It’s something we all worry about, but mostly ignore. In a society that is sanitised, medically advanced, and idolises quality of life, I wonder if we are even prepared just to consider death. Though there are a vast number of deaths across the UK each year, we have become so used to the rhythms of our life that we don’t consider the reality that we could die any minute. Every day holds many risks; there are a number of ways we could die, and yet we have (I believe intentionally) numbed ourselves to this reality through workaholism, consumerism and a fast-paced lifestyle including constant noise, entertainment and a myriad of choices for how to spend our time. How often do we sit in silence and contemplate our lives? Does our usual way of life even allow for that?
This has not been the case for all of history, however. Our culture is unique in its insistence to avoid reflecting on how vulnerable we actually are as humans. In our modern day way of life we don’t leave space for the rituals of mourning, and having improved out quality of life so much we aren’t often confronted with death as an everyday possibility. So when something like a global pandemic happens, we experience a mass panic, a bucket load of fear and a swarm of anxiety. Our physical quality of life may be better, but the health of our souls is rapidly depleting.
Being confronted with our mortality causes the delusion of protection, safety and human ‘progress’ to dissolve. Frankly, considering death and the immanency of our own lives ending one day, whenever that is, while healthy to acknowledge, is obviously, depressing. But I think it draws our attention to an instinct within us: this shouldn’t be. When thinking on death, have you ever felt, there must be more?
“It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart.” Ecclesiastes 7:2
At a time when many have been reflecting, it’s apt for the church at large to enter the discourse and expound how our worldview responds to these questions. We often don’t do a very good job of explaining the “hope we have in Jesus” and what that means. The church is as guilty of partaking in the culture of numbness around us: pretending that life is brilliant; that being a Christian is sunshine and flowers; and that being happy all the time is the solution. But God does not offer superficial solutions.
Definitions of hope talk of a feeling, desire, or acknowledgement that an outcome is possible. This results in platitudes like “it’s going to be okay in the end”: well intended; offering some kind of comfort; and sometimes very likely based on the trajectory of your life, but in reality unknown. We can’t actually know if it’ll be okay in the end because we are living in our finite limits, inside our finite world. This is a tragic fact that Covid-19 has highlighted. We don’t know how long the virus will last, and whether things will go back to “normal”. In our lives none of us knows simply from our human experience and intellect whether it really will be okay in the end.
The hope offered by the bible is not one based in your feelings, desires or emotions. Nor is it a hope that comes from a probability calculation, or an analysis of your life’s likely outcome. It’s a not a hope that comes from inside ourselves, but from an objective source: a God outside this universe, and inside our world. May I share with you this hope?
Jesus was a real person, recorded in historical documents. In these records he claims to be God’s Son, but not just a demi-god, or godly offspring, he intentionally associates himself with the Jewish God, saying that he is the one and same God who had spoken to Moses. For reasons of blasphemy, the Jewish leaders at the time had him executed. He was crucified and pronounced dead by the romans, and buried in a tomb. Jesus went through death. The core of what Christians believe is not a superficial happy story, but has at the heart a cross: a real-life story of horrific and intense human suffering and pain.
But that isn’t the end. Jesus resurrected – not resuscitated. He didn’t come back from the dead like a near-death experience, to then die again at a later time. He actually busted through death, disarming its power. Jesus travelled through death in order to overcome. Jesus – fully the God of the Old Testament – could enter into death because he was also fully human. And as a fully human-fully God, he travelled through it in order to overcome it.
What does hope mean?
Hope is death overcome. Hope is victory over the reality and power of death offered to us, if we want to trust Jesus. In trusting Jesus, we participate too in his death. His death becomes our death. His life becomes our life. We live because he overcame death and we are putting our lives in him.
This both/and story equips us to deal with the reality, grief and tragedy of our mortality and all that entails. We can acknowledge the human condition and all the aspects of life attributed to that. However, we hold in tension that we can also know – not just desire or guess – that death is not final, it is not the final say or the most powerful enemy. Not only that, though. It isn’t solely an ethereal yet-to-be-realised “eternal life”, but something that starts here and now.
You can live life now without fear because you know death is a defeated enemy. The ultimate power that triumphs over us as humans is death, but it no longer has to be. In Jesus you will travel through death, following in the steps of his victory. Death has no sting: it’s still active, we still all experience a death moment, but the intended effects are dismantled.
When Christians talk about “hope” – regardless of how wrong, or unhelpfully we’ve often portrayed it – we don’t mean a wish or a desire without any knowledge if it will come to pass. Christian hope is a kind of sure knowledge, an anticipation for something that we know is true, we know is coming, but is as of yet unrealised in our lives. So when we say “it’s alright in the end” we know that in Jesus it really is. The reason we all look for a happy ending in a story is because the greatest Story of all – the true account of God’s relationship with his people – shows us a victory ending. Don’t we all yearn for a victorious ending in our inner beings?
Yes, all of our stories will end in death. We know this is inevitable. But is that death going to be the end for you, or is it just a beginning?
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I [Jesus] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”
John 10:10
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26.
thoughts on the gospel and life 