Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 0-020

A Funeral Sermon preached by Revd Clive Skewes of Melbourne, Australia

Personal experience and world history seem to say, "the fate of humans and animals is the same. As one dies so does the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals·All go to one place, all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. The same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean." (Ecclesiastes)

These strangely pessimistic words come from the Bible itself. No hope there for a final reward, nor fear of punishment. Certainly no cheap talk about a happy ending. So why do we speak today about celebrating the fulfilment of "John's" life?

Not because we have any confidence that John has some innate capacity to survive death. There is a popular belief that our bodies will die but we ourselves will not really die. At the recent State of Origin (football) Game claims were made that the late Teddy Whitten would not only be looking down on the result with pleasure, but that some felt he was certainly there. (A secular translation of what Catholics call "the Real Presence"?) The sort of hyperbole, which surrounds our sporting and entertainment icons at their demise, reflects the view that a part of us inevitably survives death.

I want to emphatically state that is not our hope today. That view is not a part of biblical teaching. It comes from ancient Greek speculation. The Greek philosophers speculated that there was a little part of God in all human beings. This spark of God, the soul, survived death. Their view of the human person was a dualistic one. There was the human bit which perished, and the God bit which lived forever.

The Bible view of death is much more pessimistic. But the Bible's hope is also much more optimistic. It is a hope which sets the heart singing and the feet dancing.

According to the Bible we are not divine souls trapped inside the worthless shell or prison of the human body. God has created us and we are body as well as soul. (Which is a way of saying the human person relates to the earth, to other humans and to God.)

This service celebrates the whole of John's 97 years. We remember his successes and failures, his hopes and disappointments, his endearing ways and irritating habits. In the presence of God we can speak of all his activities: his sporting life, his craft, his marriage and family life, his work as a teacher, equally with his faith in God and his service through the Church. (In our thinking and speaking we may make distinctions between John's unpaid Christian service and his work as a paid employee of the Education Department. But there is no such distinction in the mind of God. God sees the whole of life as a total response to all that God is and does.)

Because we are body and soul it would be futile to hope to escape from physical life into some higher and better spiritual realm. Because we are body and soul it would be futile to think we are going to be dissolved into some kind of universal spirit or realm of spirituality, like drops of water returning to the ocean. A view that some in our society, influenced by eastern thought, are coming to hold. Such views diminish the human person and human existence.

The Bible's view of death does accord with the bleakest atheism, as we heard in the passage I quoted from the Book of Ecclesiates. The author of that book describes life from the point of view of the person who does not fear God.

Death is the end of human existence, whether it comes as release from intolerable suffering, or as sudden tragedy, or simply as the end of a long and fruitful life. Death comes to all. But it is not a natural part of life. It is an intrusion. It comes as the destroyer of life. It cuts off all hope for future healing, future growth, further accomplishment; all possibility of continued relationship with loved ones. It means "the dead end".

The atheists are right. But they are only half-right. They have only heard the first word about death. They have not received the last word. Yet it is important for us all to hear that first word, to face its full impact and the cloud it casts over all life. Otherwise we will simply go from here suppressing our grief, whistling in the dark, holding on to false comfort, resting in cheap piety, and we will not be healed.

The Christian faith is starkly honest about the total threat and reality of death. On the other hand, Christian hope outweighs the loss experienced in death.

The Bible proclaims a radical hope. Christians say, "We believe in the resurrection of the body". We won't become disembodied spirits wafting around on clouds to the accompaniment of heavenly harps. Rather we are promised we will be a new creation, part of a new humanity.

It is appropriate and fitting that we mourn John's death. Our loss is real. But in our grief we also can celebrate, not John's escape from his humanity, but the completion and perfection of his humanity in the promised resurrection of the body, ie. the completed self. We can celebrate that human existence which God has willed for John and all people from the beginning; that human existence God has always been at work to restore to us through Jesus Christ, the Crucified, Risen One.

The first Christians did not believe in the resurrection of the body because that seemed preferable to the other options that were around. They hoped for the resurrection because it had actually happened. A dead man actually lived again. Not just a man who was a freak exception to the rule that dead people stay dead, but a man in whom God's plan for the future of all human beings was revealed.

God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, despite all the gloomy expectations of his own followers. Christian faith is sure God will do the same for everyone for Jesus had promised "Because I live, you shall live also."

The connection between what happened in the resurrection of Jesus and what will happen to us is made in Romans 8. In the flesh and blood man, Jesus of Nazareth, God joined himself to all humanity. In his doing and dying God has judged us, forgiven us and promised us a place in the resurrection ö all of us whether we know it or not. So God cannot be against us.

Christian hope for the future is based on what has already happened in the past. What's going to happen to us? The Christian answer is "I believe in the resurrection of the body."

A mystery, to be sure. We know a lot about people being resuscitated, revived after being clinically dead. But we have no personal experience of the resurrection of people decomposing and returning to the dust. So the resurrection is a mystery beyond our experience.

But it is a mystery we can believe and confess, for we do know of God who created the world out of nothing. We do know of God who brings to be things that are not. We do know of God who raised from the dead the crucified Jesus of Nazareth who had been decomposing in the tomb for three days. We do know this God has promised to recreate the created order which humanity does its best to uncreate.

Our hope today is that the human person, the person that John was, what you and I are, will live again in a fully renewed existence in which there will be the loving, serving and praising of God and recognition of others, communicating and relating personally with them.

Today our message to our culture can be "Instead of trying to hide or retrieve lost youth, instead of regretting lost opportunities and mourning declining faculties, how about looking forward to the fulfilment of life given to us in the resurrection of the body!"

Indeed to celebrate the resurrection of the body is to have a double celebration because we enjoy now something of the promised future resurrection life. How? Through our choice of the God and Father of Jesus Christ who has chosen such God-forsaken sinners as you and me.

This was the source of John's hope; this was the source of his energy for service. This is what came to shape his life. One day he heard the Gospel and he put himself in the hands of God who creates out of nothing, who raises the dead and everything became new and different. Yes, there were disappointments, there was failure, even times of deep despair. But what kept him going was the perseverance, the persistence and faithfulness of God.

This hope is not only an appropriate theme for summing up John's life; it is a truth that can make a difference every day of our lives.