Preached by Rev'd John Whittaker
12 October 2008

Is there life after death?

1. Is there life after death? It’s one of those big questions and indeed the way we answer that question or even the way in which we understand the question can have massive implications for how we understand ourselves and the business of living as well as the business of dying.

2. We’ve heard from Rosie about the biological implications of death. We’ve heard from Jean an account of some of the feelings and emotions which are present alongside death. And we have heard an account of living or new living following death as the two disciples journeyed alongside the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus. In the next quarter of an hour or so I hope to offer some reflections on life and death and life after death but need to start with a caveat. And the caveat is this – understandings of life after death are inevitably complex and inevitably involve unknowns. What Christian theology attempts to do is offer understandings and perspectives which make sense when put against our understandings and beliefs surrounding the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus and which make sense when placed alongside understandings of who we are and what we are about. I offer reflections this morning but I make no claim to have a monopoly on understandings in this area.


3. One of ways in which Christianity has traditionally tried to work on understandings of death and life is to use the idea of ‘soul’ - a spiritual life force of who we are and what we are about which is independent of our physical being so that when our bodies come to their end, our life continues in our soul and that is where we find the possibility of eternal unity with God.

4. A book I have read in this area makes for good bedtime reading especially if one is struggling to get to sleep: Snappy title: ‘The Mystery of Salvation - A report by the doctrine commission of the general synod of the Church of England.’ One of the strongest parts in this report is it’s attempt to engage with what we mean by ‘soul’ and in particular an unease with a dualistic view of being human. That is our soul being our spiritual life which leaves our physical life in death. This unease comes from the observation that the history of Christian theology has had times been very negative towards body and the whole business of spirit is good physical is bad, spirit is eternal, physical is finite comes out of this. Modern theology seeks to have a far more holistic view of our humanness and as such is uneasy with a split between our physicalness and our spirit.

5. And so, the model this report offers is to understand ‘soul’ as the ‘information bearing pattern’ of the body. And to quote directly: ‘Death dissolves the embodiment of that pattern but the person whose that pattern is, is ‘remembered’ by God, who in love holds that unique being in his care.’

6. So what this seems to be saying is that God knows us perfectly and loves us completely. When we come to an end in our dying that perfect memory of who we are is held within God’s eternal love. What life after death is about is the conviction that God promises a new act of creation. In that new act of creation that perfect memory of who we are is poured into new life.

7. This perhaps all feels incredibly technical, and for a moment I’m going to use an illustration which seems even more technical unless of cause you are one of the computer boffs amongst us. This understanding of life and death and life after death is to say that death involves our software being uploaded into God’s hard disc in order to be downloaded into the new hardware. The memory of who we are – our soul – is kept safe within God’s love in order to be used in a new act of creation.

8. We are going to turn to our reading in a minute or so, but first lets recap a little bit of what we as Christians believe about the whole business of the Jesus event and his dying and his rising and his appearing to the disciples in a new and often mysterious way. At the heart of our faith is the conviction that there is a loving God who in love brought our world and indeed the universe into being. At the heart of our faith is the conviction that God desires to be in a loving relationship with us and that the old testament records the history of a people whom God called to work with him to reveal his loving purposes for the world.

9. Christianity also believes that our sin, the gap between us and God, is so significant that not even God’s work through the history of the Jewish people had the power to break down the power of that sin and allow us to truly know and love and respond to God’s love as he would invite us to do. What did have the power to break through that sin was God not simply sending a message to us but coming to be the message for us in the life of Jesus. The cost to God of coming amongst us in Jesus was to be rejection and death but the love God has for us is so immense that God is willing to sacrificially bear that cost and so to the world Jesus enters and to the cross Jesus goes.

10. And perhaps the most central tenant of our Christian faith is that God’s capacity to love and draw all into new life is not even stopped by rejection and death and so the resurrected life of Jesus bursts out of the tomb. That resurrection of Jesus is the foretaste or the model of God’s love for us not being defeated by our death, but instead drawing all that we are into God’s perfect eternity. Our hope is in the promise throughout the Bible that God will make a new act of creation, which we generally express with the word ‘heaven’ and God will pour our ‘soul’ our ‘information bearing pattern’ into that new act of creation.


11. It’s now to our reading from the account of the walk to Emmaus that I want to turn to think a bit more about because it helps us to think about what does it mean for the perfect memory of who we are to be poured into the new creation. What the road to Emmaus shows us is that the business of resurrection of new creation does not leave us the same, it is something new. The disciples did not recognise their close friend and master until the reality of who he is became clear in the taking and breaking of bread and the taking and pouring of wine. And yet in the newness there is also a continuation, when Jesus took bread there was recognition. This suggests the resurrection is not a bland merging of all God’s memory but the distinctive use of the distinctive memory of who we are to create us anew to live anew. This understanding of life and death and life after death is to say that death involves our software (who we are) being uploaded into God’s hard disc (eternal memory) in order to be downloaded into the new hardware (recreated body or resurrected body in the new creation.)

12. Our focus this morning has been to concentrate on life after death and we have spent some time thinking of what we understand by ‘soul’. However, when we reflect in this area we do also consider how we understand the business of hell and so as a short aside we enter into some brief reflections on hell. The reality of heaven is also the reality of human freedom for to enter heaven a choice must be made to respond and receive the grace of God in offering us the gift of life within the eternal and perfect love of God.

13. One of the notable changes in Christian belief over the last two centuries has been away from the use of hell fire and eternal torment and punishment to frighten men and women into belief. Nevertheless heaven and hell are the ultimate affirmations of human freedom. Hell is not eternal torment but it is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and so absolutely that the only ending is total non being for those who ultimately choose against the only source of life. Whether there will be any who do so choose only God knows.

14. A charge often leveled at Christians is that our faith is a crutch, we can’t cope with our mortality and so we need religion to provide us with eternal life. Of all the anti Christian claims which can be repudiated this must be the most straight forward one. If we believe in life after death it has huge consequences for us. It means we will be accountable to God for what we have done – it makes our moral and spiritual choices desperately serious. It means we have to consider what it means to be reconciled to all people within God’s love including of cause the people with whom we have deeply damaged relationships. I am not always sure exactly what I understand as life after death but I am absolutely convinced that the belief in life after death places demands, challenges and responsibilities on me that I just would not have without it. Life after death is hardly a crutch, it can be the most challenging and demanding conviction to mould and form how we choose to enter into our current living.

15. The question: ‘Is there life after death?’ has many meanings and many answers. It touches on life for those who live on after someone they love has died. It touches on the life of those who have died living on in our hearts and minds and memories. And it speaks about belief in God knowing us and loving us and inviting us, through Christ, into reconciliation with god and with all creation. That reconciliation doesn’t begin with our death, it begins with our living, now, amen.