We Die to the Lord

Midweek Vespers

The Third Week of Easter

A Reading from the First Epistle of John:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son.

And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

A Reflection by Joseph Sittler (1904-1987):

If I were a young preacher again, I would preach the Christian gospel of eternal life in God, but I would preach it sooner in my ministry, preach it throughout, and I would preach it more realistically.

The Bible really has nothing to say about eternal life. That sounds like a shocking statement, but it’s literally true: There is not a single clear and concrete word in the Bible about life after death. It affirms that life with God is life with that which does not die. But any specification about life after death is steadily avoided by the biblical writers.

Paul made an effort to address this question, but it’s a bum effort: “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for [beasts], another for birds, and another for fish” (1 Corinthians 15:36-39). He tries by natural analogy to say something. Interestingly, he never tried it again.

In Romans, the most mature of Paul’s epistles, he says, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8). Period! That is the fundamental and absolute word of scripture. But that word is immensely satisfying to old people. I never try to give any blueprints of eternity or heaven or eternal life, since by definition it is utterly impossible.

I think instead of trying to answer all the questions about death, we ought to follow the example of Paul and the New Testament and say, “Eye has not seen nor ear heard [the things which God has prepared for those who love Him].”; “By faith we are saved.”

By faith we are saved.

“Aging: A Summing Up and a Letting Go,”
as reprinted in For All the Saints.

Further Reflection:

I think I spoke to a ghost once.

I know that sounds crazy—could easily be dismissed as a dream—but that’s not how I experienced it. For me it was real: a shocking, stunning encounter. And certainly I could rationalize it all away now, with distance and with time. But I’d be lying to myself, and I’d know it.

I can’t say exactly what comes beyond. I can say that I’m convinced there’s something, quite a lot of something, on the other side of the grave. And if Christ has taught me anything, it’s that we need not fear our death; that He has conquered sin and death and hell already; that He has gone before us, to prepare a place for us, and that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Light guiding us out of the tomb: “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there … even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

And this frees us to live life now, to live eternal life now; a life liberated from the fears of finitude, and accounting, and ranking, and competition; a life freed to love and to give and to laugh and to comfort and to enjoy; not selfishly but gratefully, gracefully; with a mind enlightened by faith and a heart choosing hope in the Lord.

We should not live in such a way as to dismiss the importance of this world in favor of the world to come. Rather, we ought to live with one foot in the here and now, and the other already in eternity. Because that’s what eternity is: it’s always eternally now. Only in this way can we walk by faith, and not by sight, trusting in the goodness of the Lord.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.