the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the cup we participate in the foretaste of the heavenly feast to come. We have faith that one day we will gather together transformed in the presence of God. We will gather with those who have come before us and all who will come after us and all of creation will sit at table with Jesus and the saints and share in the communion of the bread of life and the cup of liberation. May it be so. Amen.
1 comment:
thanks for sharing. that God is faithful -- that is enough....
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