November is a month for remembering, particularly the dead. It starts with the two Christian festivals of All Saints and All Souls and then moves to Remembrance Sunday. Somewhere in the mix is All Hallow’s Eve, “Halloween”, with alleged links to memories of a pagan past. In our society today we largely try and avoid thinking about death; we prefer to speak of people “passing away”. But we cannot avoid it; it will happen to me, it will happen, dear reader, to you. November can remind us of our mortality. So what, if anything happens then?
I do not really know what happens to us when we die, at least not in any detail. For much of Old Testament times there was no clear concept of any kind of worthwhile afterlife; just vague references to a place of shadows called Sheol. By the time of Jesus, there was a much stronger belief that the dead would rise again; as a Christian I believe this is what Jesus showed. But Jesus himself was vague on the details, as are most New Testament writers. I do not need to know the details of what happens, how it happens, what it means to have a “resurrection body”. All I need to know are the words I proclaim at every funeral; Jesus’s declaration that he is the resurrection and the life, St Paul’s insight that nothing, not even death, can cut us off from the love of God. As a recently deceased theologian said, when asked about what happens when we die; “The God of life will prevail”. There is nothing else I need to know.
Rev David Poyner