Rest in peace and rise in glory

Based on 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

 

On Thursday evening, I received a message of the kind nobody wants to receive. I learned my friend Roger had had a fall several weeks earlier that had resulted in what was at first a slight brain bleed. He had seemed to be recovering. But on Thursday morning, things took a turn for the worse, and he ended up in ICU. I was informed he was on life support, which was going to be switched off, probably the following evening.

 

I visited Roger after work on Friday and found him in a coma, hooked up to an impressive array of apparatus that looked like it belonged in in a spaceship. I asked one of the nurses whether Roger was really alive, and she assured me he was. His heart was beating on its own, and he was breathing of his own accord; the equipment was only assisting him. But when it was removed, he would not be able to sustain himself indefinitely.

 

I have always found it uncomfortable to be with people who are dying. It is very surreal to be with those who do not have a huge amount of time left. They are still with us, while we are emotionally and spiritually preparing ourselves for the reality they will not be for too much longer. There is an exaggerated sense of normality, coupled with the unspoken realisation that there is about to be a major upheaval. It can be very unsettling.

 

I remember the final times I spent with my father, who died 31 years. I was frustrated by not knowing what to say to him. Now of course I know that it didn’t really matter. The important thing was being there. So, I spent about three hours with Roger on Friday night, not saying very much, but saying enough to let him know I was there. And yesterday morning, I woke up to find a message from his nephew informing me he had left this life.

 

Roger was a very memorable individual. Sadly, the first thing most people noticed when they met him was his disability. He had been severely affected by a debilitating form of arthritis since he was young, and any movement was difficult and painful. But he never let it stop him from living life to the best he could. In the words of our mutual friend Richard:

 

Roger's beautiful mind defied the limits of his body. Deeply engaged with the world, he held well-informed opinions on any topic from architecture to accounting, politics to ethics - and he brought clarity and insight to any discussion we ever had. He lived beyond the physical challenges he faced, carrying them with quiet dignity and refusing to let them define him.¹

 

As I find is inevitable when I am with someone who is dying, I was initially reminded of my own mortality, but then my thoughts turned to the hope I hold in the resurrection to the life to come and it comforted me to know that Roger, who was a man of faith, shared this hope.

 

Today’s Epistle reading from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, speaks of resurrection, which is a major theme in his writings. Our reading is an excerpt from Chapter 15 of this book, and I believe this chapter is quite possibly the pièce de résistance of Pauline theology. To paraphrase today’s reading if the Christ is risen, there must surely be resurrection of the dead as a natural consequence. If there is no resurrection of the dead, the apostles are lying when they say Christ is risen, which the most fundamental tenet of the Christian faith, and therefore the faith of everyone who follows the Christ is in vain. St Paul assures us this is not so.

 

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.²

 

A question I am sometimes asked is how can I believe in something like resurrection when I am supposedly a rational person who champions science. And that is not only a valid question, it is one I should have no qualms about answering if I am to be what I claim to be. I have always been certain that our existence does not end with physical death, so I have no difficulty accepting that after we die, we continue to exist in a different form. But the key phrase here is different form.

 

The first encounters people have with the risen Christ in the resurrection accounts in the Gospels make it clear his body has changed from what it used to be like. Some people do not recognise Jesus at first and he suddenly appears and disappears at times. Even in locked rooms.

 

St Paul writes that the resurrection bodies are different from physical bodies, and how something physical is replaced with something spiritual.

 

What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ⁴⁴It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.³

 

Another qualm sceptics sometimes have is what or where this non-physical but spiritual place is. I simply accept this is beyond my understanding in this life, but I will offer this thought. We can only physically experience three dimensions. But physics has proposed the existence of up to 26 dimensions, most of which we cannot directly perceive.  I am not to go as far as saying the resurrection is to any of these higher dimensions theorised in physics. But I will say that if science can propose the existence of higher dimensions we cannot currently experience, then it is not unreasonable to say there is a spiritual realm that is separate from our physical reality.

 

St Paul offers a dazzling insight to what happens when the resurrection of the dead occurs:

 

50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, ⁵²in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
⁵⁵ ‘Where, O death, is your victory?
   Where, O death, is your sting?’
⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.⁴

 

As I read this text, I thought of Roger, now free from the shackles of his pain and his disability, which will no longer constrain him. And our physical limitations will also become a thing of the past when our perishable bodies put on imperishability.

 

Eternal rest, grant unto him O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

 

Darryl Ward
16 February 2025

 

 

¹           Richard Simpson, 14 February 2025

²           1 Corinthians 15:20

³           1 Corinthians 15:42b-44

⁴           1 Corinthians 15:50-57

 

All Bible references are from the New Revised Standard Version unless stated otherwise.