I believe in death

Moderator, Dr David Bruce, offers a reflection for Easter.

Perhaps this is a provocative title for a Herald article about Easter – but the alternative is if anything, even more startling. “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” We say these words easily when reciting the Apostle’s Creed, but like much which is important in Christian theology there have been multiple, sometimes mischievous interpretations of it. So let me state it clearly. I believe in both the death of the body and the resurrection of the body.

Death is horrid. Our family experienced a tragic and unexpected bereavement on New Year’s Eve 2021. Death came like a chill wind through our house, settled in every room, infected every conversation and left us stunned. It has taken months to recover, and the journey is not over. People have been very kind – sending words of comfort and offering practical support. How grateful we have been for these expressions of love. But this awful personal loss has forced us to ask some questions. What is it that we actually believe about death? Are these beliefs fanciful, or well grounded? What ought we to say at funeral services? Is death so insignificant a thing that we can comfort ourselves by dismissing its brutal force, taming it and even making it our friend?

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was…. What is this death but a negligible accident? …I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner…”

These words are often quoted at funerals today – presumably in an attempt to shrink the impossible scale of what has happened to manageable proportions. But what these words offer is empty of hope. They are quoted from a sermon preached by Canon Henry Scott Holland in St Paul’s Cathedral following the death of King Edward VII in 1910, but are almost universally misunderstood. Canon Scott Holland makes this reference to expose the futility of such thinking about death, not to celebrate it. He goes on in his sermon to explain the Christian hope, based not on an empty notion of death as a convivial or trivial thing which needs no remedy other than the passage of time until we are all joyfully reunited. Instead he rightly describes death as a dark enemy, the

final obscenity: “…the cruel ambush into which we are snared [making] its horrible breach in our gladness with careless and inhuman disregard of us.”

Death un-does us. Resurrection re-creates us. It is the sure guarantee that in Christ who defeated death, we may be re-made.

This latter sentence describes my New Year’s Eve experience. This I can identify with. Into this awfulness, the truth of the statement “I believe in the resurrection of the body” begins to gain some traction. Death un-does us. Resurrection recreates us. It is the sure guarantee that in Christ who defeated death, we may be re-made.

The Westminster Confession of Faith upon which Presbyterians rely as an explanation of the most important teachings of the Bible, says that although our bodies return to dust when we die, our souls “immediately return to God who gave them” (Confession, Chapter 32). Having returned to God, believers: “behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies.”

This is important, because it points forward in time to an as-yet unfulfilled promise of God. The Confession goes on to explain: “At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the self-same bodies…which shall be united with their souls forever.”

This two-step understanding of what happens to us after death is not a version of purgatory, but a clear celebration that our ultimate destiny with God is a bodily thing, as real and as tangible as our physical lives are today. The same, solemnly and sadly, applies to those who died outside of Christ. They too will be raised by Christ, but “to dishonour”.

The concluding verses of the hymn For All The Saints Who From Their Labours Rest captures this sequence well:

“The golden evening brightens in the west; | Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest: | The peaceful calm of paradise the blest | Alleluia

But lo! There breaks a yet more glorious day; | Saints, triumphant rise in bright array; | The King of glory passes on his way! | Alleluia

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast | Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host | Singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost | Alleluia.”

We must not talk it down, rationalise it away, or dismiss it as a myth. Upon this rests our hope. We are a resurrection people…

In saying, “I believe in the resurrection of the body,” we are not only saying that on the third day, Jesus was raised from the dead. We are talking about ourselves. This is our ultimate hope. We will be raised to be with Christ, for he was raised, and we are in him. In respect of this teaching, the manner of our death is not the issue, or by what means our bodies returned to dust (burial in a cemetery, or at sea, cremation or by other means). The central hope of Easter is that in Christ, we will be raised with him. Without this sure hope, the gospel is empty rhetoric.

And so, the biblical story of Good Friday leading to Resurrection Sunday offers us a hope-filled pathway to follow in the sometimes shocking harshness of the Christian life. When it may seem that because of the bruising nature of the battle, all hope is lost, it is not. It is however the case, that such hope emerges from a white-hot crucible of suffering.

Let us not miss this. The cross was a complete subversion of everything the followers of Jesus believed and hoped for. In whatever ways they may have understood Jesus’ influence, teaching and rule, they did not see his death coming and certainly not on a Roman cross. This is why, having learned of his death they were in despair. “We had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). But the manner of his death suggested the opposite – that their hope was misplaced. His death in such a way, seemed to say that their oppressors had won, that the kingdom of Rome was secure and the kingdom of God was a pipedream. They fearfully realised that (as N.T. Wright expresses it), “Crucifixion of a would-be Messiah meant that he wasn’t the Messiah”, and that they had been deluded. Furthermore, their own safety as those who were publicly aligned with him was also at risk. Hope gave way to paralysing fear. They were crushed, terrified and fled for their lives.

So, break out the banners and let the trumpets truly declare what happened. He is risen! He is risen bodily, physically, actually, historically and truly. He is risen in a way that defies the laws of biology, chemistry and physics. He is risen to state a truth that is not wishful thinking, but will stand the scrutiny of the centuries. He is risen indeed! Because of what happened that day, the world is not the same, and never can be again. The universe has bowed to his mastery. The world now spins as an act of worship to him, and the entire cosmos affirms it.

We find that life, now re-defined and re-born, is a different thing to what it was on Good Friday – no longer constrained by time but unshackled as it reaches forward to eternity. The angels cry “Holy”, and paradise is now prepared like a city of mansion-houses to receive its people. We must not talk it down, rationalise it away, or dismiss it as a myth. Upon this rests our hope. We are a resurrection people, settled on the identity of Jesus, enthralled as he sweeps us up into his arms of love and grace. He is risen! Welcome home this Easter!

Dr David Bruce is Moderator of the General Assembly. His brother, Nigel died in a drowning accident in New Zealand on New Year’s Eve, 2021.