Death Is Not Death

My spiritual journey has brought me into a liturgical Church and to making an Oblation in a specific Benedictine Monastery, but when I was at the very beginning of my Christian journey I asked our Scots Presbyterian minister, “What happens to you when you die?  The basic answer that he gave was that when you die, your body lies mouldering in the grave until the day of resurrection when the saints rise from the grave and ascend to meet Christ in the skies.  This is a very popular answer among some evangelicals, but it is based on a false premise.  I remember that at the time the answer seemed perfectly beastly. 

This scenario is drawn from a dispensationalist view of the return of Christ; the theory being that the saints living on earth are raptured before the Great Tribulation, and the saints who have died and have been lingering in the grave are resurrected at the same time.  This has raised anxieties for some who worry about whether or not cremation creates problems with the resurrection or what happens if a body is scattered over the earth.  This interpretation is held by a number of Baptist and independent Bible Churches but was not popularized until the 19^th Century; and has not been held by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Anglican Communion or most Protestant Calvinist churches. The basic reason is that there are no references in the early church Fathers for this and the biblical foundation for the view is weak.

The most popular text referenced for this view is 1 Thessalonians 4:15-16 “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” 

This we are told means that the dead in Christ remain in the grave until he comes again; but that ignores the immediate context in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him,” and an earlier text in 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13, “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”  In both of those texts we are told that the saints are going to return with Christ when he comes, and our comfort is that while they are asleep to us, they are alive to God and they will accompany Him when He returns to claim his own.

The basic view of Holy Scripture is that when we die we enter into the rest of God Himself. “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).  This does not mean that when we die our rest renders us unconscious in deep sleep, unless you think that God himself rests in that manner.  That rest the saints enter into, is the Sabbath rest that God Himself enjoys.

As Anglicans our understanding of what happens when we die is reflected in a prayer from the Burial Office, “Remember thy servant, O Lord, according to the favour which thou bearest unto thy people; and grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, he may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  The prayer is representative of the basic view of The Book of Common Prayer which assumes that on dying Christians enter immediately into eternal life.

This also coincides with the teaching of Jesus when He is confronted by the Sadducees, “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32).  This tells us two things: first, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive, and second, that they have already been resurrected.  This is also illustrated by the Transfiguration.  Moses and Elijah appear in visible form and speak with Jesus about His exodus which He was about to accomplish.  The Book of Revelation, written for the comfort and encouragement of Christians in a time of persecution also treats the martyrs beneath the altar in physical form wearing white robes, and they are told that the number of martyrs is not yet complete.

What then do we do with biblical concept of the resurrection of the saints?  In order to understand this one has to understand the relationship of time and eternity.  Time is created by God, and as His creation we dwell in time, but God Himself is not time bound but He dwells in eternity.  When we die we step out of time and we step into God’s eternity and all things are present to us, including the return of Christ and the resurrection of the saints.  

This is the view held by C. S. Lewis and unfolded in the Narnia Tales in “The Last Battle.”  The children who die in the last battle step right into the resurrection and are physically present in glorified bodies with capabilities far outstripping what they had when they were time bound on earth, or in Narnia.  At death, time and the physical limitations of this earth are annihilated and we enter our inheritance fully resurrected, fully physical, and more than physical. The model for this is the bodily resurrection of Jesus, our forerunner.

The view that when we die we lie mouldering in the grave until the resurrection makes the mistake of assuming that eternity is an extension of time.  It is not, and the day will come when we too will step out of time and into the amazement of eternity.

Death is not death, and therefore do I hope:

   Nor silence silence: and I therefore sing

      A very humble hopeful quiet psalm,

   Searching my heart-field for an offering;

A handful of sun-courting heliotrope,

   Of myrrh a bundle, and a little balm.¹

¹Christina Rossetti: The Complete Poems, (London: Penguin, 2005), p. 392