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What happens after we die?
This is an important question, and I encourage you to ask it whenever you feel the need, particularly if you’re talking to clergy. It is a valid question; it expresses a natural, understandable concern; it deserves a good answer.
So. Here is my answer.
After we die, “God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being, that we may live with Christ in the communion of the saints.”
Now, I didn’t just make that up. I took it from our Prayer Book. You can find it on page 862. It is an Episcopal, Anglican expression of Christian hope about the resurrection of the body. It is something we can trust, something we can hope for, something we can, even now, live into.
So let’s parse it out.
“God will raise us from death.” Let’s talk about this bold statement of faith right here, next to this baptismal font. Let’s talk about water. God brought order from the waters of chaos, and created life. By water God saved Noah and his family. By water God rescued the Israelites, who escaped to freedom. By water our Lord Jesus Christ “was baptized by John and anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.”
(I did it again. I quoted our Prayer Book. This time I’m on page 306, where we will go today when we baptize Aubrey and Sarah, two new Christians.)
Water, then, is more than just a life-sustaining beverage or a lovely hot bath. (Though it is those things!) Water is more complicated than that. Water helps us understand how God is right here with us, in both life and death. Water saves... and it destroys. Water delivers... and it drowns. Noah and the Israelites made it, but the rest of humanity was lost in the flood, and Pharaoh’s army was drowned under the Red Sea. Does God raise them from death, too? I proclaim this faith: God invites anyone and everyone who has drowned beneath the waters of chaos, the waters of injustice, the waters of sin, the waters of death—God invites them all to be raised. Jesus himself was drowned by sin and death, and was raised to new life. In Holy Baptism, we are joined to his death and resurrection, never one without the other. By water—a substance that brings both death and life—by water, God raises us from death.
Okay. Here’s the next phrase in our answer about what happens after we die: God raises us from death into the fullness of our being. The fullness of our being: We can’t easily nail down just one interpretation of what this might mean. But let’s work at this. Let’s not give up and throw up our hands and say, “Oh, it’s just a big mystery.” We’re better than that.
After we die, we will be raised from death into the fullness of our being, that is, into our best selves; into our true identities without the damage and distortions caused by sin; into fully-restored relationships with God and neighbor. Yes. And: “the fullness of our being” is also something that happens here, on earth, during this life. Each Sunday morning is a new dawning of Easter Day, and every sunrise of every day is a new occasion of grace, another invitation from God to us, an invitation to jump out of our graves of sin and rebellion, of grief and despair, and to be raised by God into the fullness of our being. Sometimes this happens just one day at a time, even one minute at a time. Sometimes it feels like we are “white-knuckling it,” as recovering addicts like to say. But it happens. God calls to you, to all of us, every new day: “Take courage,” we hear God say say this very morning. “Take courage!” God says through the prophet Haggai, because “my spirit abides among you.”
So, 1) God raises us from death; 2) into the fullness of our being; so that 3) we may live with Christ. Live with Christ. Now what does this mean?
Well, it doesn’t mean an eternal trip to a deluxe vacation resort with Christ. That’s not really what Christians mean by “heaven,” and certainly not what we mean by “live with Christ.” Remember: before he was raised, Christ was brutally killed. He “entered not into glory before he was crucified,” we say in one of our prayers on Palm Sunday. To be baptized in Christ is to die and be raised with Christ. We do not live before we die: we die to sin; we die to old ways of doing things; we die to behaviors that harm our neighbor; we die to indifference to the suffering of others; we die to indulging our every impulse no matter the cost… and perhaps most importantly, we die to solitude, and therefore, we die to despair. Hear this Good News: when we live with Christ, we die to solitude and the dreadful child of solitude, despair.
And finally, “dying to solitude” brings us to the last phrase in our Prayer Book’s answer to what happens after we die: we live with Christ, yes, but we live with Christ in the communion of the saints. Aubrey and Sarah join a vast communion today, a numberless throng of saints, those who are living here and now, and the faithful departed, too: all of us living with Christ, and living with one another.
This can sometimes be a little rough, this lack of solitude, this living with the saints. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we do heartbreaking things. And of course, all of us die. Even if death does not have the last word—and our faith tells us that death most certainly does not have the last word!—even so, death is one of the words. “O death, where is your victory?” St. Paul sings with the church in Corinth. “O death, where is your sting?” Hm. Well, I’ll tell you, brother Paul, where the victory and sting of death are. They’re right here. Everyone in this room knows them and feels them.
But Paul’s faith about the defeat of death does give us authentic hope. The victory of death and the sting of death—they do not overcome us. God raises us from them, and raises us into the fullness of our being, so that we then live with Christ and one another.
Holy Baptism, then, is much more than an answer to the question, “What happens after we die?”. (Though again, that’s a great question.) Holy Baptism answers this question, too: “What happens after we live?”
What happens after we live?
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as Jesus teaches us today, is the God of the living. And that includes you and me, here and now. In Holy Baptism we are given life, and have life abundantly. We join this community that practices life-restoring forgiveness, week in and week out. (As we all know so well, forgiveness takes lots and lots of practice. Even receiving forgiveness can be hard.) We join this community that practices life-giving ministry to the stranger, week in and week out—yet another action that takes practice. We join this community that sides with the poor and the oppressed, with victims of violence and injustice, with all who bear the image of God and are crying out for the Good News of resurrection… And we also side with the woman the Sadducees are using to trick Jesus today. (Even after death, the Sadducees couldn’t imagine that she belongs to God, and not one of the men in her life!)
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God not of the dead but of the living; God whose creative power shatters the grave and fills us with the Spirit: God pauses here and now and invites us to drown in these waters, to die, and to rise again into the fullness of our being, to live with Christ and with one another.
Alleluia, we sing at the edge of these terrible yet life-giving waters. Alleluia, for we have put on Christ, and we will live, together, forever and ever.
***
Preached on the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27C) at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Burke, Virginia. The liturgy included the baptism of two children.
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38
Art: “Festival of Lights,” by John August Swanson, 2000.