That there is a life beyond death: heaven and stream

Note from the publisher: This is the script of a Radio 4 program on Saturday, April 13th Bundle'S Series of Essays, although the month of June for the 1,700th anniversary of Nicaea Council.

I I love this epitaph, which was found on a grave in the Bushey Kirchhof, Hertfordshire. It comes from before 1860 and was quoted in a letter to the Viewers on September 2, 1922.

Here is a poor woman who was always tired / because she lived in a place where help was not set. / Her last words were on earth: “Dear friends, I go / where the washing does not do or sweep or sew, / and everything that exactly is there are exactly to my wishes, / because where they don't eat, there is no washing of dishes. / Mourn for me now, don't mourn for me. / I will not do anything forever.

It is moving, warm and funny. Life beyond death conjures up various ideas, but how does the Bible show the “life of the world”? In the revelation, the last book, we see a kaleidoscope with encouragement of activities.

There is no suffering, death and evil. There is joy in the presence of God and Jesus Christ, profound adoration, reunited God's people, a variety of cultures and celebrations at a wedding party.

This festive issue is found with passages in the Hebrew writings and in the Gospels. In Isaiah 26 prophecies Isaiah:

On this mountain, the lord of the hosts will prepare a banquet with a rich tariff for all peoples, a banquet with wines that is well mature. He will devour death forever.

In the parables of Jesus, the parties are the key to participating in the Kingdom of God and in the future. In Lukas 13 he explains:

From the east and west, from north and south, people will come and take their places in the banquet in the kingdom of God.

He calls the leaders of his own people into question and promises an astonishing promise of non -Jews, the non -Jews that are accepted at the family table of God. They have set places for them, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as Matthew's version makes clear.

From 1985 to 1991 my wife Alison and I and our family lived at the St. Andrew's College in Kabare at the foot of Mount Kenya. In the chapel, the right Mahogany door, carved by a friend, Benson Ndaka, has a relief that represents this verse in Lukas of the messianic festival. The left door of Benson explains the feeding of the 5,000, the miracle that is looking forward to the last sacrament. His story even uses the same words from “taking”, “blessing”, “breaking” and “give”.

I lively remember our Thursday evening services of the Holy Community in this chapel, which faces Mount Kenya. Past, present and future combined at the traditional place of Kikuyu attachment with carvings and context -related liturgy. Then closed a procession with dance, song and ululations with a festival in the dining room. A taste of the sky here on earth!

When I served as Bishop of Sherborne in Dorset, I was asked to take a primary school assembly in a village shortly after a school boy died in a car accident. During the question and answer session, a girl asked me: “Why do we have to die?”

Not an easy question. I held a moment and then suggested that we needed new bodies to live in a new place with God in heaven. These bodies we have now do not work in heaven. And to get new bodies, we have to die.

I asked her if a fish from water could live in the air. “No,” came the answer. And what about us? Can we live and inhale water for hours without special equipment? 'NO'. Every climate needs its own, certain body. The death and increase of a new body are therefore gladly equipped to change a change in climate.

In 2018 my cousin Andrew died of a tumor. I visited him in a hospice in Essex, which was full of peace. He asked me what I felt while dying and what happens afterwards. I thought a bit and then mentioned that might die and born.

A baby is hidden in the womb and is completely based on the mother for life support. It has no idea about the monsterality and diversity of real life because it is restricted. Then the baby is born by a narrow space after a traumatic experience. A new system for purchasing oxygen begins immediately. The complicated process that comes through the mother's placenta gives Air directly into the babies' lungs.

I then informed my idea that after our death it would go into a narrow corridor – but we are not alone. We are accompanied by this corridor by Christ. He knows us and comes up to us. He goes with us and then introduces us to our homeland of the eternal joy of God and in God's surprising people. As with the parables of Jesus, there are probably many surprises.

Andrew asked me to mention these ideas at his funeral so that others could also be comforted. I said I would do it and I did it.

With funerals, I sometimes share my poem “by the water of the delivery”. I wrote this when I thought about the topic of water in the Bible – from Genesis to Revelation – and a woman who was born.

Through breathing and brood, through breaking and births, through department and loss, by stirring and calming: by living, by standing, refreshing, refreshment, by drowning, immersing, raising, raising, you, Lord, deliver to us.

The last clause of the Nicene Creed is: “I'm looking for the resurrection of the dead and the coming life of the world.” But when do Christians believe that we will receive our resurrection bodies? When do we die? Or on the last day when God concludes the story and makes the whole creation new? Some verses in the New Testament imply the former and others the latter. How do we reconcile you?

The following is my attempt. Time is only part of this world and not to the next. When we die, we pass outside The dimension of time. So we get our resurrection bodies in the sparkling eye. From the perspective of a dying person, there is no gap between death and the last day of the universe. But from the perspective of those who mourn, there is a time gap.

Imagine your friend dies tonight and the end of the world in ten years. She would come outside of time, and as far as she dies, it will be the same for her as at the moment the universe is being re -enacted. For them who stay and mourn, there would be a ten -year -old gap between the death of her friend and the end of the universe. From the perspective of the person who dies, the resurrection is immediately.

I recently enjoyed reading James Runcies novel about Johann Sebastian Bach. The great passion. During this time we interwoven clips from the credo of Bach's Bminor mass with meditations over the Nicene Creed, and we will hear two more at the end of this program. Runcies book is imaginative on composing Bach's other famous work, the passion of Saint Matthew. After his premiere, Bach is exhausted and says:

All I have done is to try to see this music that we could hear in heaven one day. Heavenly music – the ultimate harmony, played with such a variation that it has no end.

After his funeral, Catharina, one of Bach's daughters, speaks about with the narrator Stefan The art of the fugue.

He wrote a fugue based on the initials of his own name, but the notes break off abruptly as if someone suddenly stopped in the middle of one sentence and do not remember what he will say next. But I wonder if it might be deliberately a challenge for someone who reads it to end it himself. “You know the rest. You don't need me.”

I think Catharina has a point. Bach's health failed when he prepared the art of the fugue for the publication.

In 2009 I wrote a poem a few months before my consecration during a quiet day in the Westminster Abbey, which is mentioned, which is mentioned The art of the joint. It bears the title “Finished in the new creation” and shows Bach as well as the poet Coleridge and the painter Turner, who left all unfinished works.

Bach was fascinated by both mathematics and music, as Ruth Tatlow showed in her bookBachs pay: compositional shares and meaning. In an earlier version of his credo, he inserted a new 49 -bar choir into incarnation. This had the effect that the music that illustrates the crucifixion fell exactly halfway the credo. As a good Lutheran, he literally and mathematically made the cross.

Bach devoted the art of the fugue to the Mathematical Institute of Leipzig, where he worked in the St. Thomas Church, and added his usual SGD at the head of the manuscript. These are the initials of his favorite, modest, Latin sentence, Soli deo gloria – “Glory to God alone”.

Here is the verse about Bach in my poem and the last verse:

The flowering hand of Bach, which woves the sum of his works, leaves his art of the fugue, which is interrupted exclusively by the glory of God. Everyone is ready, completed, perfected, in the new creation of God.

The Latin original of the English, 'I'm looking for' expect. At the end of the credo is the entire sentence “And I'm looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the coming world?” There are two intensely contrasting sections of religious emotions. The first marked with the Italian term adagio – which means “to be played slowly” – and the second marked, Vivace – Which means that it should be “lively and lively”.

Christoph Wolff, a leading Bach scholar, wrote the following in the multi-authored book. Exploration of Bach's B minor fair:

The extremely expressive five -part A cappella Setting the adagioAccompanied only by the Gloabass, is full of unprecedented chromatic and engarmic devices, which very moving human suffering, misery and pain and ultimately lead to death. It is the “I'm looking for”, the anxious and worried waiting, the stream underlines in the adagio.

The adagio, ET expected resurrectionem mortuorum Has fascinating, expanded, groping harmonies, expresses our time of longing and wait. It is almost as if this music – sometimes agonizing – has an impact on our Lent. Bach was almost death when he completed this masterpiece. His eyesight failed how his handwriting can be seen on the original manuscript of the later sections.

And then with that Vivace, Surprisingly, Bach breaks his reference to the resurrection with his full orchestra, led by trumpets and pacepani. With a bound one, he portrays his exuberant, ebull have been boundless. Yes. Due to the resurrection of Christ there is a resurrection of the dead. Yes. There is life in the world because we are connected to Christ and meet and accompany ourselves and accompany ourselves.

So we end our six -part series for the Nicene Creed with Bach's overwhelming expression of God's eternal joy. Let us listen, believe and connect the festival on the eve of the palm Sunday.