I am going to begin my Holy Week and Easter message in a very stark way. I am going to name a truth. Each one of us will die. Our circulatory, respiratory, and brain functions will cease. Death is inevitable. Dying is a process we will all go through.
What happens next is one of the most enduring questions in human life.
Some believe there is nothing beyond death.
Others believe there is something more.
Christians speak of a resurrection from the dead. They believe that there will come a time when Jesus will raise people to life again. Those who are raised will have a spiritual body and a heavenly expression.
They will be imperishable and immortal. This change will come upon us like a flash in the twinkling of an eye.
Now humans experience the finite nature of time and life. Then there will be an experience of eternity. Now creation experiences sadness, anguish and trauma. Then there will be an end of pain,
grief, and destruction. It will be banished forever.
The scriptures outline the events of the first Holy Week and Easter to proclaim a profound hope. Christianity encourages people to see sin, evil, and death as temporary. The love and goodness of God are permanent.
I have been careful, so far, in this reflection not to use the word “us”.
Who shares in this promised life?
Is it everyone, or only a few?
Almost everyone can identify some people in history they hope will not be granted a hope-filled eternity. They name the evil they have wrought and the suffering they have imposed as reasons wanting them banished into nothingness or worse.
Almost no one wants everyone to get to heaven.
At the same time, we struggle with the barriers that some religious groups try to erect around entry to heaven. Almost everyone who has a sense of eternity has someone they hope will experience it. Their desire becomes more earnest the deeper the love or compassion they have for these people.
Within the Christian scriptures we see this exploration being played out. We hear that belief in Jesus should give us confidence. We discover that expressing generous
love reveals God’s life in us and our life in God.
We recognise that turning towards goodness, kindness, and holiness draw us closer to God and God’s hopes for the cosmos.
An essential part of the Christian faith is knowing that some day we will die but then choosing how we will live. Not simply about being and doing good but also about how we think and orient our lives.
We have a choice about the impact we have on others and how we think about ourselves.
Christians ultimately say that we come to understand these things through the witness of Jesus.
Will you be guided by him?
Are you open to seeing Jesus as God amongst us?
Are you willing to live as he would have us live?
St John wrote:
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4: 9 – 12.
May you, this Easter, be filled with the hope of Jesus!
+P
