The Christian Hope: Life After Death

"The son, the mistress of the house in Zarapeth, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.  Elijah said to her, 'Give me your son.' He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed.  Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried out to the Lord, 'O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again.' The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived."

--I Kings 17:  17, 19, 21-22

"Jesus went into a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him.  As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out.  He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow.  When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, 'Do not weep.' Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still.  And he said, 'Young man, I say to you, rise!'  The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother."

--Luke 7:  11-15

There is a running theme throughout these readings from this past Sunday.  Did you catch it?  Of course you did!  You're smart people!  But just in case you didn’t, the theme is life coming out of death.  In I Kings Eijah, the great man of God as he was called, brings a widow’s son back from death.  In the Gospel Jesus does the same thing, raising another widow’s son, this time in the town of Nain. There is always life after death. 

You might be wondering why these readings aren’t used for one of the first few Sundays after Easter; after all, that’s the single biggest day in our Christian lives, and it’s a day when we remind ourselves that death is not the end.  It wasn’t the end for Jesus, and it won’t be the end for us.  It might make more sense for readings such as these to have been used right after the Resurrection, so that the could really hammer home that point about life after death.  So why save these readings till now, a whopping 10 weeks after Easter?

The folks who put together the lectionary are a lot smarter than me.  Still, I suspect that the reason these resurrection readings are used now, during Ordinary Time, is because this is when we need them most.  We all know the Easter story, after all, which means we're not likely to forget it when that great festival day comes around.  It's during the non-Easter times that we most need to be reminded of the reality of resurrection. This is the narrative of our faith, something we need to hear over and over again.  There are two great narratives told by the people of God through Holy Scripture.  For Jews the narrative is liberation.  Whether it is from the Egyptians, the Babylonians, or the Romans, Jewish history is a constant reminder that God will always deliver God’s people out of bondage and into freedom.  For Christians the narrative is resurrection, the promise that death is not the end.  We are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, and just as we know that we will share in death with him, we also know we will share in resurrected life with him.  Not only do we see this in literal resurrections--such as Jesus, Lazarus, or the widow's son in Nain--but we see emotional and spiritual resurrections in individuals like Peter, Paul, several Roman soldiers, and the Ethiopian eunuch.  God is always bringing goodness and life out of the worst set of circumstances.

This is the hope in which we stand as Christians, and it is the hope that has sustained the Church for thousands of years.  Without this hope the Church may very well have faded into the obscurities of history long ago, but thanks to those who have kept that hope--the hope of life always coming from death--the Church has survived.  Chief among those who have kept this hope are the martyrs, those who have died for their faith and whose blood, it is said, is the seed of the Church.  If you follow Good Shepherd on Facebook and Twitter you know that each day we commemorate a particular saint and give you a background of their lives.  Last week we had three consecutive days in which we honored martyrs. 

We honored Justin Martyr (and no, that wasn’t his real last name).  Justin was a great writer and philosopher in Rome in the 2^nd century.  When faced with either renouncing his Christian faith or being beheaded, he chose the beheading.  

Icon of Justin Martyr.

The next day we honored Blandina and her companions.  In a time when it was believed that Christians practiced cannibalism, incest, and other kinds of debaucheries a group of Christians from Lyons were rounded up and fed to the lions.  One of the group was Blandina, a slave, who, as she was being tortured said nothing except, “I am a Christian, and there is nothing vile in us.”  

St. Blandina of Lyons.

And the day after that we honored the Martyrs of Uganda, killed in 1886.  The king, Mwanga despised Christians because they put their loyalty to Christ ahead of loyalty to him and his government, so he resolved to not only make association with Christians illegal, but to completely wipe out Christianity from his land.  He then had a number of Christian men, women, and children executed by firing squad.

The Martyrs of Uganda.

It was the hope of life after death that sustained each of these as they were led away to their deaths.  They all knew that their mortal bodies would be destroyed, but each one held on to that promise that God would somehow, someway bring goodness and life out of their deaths.  Justin may have been beheaded, but his writings—especially those about how Christians worship—survived and became the model for our own forms of worship today.  Blandina and her friends may have been tortured, but it is said that as she was tied to a post being devoured by lions, the on-lookers saw not Blandina, but rather Jesus himself standing there, and they left that arena changed forever by the experience. And while Mwanga killed those Ugandan Christians, their example of singing hymns and praying for their enemies as they walked to their deaths had the opposite effect from what he had intended, and within a few years Christianity boomed, and Uganda now has the largest Christian population of any African nation.  

They all knew that life always comes after death.  We may not be called to stand and die for our faith as they did, but we are meant to still hold on to that same hope, that God can and will take the worst set of circumstances and use them for instruments of life.  Not only must we hold on to that hope for ourselves, but we must be willing to cultivate that hope, plant seeds of that hope, among our brothers and sisters.  There are so many out there who believe that life is not worth living, so many who feel that their current lot is all that there is, that it won’t ever get any better.  We who know the resurrection truth know better.  We know that God is always able to bring life out of death.  That is the power of grace. That is the grace that worked through Elijah and Jesus as they brought those boys back to life.  That is the grace that sustained Justin, Blandina, and the Ugandan martyrs as they were led to their deaths.  It is that grace that will bring meaning and life out of the worst of circumstances.

So to answer that earlier question:  why have readings like these 10 weeks after Easter Sunday?  Because we need them now, perhaps more than any other time of year.  As things slow down, as we fall back into routines, we need to know that that promise of resurrected life is not going anywhere, that it is always there.  We always need to be reminded that God will bring life from death.  So hang onto that hope in your own life.  Cultivate that hope in the lives of those around you.  Because we know, just like those martyrs, just like Elijah and Jesus, we know that the words of the Psalmist are as true now as they were then:  weeping may spend the night, but joy always comes in the morning!