Waiting close

When we lost Eli - nearly two years ago now - a great many decisions had to be made in a hurry.  We quickly decided that his body should be cremated, but  what should be the resting-place for his remains? We are fortunate that there was a natural answer. Some years ago, wise and generous donors endowed our church with a columbarium - a place (actually part of the church building with a little garden) which provides spaces where the cremated remains of church members may be respectfully stored.  I love the symbolism here - that when we currently-living members enter in to worship we do so in the company of a whole fellowship  of believers extended backwards through time. In England one often enters the village church through the graveyard, receiving a similar message about the "communion of saints".

As you can see from the picture, each niche in the columbarium can hold two sets of remains.  When we laid Eli to rest, that did seem as though it might be a problem.  It was not long, however, before we found out that the space we had reserved for the second occupant was going to be needed soon enough - for me! So, once the stupid cancer has its stupid way with me, I will rest close to Eli as we both await the general resurrection.

"Hang on a moment", someone will say. "What's this about awaiting something? I thought Christians believed that when you die you go straight to Heaven to be with Jesus. That's the happy ending, isn't it?"  It is certainly happy - happy enough that Jesus can say to the dying thief on the cross, "This day you will be with me in Paradise"; happy enough that Paul can say that "to die is gain" for someone in his position. I believe our rest will be a happy rest.  But ending? There is more to the story than perpetual rest, as we confess each time we say the Apostle's Creed: I believe in the resurrection of the body.  That is not just about Jesus' resurrection on the third day.  Paul insists in I Corinthians 15 that the resurrected body of Jesus is an example of what resurrected bodies - our  resurrected bodies - will be like in general.  And this matters - for the world, for me, but intensely and profoundly for my dear Eli. I want to try to explain why.

Jesus, presently "seated at the right hand of the Father" (the Creed again), is not planning to stay there for ever. At some moment in future history he bursts out of heaven, returning to earth with clouds of glory and great fanfare.  And the point of this spectacle isn't to snatch the last remaining Christians from the planet before letting it fizzle up.  This is a genuine return - Jesus is coming back to implement his kingdom, his rule, in a restored Earth where people will live in restored bodies. "If we have been united with him in a death like his", writes Paul, "we shall surely also be united with him in a resurrection like his".

To be sure, Jesus' resurrection body could do some things that regular physical bodies don't do these days.  But it was not a ghost: it was perfected physicality.  Paul elaborates on this too, using the analogy of the body as a seed.  "It is sown in weakness: it is raised in power.  It is sown in dishonor: it is raised in glory."

For two years now, each time I read this passage I tear up.  For many years, Eli (or Miriam)'s struggle was with their body.  Dysphoria meant that this body never felt quite right.  Try honestly to imagine it. While most of us get out of bed in the morning glad to be "enfleshed", to be alive and to have a body that feels right and acts as we expect, I think that each morning Eli had to struggle to put on his body like putting on an ill-fitting suit of clothes.  He kept trying to get it right.  Sometimes he got closer, sometimes further away.  And then, one evening, troubled beyond all these issues by an infection that made us all feel miserable, he could not take it any more.

What is my ultimate hope for Eli? A disembodied, spiritual life with Jesus? No! He needs a body which works for him - a body that is a focus of joy, not of pain and frustration - a body that enables the communication of love - a body that places him in lasting relationship with the creation and its Creator.   That is the promise of the resurrection!  "It is sown in dishonor: it is raised in glory".  That is the day I look forward to also.  "Beloved, we are God's children now" writes the aging John to his congregations, and continues:  "We do not yet know what we shall become, but we know that when we see Him we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as he is." (I John 3:2)

Amen