Eternity in Each Present Moment

A sermon for the funeral of Bob Gardiner

14 June 2024

 

Romans 8.38-39
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 
It is a fearful thing to be asked to preach
            at a funeral service where the set reading for the congregation
            includes Paul Tillich’s ‘Sermon on Time’;
but this is the task Bob, in his wisdom, has set for me,
            so let’s see how we get on.
 
I’d like to begin with a short poem,
            which I wrote for Advent a few years ago.
I hope it captures some of the thinking in Tillich’s sermon,
            whilst raising the question of what eternity might mean
            to us mere mortals, contemplating the fleeting frailty of our human existence.
 
A poem for Advent:
 

Divine Time is not a line,

from Earth to Heaven,

from Hell to redemption,

from here to there.

 

Divine Time is a circle;

a spiral of turning.

 

As the seasons turn the year,

the hands of Divine Time

proscribe their journey

from start to start,

and from end to end.

 

Now is the start,

and now is the end.

 

'Eternity in each present moment'.

 
Well, the Christian doctrine of resurrection is not, contrary to popular opinion,
            all about the afterlife;
and neither can 'eternal life' simply be reduced
            to ‘pie in the sky when you die’.
 
Rather, they are about living the eternal value of each day,
            so that all that is good in life is not lost.
 
Eternal life, as my poem puts it,
            is ‘eternity in each present moment’.
 
William Blake captures this same insight
            in his poem Auguries of Innocence, in which he invites us…
 

To see a World in a grain of sand,

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.

 
Scripture tells us that God is love, and that God is eternal,
            and at our life’s conclusion all that we have ever been,
                        from young child, through strong adulthood,
                        to infirmity and helplessness,
            all this is swept up within the love of God
                        and held in God’s eternal loving embrace.
 
This is the Christian perspective on eternal life,
            and it is Christ’s gift in the face of death.
 
It’s not always recognised these days
            that death is at the heart of the Christian faith.
 
Yet in any church, symbols of death are all around:
            From the cross on the wall,
                        to the bread and wine of the Eucharist,
            bodies break, blood is spilled,
                        and mortal life comes to its end.
 
However, Christians tend to devote far more time focussing on life in all its fullness,
            than we do confronting the reality of death.
 
And in this, of course, we mirror the world around us,
            which consigns death to the specialists,
            and dangles the goal of eternal youth before us all.
 
As seventy becomes the new fifty,
            we pursue the dream of health and activity into old age,
            and deny to ourselves the truth of our own mortality.
 
It was once the case, before modern medical advances,
            that death was a regular reality for all people.
 
Death occurred primarily in the home,
            and it was not unusual
            to sit with the body of a family member who had died.
 
But these days, we confine death to the hospitals,
            and many of us have never been with a dead body.
 
Within the medical profession, death has become the great enemy,
            to be avoided at all costs.
 
And we focus our energies on keeping people alive,
            even sometimes beyond the point
            where death would be the more appropriate gift to offer.
 
But Christianity, with death at the heart of its faith,
            brings a different perspective on the end of life,
            which stands as a prophetic witness to the world.
 
And that perspective is this:
            Death is no longer the mortal enemy of humankind.
            Death’s power over people is broken,
                        because in Christ we find the hope of resurrection;
                        in Christ we find the promise and hope of eternal life.
 
It’s important here
            that we don’t confuse ‘eternal life’ with ‘living forever’,
they aren’t the same thing at all.
 
‘Eternal life’ is a quality of life that endures beyond the grave,
            and it comes as the gift of God, given through Christ Jesus.
 
Whereas ‘Living forever’ is simply an attempt to deny the mortality of humanity,
            and is always ultimately going to founder in the face of death.
 
Even Lazarus, called forth from his tomb, would die again. (cf. John 21.21-24)
 
So what is death? And what is life?
            What, if anything, is the purpose of life?
            What, if anything, is the meaning of death?
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
            after hearing the news that his wife has died,
captures the existential question in beautiful poetry:
 

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Macbeth Act 5, scene 5

 
In his despair, Macbeth strikes right at the heart
            of the fundamental question of life:
What does it count for?
            What is it good for?
                        What, if anything, is its value?
Is it all just destined for destruction?
 
Such thoughts were certainly on the mind
            of the criminal who found himself being tortured and executed
                        next to Jesus of Nazareth.
 
We don’t know his crime,
            but Rome had deemed that he should die before his time.
In contrast to those standing around the cross watching on,
            and in contrast to the occupant of the third cross,
this criminal still sought meaning to his life even as it ended:
            ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘remember me when you come into your kingdom’ (Luke 23.42).
 
The hope expressed here was that one day,
            at some future point
                        when wrongs are righted and balances balanced,
            there might be a place for this man
                        in Jesus’ messianic kingdom.
 
In his reply, Jesus gave the criminal on the cross
            far more than he was expecting:
‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus said, ‘today you will be with me in Paradise.’ (Luke 23.43).
 
The criminal’s hope for participation in a future kingdom
            became the promise of a present paradise.
 
This word paradise derives from the Persian word for a walled garden,
            and Jesus’ use of it here brings to mind the garden of God,
            an image familiar to us from the story of the garden of Eden (Gen. 2.8).
 
But the divine garden is more than a place now lost,
            it is a way of life, and a state of soul.
 
The paradise into which Jesus invites the criminal
            is the eternal garden
which is open to all those who seek it,
            as the curse of Eden (Gen. 3.23-24) is reversed
                        and the unrighteous find life everlasting within God’s garden
                        (Rev. 2.7, 21.25-22.2).
 
This criminal’s life was not, it seems, wasted;
            and neither, therefore, are ours.
 
He received forgiveness
            and his life was found to have eternal value.
 
He entered into eternal life
            through his encounter with the crucified messiah.
 
This idea that life may have some eternal quality to it,
            that it may be more than ‘a walking shadow’ that leaves no trace,
is a key theme within the biblical witness.
 
But the concept of an ‘afterlife’
            only develops fairly late within this tradition.
 
In the Old Testament, divine reward and punishment
            are predominantly depicted as taking place within this world,
                        with faithfulness to God bringing blessing,
                        and disobedience, misfortune.
 
However, there are occasional glimpses
            of an emerging belief that,
                        whilst at death the body returns to dust,
            the spirit of life returns to the God who gave it (Ecc. 12.7).
 
So Enoch and Elijah are said to find a place in the heavenly realms
            after their earthly lives have finished (Gen. 5.24; 2 Kgs 2.1-18).
 
And the Psalms provide an even clearer basis
            for a Jewish hope in an afterlife
                        (Pss. 1.3; 16.10-11; 49.15; 73.24; 139.24),
while Job states clearly his belief
            that in his flesh he shall see God
            even after the destruction of his body (Job 19.25-27).
 
However, it is within the apocalyptic tradition
            that a view starts to emerge of the afterlife
                        as a place of reward and judgment,
            with those who have been faithful in this life,
                        but who have experienced nothing but trials and persecutions,
            starting to look to eternity
                        as the place where justice and vindication might be found
                        (Dan. 12.2-3).
 
In the New Testament,
            eternal life as articulated by Jesus
                        is less about a hope for the future,
            and more about present lived reality for those who are in Christ.
 
Life eternal, for Jesus, is life lived in all its fullness,
            it is life freed from slavish devotion
                        to those powers and principalities
            that distort and demean God’s image in each created being.
 
So Jesus promises ‘eternal life’ to anyone who ‘believes’ (Jn. 6.47),
            and in the Lazarus story he declares himself
                        ‘the resurrection and the life’ (Jn. 11.23-24). 
 
Paul emphasises the immediate implications
            of having been united with Christ
                        in his death and resurrection (Rom. 6.5),
            and believes that once he ‘departs’
                        he will be ‘with Christ’ (Phil. 1.21-24).
 
The dawning eternal kingdom of God
            into which Christian believers are invited,
            and for which they are asked to pray (Matt. 6.10),
becomes manifest in the lives of those who live it.
 
But it is again the apocalyptic tradition
            that gives us the most compelling images
            of the afterlife in the New Testament,
with the book of Revelation portraying the ultimate destiny of creation
            as a return to the garden of God,
            God's paradise in the midst of the eternal city (Rev. 22.1-6).
 
Part of this recovery of that which was lost at Eden
            is the stripping away from creation
                        of all that has no eternal value,
            with God’s ultimate judgment on evil and all its works
                        emerging as a key theme.
 
The concept of ‘hell’ in the New Testament
            is most often expressed in terms of the valley of gehenna,
a burning rubbish dump outside the walls of Jerusalem,
            where the worthless refuse of the city was consigned to the flames
            (Matt. 5.22-30; 10.28; 18.9; 23.15, 33; Mar. 9.43-47; Lk. 12.5; Jam. 3.6).
 
All human activities which displace God from the centre of creation
            are shown to be futile
as God’s eternity comes into being
            in the midst of those communities that name Jesus as Lord.
 
Ultimately even death itself
            is consigned to the flames of destruction (Rev. 20.14).
 
So the witness of the New Testament
            is that for those who are ‘in Christ’,
                        life eternal begins here-and-now.
 
The goodness, mercy and forgiveness offered and received today
            are eternity in the present moment,
as the world is re-created
            through the faithful witness of those
                        who have been united with Christ
            in his death and resurrection.
 
Salvation is not about where the soul goes after death,
            neither is resurrection about what happens to the body
                        after it stops breathing.

Eternal life is not the spiritual equivalent

    of a final salary pension scheme,

paying out on death depending on the amount put in over a lifetime.
 
According to Paul in Romans 8,
            salvation and resurrection in Christ
                        are about the renewal of all creation
                        through the gift of new life by the Spirit:
He says, ‘If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin,
            the Spirit is life because of righteousness’ (Rom. 8:10).
 
By this understanding, the question ‘where do we go when we die?’
            becomes redundant,
because death has no power or meaning
            for those who are ‘in Christ’.
 
As Paul again puts it: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation
            for those who are in Christ Jesus’
because nothing, ‘neither death, nor life,
            nor angels, nor rulers,
                        nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
            nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us
            from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8.1, 38-39).
 
Our eternal lives
            are inextricably interwoven with the physicality of creation,
            and eternally interwoven with the reality of God.
 
I do not accept that our souls are trapped in this vale of tears,
            waiting to shuffle off this mortal coil
            as we make our way to somewhere better.
 
Rather, I believe that each moment of our lives carries eternal value,
            that each second that we live is precious to the God who is beyond time.
 
If Christ is raised, then Christ is alive to all people, in all places, at all times,
            and therefore, our whole lives, from birth to death,
            are held forever within God’s eternal love.
 
I believe that God embraces the creativity of our lives,
            gathering into eternity everything we are, everything we do,
            everyone we love, every thought we have.
 
All of us - our bodies, our actions, our prayers, our relationships,
            all these are part of who we are in God’s undying care.
 
So it’s not a question of where we go when we die,
            rather, it’s a deep conviction of God’s eternal love
            which is real for us in the here-and-now.
 
In opposition to Plato,
            this world is not something to escape,
            but a reality to embrace in all its fulness.
 
All that ever is, is contained within God’s love,
            all that exists is redeemed by the cross of Christ,
every act of evil is judged, found wanting, and banished,
            and every act of love is valued and held eternally.
This is resurrection.
 
When we pray, ‘your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.’
            we are expressing our hope, the hope given to us by Christ,
            that heaven comes to us on earth, not that we go to heaven.
 
Heaven is the unseen dimension of Creation where God’s will resides,
            it is the antithesis of Plato’s spiritual realm which is beyond creation.
 
And when we pray for God’s will to be done,
            we are praying for heaven to merge with earth and bring it to fulfilment,
            and we are holding before God the whole of the created order.
 
In a world of environmental catastrophe and climate crisis,
            we cannot afford the luxury of escapist theologies
            which devalue the earth in favour of a heavenly home.
 
This is our home, it was Bob’s home,
            and it is the stage on which our shared eternity is shaped.
And all of this world, all of us, each part of us,
            is loved by God and is part of God eternally.
 
This is resurrection, this is the hope of eternity,
            and it is our hope for the here-and-now.
 
One final poem for you, this time a verse from a hymn
            written by Colin Gibson:
 
Nothing is lost on the breath of God,
nothing is lost forever;
God's breath is love, and that love will remain,
holding the world forever.
No feather too light, no hair too fine,
no flower too brief in its glory,
no drop in the ocean, no dust in the air,
but is counted and told in God's story.