York Minster

Living in Eternity

Date: 30th March 2008
Preacher: The Revd Canon Jeremy Fletcher

One day someone will explain what it is about a fine morning in Spring which turns the thoughts of the middle aged, not to going on pilgrimages, but to Spring cleaning and tidying up. Both house and office were a blizzard of activity yesterday. Something unspoken and unacknowledged between us impelled Julia and me to get things sorted out. If it hadn’t rained in the afternoon the cars would have got the treatment too.

In the evening, in the spirit of the rest of the day, I reviewed the plans for my funeral. There is no date set for this event, as far as I know. But there were various reasons why. Partly it’s because I’m reviewing a book about planning funerals, which starts with the wise observation that planning a funeral is like planning a wedding, only you have days for a funeral and months for a wedding. It might also be because it would be a bit embarrassing if a clergyman married to a solicitor hadn’t made provision both for the service and the legalities required.

The most significant reason however is that it’s Eastertide, and all the focus of the church in these great 50 days leading to the Ascension and Pentecost is that we should look carefully, sensitively and joyfully into the reality of death, knowing that it is as real as ever, but that the resurrection of Christ enables us to face it with new perspective and confident hope.  The message of Easter is that preparing for eternity is the most important thing we can do, and to live in the face of our dying is to live more fully until that time. This then, is sorting out time, and the readings from Acts and John’s gospel give us different ways of assimilating the new world and new beliefs with which the resurrection challenges us.

For many people the thought of death is so devastating that it cannot be mentioned and must be avoided. The state of the disciples on the first day of the week testifies to that. All of them were devastated, none of them were prepared for good news, all were trapped in the fear of what would happen next. The doors are locked not only against the crowd. None of them was looking for the resurrection; none was searching for Christ among the living. All they could see was that the death of their friend was a disaster, and the end of everything. It stopped the clocks. IF you have experienced the death of a loved one then you will know all about that, and the reality will make itself known again and again.

Thank God for Thomas. Lots of people find that, in the experience of devastation, they concentrate on the details, on putting things in place, on sorting out the small things. I can’t see that the disciples understand the resurrection immediately in John’s gospel, and I’m not sure if they knew what they meant when they said to Thomas ‘We have seen the Lord’. His reaction is magnificently human. ‘I need to see, and touch, and know.’  At least he is open to the possibility that something has changed, and perhaps it is his questioning, his working at it carefully and doggedly, that unlocks the deeper reality of the resurrection for his fellow disciples. Thank God that, in the absence of evidence, he worries it his belief and his doubt and he faces the possibility that it all might be wrong, that Jesus has indeed died and that is it. The thing we cannot do with death is to swat it away, shoo it behind the sofa, hide it under the carpet. If Thomas had done that he would not have been there the next week. And he would not have believed.

A recent survey has shown that a surprising number of people do believe that Jesus rose from the dead. The Archbishop of York said in this pulpit a week ago that the resurrection is the best attested event in human history. That’s all quite pleasing, but it will mean nothing if our life is not changed. If we believe that Jesus rose from the dead but still think that death is the absolute end then the believing is not worth wasting our brain power on. Thomas gets his proof, but his response isn’t an academic paper or a good topic of conversation over his second pint that night, it is an act of worship: ‘My Lord and my God’. This changes his life because it puts death, Jesus’s death and his death, in its place.

A few weeks later Peter could stand up in front of a crowd of people against whom he had once locked his doors and tell them they had crucified Jesus. It was not said out of anger, or a desire for retribution or the search for justice. It was because he knew that ‘God raised Jesus up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in is power’; that ‘This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses’. It was entirely possible that the crowd would attack him too, but he was able to speak because he knew that, for him and all who believed in Christ, death had already happened and eternal life had begun, and the crowd needed to know that.

It is not that this life is now worth nothing because there’s a better one to come. It is that this life and life beyond death are part of the same whole, that our future is our present. Paul says that for him to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Peter speaks boldly because he must be a witness, and must testify. John writes so that you, we, may come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that though believing we might have life. Everything we are now is reshaped because what we will be is secure, because what we will be is what we are. In baptism we have already died. Eternal life is not the future, it is the present. The absolution at confession invites God not to promise everlasting life one day, but to keep us in eternal life now.

I quite enjoy reviewing my funeral. That is not to trivialise such an event, and I will weep with many others at the funeral to take place here this week of a valued friend of many. Loss in this life is loss, and there will be mourning. But the pain we will feel is put in its place by the belief that the loss is temporary, and that our new life awaits, glimpsed again and again in our present eternal life with Christ. Thank God that Thomas asked his questions, and fixed his faith with detail and care. Thank God that we have the opportunity to believe with him. And thanks be to God that Christ is risen from the dead, the first fruits of those who sleep.