Comment by Harborough churches: Christianity offers us solid hope in the face of death

“I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” So joked the actor and director Woody Allen. We don’t tend to talk about death. But most of us will have thought about it at some point.

For atheists, death is the absolute end. Our genes may have been passed on to future generations, but when we die we cease to exist. As Dylan Thomas wrote: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Agnostics are less certain. Sir Terry Wogan said it was a relief to finally lose his faith when he was 17 after a terrible experience at a religious school. Yet, shortly before he died he said to his long-standing friend and Roman Catholic Priest, Father Brian D’Arcy,

“Everything’s going to be all right, old boy. You might want to say a few prayers if you have any influence up there, if there is anyone up there.”

Many people feel like that. They simply do not know whether there is a God, or anything beyond death. But they hope that there is an afterlife. By contrast, Christianity offers us solid hope in the face of death - the hope of one day receiving new bodies.

This is what Paul wrote to Christians in ancient Corinth, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’.”

The Christian hope of life after death is far more than just the hope of going to heaven. The New York Times’ bestselling author Timothy Keller says, “The idea of heaven can be a consolation for suffering, a compensation for the life we have lost. But resurrection is not just consolation – it is restoration. We get it all back – the love, the loved ones, the goods, the beauties of this life – but in new, unimaginable degrees of glory and joy and strength. It is a reversal of the seeming irreversibility of loss…”

The Christian hope of the resurrection of the body rests firmly on Jesus’ resurrection that first Easter. It means that the Christian hope of eternal life is not just wishful thinking. It is based on historical events.

If it happened, it means Jesus offers us the greatest hope we could ever have.

Why not investigate the evidence for yourself this Easter? If it’s not true, you have lost nothing. But if it is true, you have gained everything.

Stuart Allen is a Pastor at Christchurch Harborough