DOUBLE EXPOSURE
Stories
Homeward Bound
Messages about Life after Death
One of the most lasting images in the New Testament is one from Saint Paul: O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?
The early Christians asserted that Jesus has taken the sting out of death by demonstrating that it is but a doorway into another realm.
Have you ever been badly stung? I have - twice. And on both occasions I recognized the importance of removing the pain and being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, just like the Bible says.
The earliest memory from my childhood is when I was four years old. My father owned a little hardware store in McColl, South Carolina. He employed a handyman named Buster. Old Buster could do just about anything and would in order to earn a living. On Sunday afternoons when the store was closed, Buster would take care of the lawn and shrubbery at our house. One Sunday, Buster's assigned task was to saw off the dead limb from a huge bush by the side porch. It was a dreadfully hot day and I was barefooted and without a shirt. No one else was in the yard, just old Buster and me. I was slurping on a popsicle and Buster was sawing the limb. Now, Buster and I used to talk a lot. So we were talking when the limb finally cracked off. As that limb cracked, another sound filled the air. It sounded like a huge buzz. Buster screamed, turned around and ran right over me. I can still, almost forty years later, visualize that handsaw hitting me right in the nose. The hornets stung me all over my face and upper body. I vividly remember what happened next: I never did cry and as soon as Buster screamed, the whole neighborhood was mobilized. My mother had me in her arms and was rubbing butter and ointment over the stings. Neighbors came dashing over with ice, and the physician from next door, who was cutting his grass, came over in a flash. Actually it was comforting to have the sting removed and to be surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
The second time I was stung things were quite different. It was 20 years later and I had become "citified." I had lived in Boston for three years in a dormitory in an area with 30,000 people per square mile. That summer I accepted a job in a huge First Baptist Church in South Carolina as a youth director. My first week in town I dreamed up what I thought was a good project. Many years previously the church had erected a sign at each of the six main highways leading into the city. The signs simply read "The First Baptist Church welcomes you." Underneath the welcome were printed the address of the church and the hour of worship. The time and weather had taken their toll on the signs. The paint was peeling off and the general appearance had deteriorated. It was an obvious project - to repaint the signs. So one Saturday morning we set out to scrape the flaking paint with wire brushes. The first sign was overrun with bushes. So I went in with a little axe and started hacking away. Very soon afterwards, I heard and saw what old Buster had heard and seen. Those hornets really stung me.
I wrapped up my hands and face in paper towels and drove as fast as I could to a physicians office. He was at Myrtle Beach for the weekend, but the secretaries directed me to a clinic where I could be seen. When I got to the clinic there were at least 30 people in the huge waiting room. I did not know a soul. My name got at the bottom of the list. For an hour and twenty minutes I sat there by myself among strangers. Then the nurse took my name in and two doctors came rushing out. When they found I had been there that long, they said, "Go on home. If you had been allergic you would have passed out by now."
It really makes a difference when the sting isn't taken out and you can't see the familiar cloud of witnesses.
The book of Hebrews poignantly suggests that most humans live their whole lives in bondage to the fear of the sting of death. In fact, the Apostle Paul states that "the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26)." Death is the ultimate sting. It is the final meeting toward which our lives move. Saint Augustine says in one of his sermons, as a physician leans over the cot of a sick man and pronounces gravely, "He will die, he shall not get over this," so one might look into a crib on the first day of a baby's life and say, "She will die, she will not get over this."47
Life is terminal. There is a sting to it. Everyday - despite the growing of the grass, the chatter of the animals, the ecstasies of the moment, the plaques on the wall in our den, and the eternal movement of the universe - is a step closer to this final sting. As Will Willimon says, "Whoever doesn't know this knows nothing."48
One of the deepest problems in our day is perhaps the reality that our society has put the sting back in death and tried to remove the cloud of witnesses. There have been healthier times when society did not go to such great lengths to keep death out of sight and out of mind. The sting of death was not as great because it was an experience lived with each day. The burial ground surrounded the church which itself stood in the center of the community. It was impossible to avoid the cemetery, the church, and the importance of the cloud of witnesses gone before us. Moreover, a person was buried from the church, the same place where that person was baptized and married and sat with the children and friends on Sunday mornings. Today we hide our burial grounds and sometimes even our churches on the outskirts of town where we rarely have to see them. And the complexities of our schedules often mean we want to be associated with a good church but not deeply involved in one. Sometimes it appears that the sting is back and the cloud of witnesses is gone.
Wouldn't it be life-changing if we could have the sting of death removed and begin to see the cloud of witnesses again? I can think of no transformation that would have greater impact on our daily lives than having our negative feelings about death removed - to learn again that we have been mistaken in our fears.
The early Christians realized there is no sting in death for those who know Christ. They could sing and live in great joy because their eyes produced a brief but real "double exposure" so that right behind the wall of terror they could see the one who received them. The sting was removed from death for them because Jesus had demonstrated that it is but a doorway into another realm just as our birth from our mother's womb was but a doorway into this world.
In a prenatal state a baby is happy in its mother's womb. Tucked up under its mother's heart, it is already sensitive to love. Suppose we could get across to such an unborn fetus the realization, "You can't stay here forever. You're going to be born." That to the baby would be death. It would mean a change from security to insecurity, from a certainty to an uncertainty. You can imagine the thinking of the infant. "I want to stay here. I'm comfortable. I'm fed. I'm loved."
When our youngest son, Coulter, was born, I was privileged to be in the operating room. It didn't happen the way we planned. The local anesthesia didn't take, so after a few hours the general anesthesia was given and what was supposed to be gradual became very sudden. As soon as they took him out and sponged him off, they gave him to me to take to the weighing scales. I couldn't believe it. He was screaming and shaking all over. Every possible part of his body was shaking, trembling, and screaming. I don't know what I expected. But I was almost in a state of paralysis. The baby was shaking in fear with every fiber of its being. I said to the nurse walking in front of me, "This baby is terrified. He's scared to death." Without breaking her stride, she calmly declared, "They all are at first. They all are." And it's true. Going into a new world is frightening.
But as the cloud of witnesses places loving arms around the child, it begins to love life and to love this world. Time passes. And he becomes middle-aged. And perhaps, an old man. The thought comes to him, "I want to stay here. I'm fed. I'm loved. I don't want to go from certainty to uncertainty, from security to insecurity."
But this time there is a difference. Someone outside this womb of our existence has actually come into the world with us, died, gone beyond it and given us a glimpse of the final birth. There is no greater light breaking into the stream of human existence than that moment when Mary Magdalene runs to the disciples and exclaims, "I have seen the Lord. I have seen the Lord. He is risen, He is risen." Like the soft roll of a kettledrum announcing something important over the enveloped shades of fear, she walks toward her destiny. The violins and horns tune up and, finally, the full orchestration of the gospel hits the world like a triumphant climax heralding the start of a new day - "I have seen the Lord. He is risen." There is no sting. I have seen over to the other side. There is no sting in death.
From that experience lives were transformed. Like a prairie fire flying from heart to heart that message captured humankind. Up against the mighty empires came these simple Christian people saying that in the name of Jesus people could live. They were witnesses to it. They were the first cloud of witnesses to those who live on earth that the sting is removed, the last enemy destroyed, the greatest obstacle to a happy life removed.
The sting is gone. And a great cloud of witnesses surrounds us as we make our Christian pilgrimage. The whole creation before us is standing in the bleachers as we run our course in life. They are not just the ever-present saints who are still living and who rally around us to offer love and support. We are running our race in life before a cloud of witnesses far greater in number than we could ever imagine. Jesus looked out on a troubled world and said, "In my father's house are many rooms. Where I am you will all be. I do not leave you alone. We shall all feast together in the Kingdom anew."
Generation flows into generation. We are surrounded by witnesses. We can live with a quiet and simple confidence in the continuation of our soul after death. It is not something we have invented. It is true. It is real. The witnesses are there waiting for us and watching.
Life moves on. Buster is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. Every single one of the old neighbors is dead. And the old house and yard have long since been sold. Those things happen to us all. But what Mary Magdalene saw and heard is true. The Lord is alive. He has risen. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and death has lost its sting.
This assertion is so grand that we can cease the common practice of avoidance. Most of the time we are so involved in life that we would like to postpone as long as we can any consideration that ultimately every journey that has a begin-fling has an ending, a final destination.
There is a place on this earth where the journey of life is a very long one. The place is named Hunza Land. It's about as close as we humans can get to immortality. Hunza is a postage-stamp country in a high mountain valley bordered by Russia, China, and Pakistan. The valley floor is more than 10,000 feet above sea level and is reached by mountain passes that are as narrow as 18 inches. I don't even know if I could turn sideways and squeeze into Hunza. In this extreme isolation a way of life has developed in which many of the 25,000 inhabitants live to be as old as 120 years of age and a few live to be 140. They are free from diseases like hypertension and cancer. Hunza Land is quiet. People rise at 4 a.m. and go to bed at 9 p.m. They have no dogs or cats. There are no telephones or radios or televisions. There is no newspaper. No planes fly overhead and there are no automobiles.
Personally, I would rather live in High Point for 60 years than Hunza Land for 140 years. Our journey is shorter because we drive ourselves on an emotional plateau of stress that forces a lot of wear and tear on our bodies and minds. Yet, even in Hunza Land the doctor leans over men and woman, folds up his stethoscope and says quietly, "He's gone." So the question is not how long do we live, but "Gone where?" Where indeed has he gone? That's a big question; so big that it makes all other questions seem trivial and irrelevant. Gone where?
Finally, the people of the Bible encountered the Greeks. These Greeks believed that the essence of a person is the "soul" which exists separate from the body. The body dies, disintegrates, and is no longer recognizable. The soul continues to exist. The Apostle Paul then, could say, "We shall be raised" and "We shall be changed." Life begins and ends with God. If we have a death like Christ's, we will be united in a resurrection like his.
Essentially, that's the biblical message to us. It all hinges on our belief in Jesus' resurrection. But what can we know about the resurrection? There are a minimum of known historical facts about that event. We do have the disciples' eyewitness experiences of the risen Jesus. We know the tomb was empty. We know for a fact that the Jewish leaders could not disprove the message of the resurrection of Jesus, even though they had the power and the motivation to do so. We know for a fact that the church worshiped on Sunday.
But is all that our only strength? Mohammad spoke repeatedly about Jesus, too. The Koran accepts the Virgin Birth. Jesus' miracles are explicitly acknowledged there. Jesus, says the Koran, predicted the coming of Mohammed. In fact, it says that which descended upon the apostles at Pentecost was Mohammad.
At the most basic level, as my time runs out and I am powerless to stop the flow, I want to know, "Is. . . there any ... hope?" What is the compelling evidence that there is indeed life after death? The Old Testament vision does not comfort me. The disciples' eyewitness experiences of the risen Jesus are not conclusive. Buddha claimed repeated existences. Hinduism and Mohammadanism and Confucianism point to their heavens where life goes on in rebirths or with ancestors. The fact that the church worshiped on Sunday is scant evidence; the pagans also worshiped on Sunday and often in the same places.
What is the irrefutable evidence of life after death? I think it is this, is it not? There is no greater evidence than the transformation of the disciples from self-serving, disbelieiving,
pragmatic men and women into bold witnesses who were willing to die for their convictions.
Think of this and think very seriously. If we had in our history books a claim that in 1805 15 people in New Jersey saw a 100-foot high green fog with a spaceship in the middle of it, we'd have to wonder. No scientific evidence could back it up. History would laugh at it. The written records would certainly be disputed. Psychologists would have a category in which to place the mass hysteria.
But if the current chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (which Nicodemus was in his day), the mayor of High Point (which Barnabas was), the head of the Internal Revenue Service (which Matthew was), the Secretary of Defense (which Simon the Zealot was), Lee Iacocca (which Peter was), Cybil Sheppard and Jessica Lange (which Mary Magdalene was), the president of IBM (which Andrew was), and the sons of Aristotle Onassis (which the Zebedee boys, James and John, were) went to New Jersey tomorrow and came home, gave away every single dime, every single piece of property they had, walked this nation loving and helping everyone they saw with such power that it led to their executions before a firing squad, their being crucified upside down, their being hauled before a chopping block to be beheaded, and their being able to sing and laugh and forgive the people who did it because they said they saw a 100-foot green fog with a spaceship in it that guaranteed life after death; and if, 50 years from now, the head of the KGB in Russia, our arch enemy who had had Americans murdered (such as the Apostle Paul had done to the Christians), were suddenly to give up his post, walk the streets of American helping us debug every Embassy in Russia, be tortured 42 times for it, be thrown in prison in Siberia and as he lay dying in his cell, smile and say, "The 100-foot green fog with the spaceship in it gave me the transformation" - then, if all that happened, you and I would stand naked on the shore of death, with it howling in our face, and say, "No matter what may come, I can say with certainty that there is a 100-foot green fog with a spaceship in the middle." The irrefutable evidence for life after death is the transformation of self-serving, pragmatic people into bold witnesses who are willing to die for their convictions. And that is precisely what you and I have.
She was in her mid-80s. The pain was fresh and raw. Her malignancy was advanced. Her son called her on the phone. "Are you afraid?" he asked. "No," she said. "My mother went like this; my brother went like this; hundreds of thousands of people go like this each year. If they can do it, I guess I can." Sensing his fear, she said, "It's all right. I have more people over there waiting to say hello to me than I have here to say goodbye to."50
And that is precisely what you and I shall have, kin and friends living in a home, waiting for our arrival. As I quickly reach a point in life where I realize that the earth will go on without me, death begins to lose much of its sting. I no longer preach the message of hope and home just for the older folks in my congregation or for those of us who have lost loved ones. I no longer preach to provide assurance for some of the biomedical decision-making that appears to bless and curse modern technology. I preach the message of hope and home because I believe it to be true.
The early Christians asserted that Jesus has taken the sting out of death by demonstrating that it is but a doorway into another realm.
Have you ever been badly stung? I have - twice. And on both occasions I recognized the importance of removing the pain and being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, just like the Bible says.
The earliest memory from my childhood is when I was four years old. My father owned a little hardware store in McColl, South Carolina. He employed a handyman named Buster. Old Buster could do just about anything and would in order to earn a living. On Sunday afternoons when the store was closed, Buster would take care of the lawn and shrubbery at our house. One Sunday, Buster's assigned task was to saw off the dead limb from a huge bush by the side porch. It was a dreadfully hot day and I was barefooted and without a shirt. No one else was in the yard, just old Buster and me. I was slurping on a popsicle and Buster was sawing the limb. Now, Buster and I used to talk a lot. So we were talking when the limb finally cracked off. As that limb cracked, another sound filled the air. It sounded like a huge buzz. Buster screamed, turned around and ran right over me. I can still, almost forty years later, visualize that handsaw hitting me right in the nose. The hornets stung me all over my face and upper body. I vividly remember what happened next: I never did cry and as soon as Buster screamed, the whole neighborhood was mobilized. My mother had me in her arms and was rubbing butter and ointment over the stings. Neighbors came dashing over with ice, and the physician from next door, who was cutting his grass, came over in a flash. Actually it was comforting to have the sting removed and to be surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
The second time I was stung things were quite different. It was 20 years later and I had become "citified." I had lived in Boston for three years in a dormitory in an area with 30,000 people per square mile. That summer I accepted a job in a huge First Baptist Church in South Carolina as a youth director. My first week in town I dreamed up what I thought was a good project. Many years previously the church had erected a sign at each of the six main highways leading into the city. The signs simply read "The First Baptist Church welcomes you." Underneath the welcome were printed the address of the church and the hour of worship. The time and weather had taken their toll on the signs. The paint was peeling off and the general appearance had deteriorated. It was an obvious project - to repaint the signs. So one Saturday morning we set out to scrape the flaking paint with wire brushes. The first sign was overrun with bushes. So I went in with a little axe and started hacking away. Very soon afterwards, I heard and saw what old Buster had heard and seen. Those hornets really stung me.
I wrapped up my hands and face in paper towels and drove as fast as I could to a physicians office. He was at Myrtle Beach for the weekend, but the secretaries directed me to a clinic where I could be seen. When I got to the clinic there were at least 30 people in the huge waiting room. I did not know a soul. My name got at the bottom of the list. For an hour and twenty minutes I sat there by myself among strangers. Then the nurse took my name in and two doctors came rushing out. When they found I had been there that long, they said, "Go on home. If you had been allergic you would have passed out by now."
It really makes a difference when the sting isn't taken out and you can't see the familiar cloud of witnesses.
The book of Hebrews poignantly suggests that most humans live their whole lives in bondage to the fear of the sting of death. In fact, the Apostle Paul states that "the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26)." Death is the ultimate sting. It is the final meeting toward which our lives move. Saint Augustine says in one of his sermons, as a physician leans over the cot of a sick man and pronounces gravely, "He will die, he shall not get over this," so one might look into a crib on the first day of a baby's life and say, "She will die, she will not get over this."47
Life is terminal. There is a sting to it. Everyday - despite the growing of the grass, the chatter of the animals, the ecstasies of the moment, the plaques on the wall in our den, and the eternal movement of the universe - is a step closer to this final sting. As Will Willimon says, "Whoever doesn't know this knows nothing."48
One of the deepest problems in our day is perhaps the reality that our society has put the sting back in death and tried to remove the cloud of witnesses. There have been healthier times when society did not go to such great lengths to keep death out of sight and out of mind. The sting of death was not as great because it was an experience lived with each day. The burial ground surrounded the church which itself stood in the center of the community. It was impossible to avoid the cemetery, the church, and the importance of the cloud of witnesses gone before us. Moreover, a person was buried from the church, the same place where that person was baptized and married and sat with the children and friends on Sunday mornings. Today we hide our burial grounds and sometimes even our churches on the outskirts of town where we rarely have to see them. And the complexities of our schedules often mean we want to be associated with a good church but not deeply involved in one. Sometimes it appears that the sting is back and the cloud of witnesses is gone.
Wouldn't it be life-changing if we could have the sting of death removed and begin to see the cloud of witnesses again? I can think of no transformation that would have greater impact on our daily lives than having our negative feelings about death removed - to learn again that we have been mistaken in our fears.
The early Christians realized there is no sting in death for those who know Christ. They could sing and live in great joy because their eyes produced a brief but real "double exposure" so that right behind the wall of terror they could see the one who received them. The sting was removed from death for them because Jesus had demonstrated that it is but a doorway into another realm just as our birth from our mother's womb was but a doorway into this world.
In a prenatal state a baby is happy in its mother's womb. Tucked up under its mother's heart, it is already sensitive to love. Suppose we could get across to such an unborn fetus the realization, "You can't stay here forever. You're going to be born." That to the baby would be death. It would mean a change from security to insecurity, from a certainty to an uncertainty. You can imagine the thinking of the infant. "I want to stay here. I'm comfortable. I'm fed. I'm loved."
When our youngest son, Coulter, was born, I was privileged to be in the operating room. It didn't happen the way we planned. The local anesthesia didn't take, so after a few hours the general anesthesia was given and what was supposed to be gradual became very sudden. As soon as they took him out and sponged him off, they gave him to me to take to the weighing scales. I couldn't believe it. He was screaming and shaking all over. Every possible part of his body was shaking, trembling, and screaming. I don't know what I expected. But I was almost in a state of paralysis. The baby was shaking in fear with every fiber of its being. I said to the nurse walking in front of me, "This baby is terrified. He's scared to death." Without breaking her stride, she calmly declared, "They all are at first. They all are." And it's true. Going into a new world is frightening.
But as the cloud of witnesses places loving arms around the child, it begins to love life and to love this world. Time passes. And he becomes middle-aged. And perhaps, an old man. The thought comes to him, "I want to stay here. I'm fed. I'm loved. I don't want to go from certainty to uncertainty, from security to insecurity."
But this time there is a difference. Someone outside this womb of our existence has actually come into the world with us, died, gone beyond it and given us a glimpse of the final birth. There is no greater light breaking into the stream of human existence than that moment when Mary Magdalene runs to the disciples and exclaims, "I have seen the Lord. I have seen the Lord. He is risen, He is risen." Like the soft roll of a kettledrum announcing something important over the enveloped shades of fear, she walks toward her destiny. The violins and horns tune up and, finally, the full orchestration of the gospel hits the world like a triumphant climax heralding the start of a new day - "I have seen the Lord. He is risen." There is no sting. I have seen over to the other side. There is no sting in death.
From that experience lives were transformed. Like a prairie fire flying from heart to heart that message captured humankind. Up against the mighty empires came these simple Christian people saying that in the name of Jesus people could live. They were witnesses to it. They were the first cloud of witnesses to those who live on earth that the sting is removed, the last enemy destroyed, the greatest obstacle to a happy life removed.
The sting is gone. And a great cloud of witnesses surrounds us as we make our Christian pilgrimage. The whole creation before us is standing in the bleachers as we run our course in life. They are not just the ever-present saints who are still living and who rally around us to offer love and support. We are running our race in life before a cloud of witnesses far greater in number than we could ever imagine. Jesus looked out on a troubled world and said, "In my father's house are many rooms. Where I am you will all be. I do not leave you alone. We shall all feast together in the Kingdom anew."
Generation flows into generation. We are surrounded by witnesses. We can live with a quiet and simple confidence in the continuation of our soul after death. It is not something we have invented. It is true. It is real. The witnesses are there waiting for us and watching.
Life moves on. Buster is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. Every single one of the old neighbors is dead. And the old house and yard have long since been sold. Those things happen to us all. But what Mary Magdalene saw and heard is true. The Lord is alive. He has risen. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and death has lost its sting.
This assertion is so grand that we can cease the common practice of avoidance. Most of the time we are so involved in life that we would like to postpone as long as we can any consideration that ultimately every journey that has a begin-fling has an ending, a final destination.
There is a place on this earth where the journey of life is a very long one. The place is named Hunza Land. It's about as close as we humans can get to immortality. Hunza is a postage-stamp country in a high mountain valley bordered by Russia, China, and Pakistan. The valley floor is more than 10,000 feet above sea level and is reached by mountain passes that are as narrow as 18 inches. I don't even know if I could turn sideways and squeeze into Hunza. In this extreme isolation a way of life has developed in which many of the 25,000 inhabitants live to be as old as 120 years of age and a few live to be 140. They are free from diseases like hypertension and cancer. Hunza Land is quiet. People rise at 4 a.m. and go to bed at 9 p.m. They have no dogs or cats. There are no telephones or radios or televisions. There is no newspaper. No planes fly overhead and there are no automobiles.
Personally, I would rather live in High Point for 60 years than Hunza Land for 140 years. Our journey is shorter because we drive ourselves on an emotional plateau of stress that forces a lot of wear and tear on our bodies and minds. Yet, even in Hunza Land the doctor leans over men and woman, folds up his stethoscope and says quietly, "He's gone." So the question is not how long do we live, but "Gone where?" Where indeed has he gone? That's a big question; so big that it makes all other questions seem trivial and irrelevant. Gone where?
Finally, the people of the Bible encountered the Greeks. These Greeks believed that the essence of a person is the "soul" which exists separate from the body. The body dies, disintegrates, and is no longer recognizable. The soul continues to exist. The Apostle Paul then, could say, "We shall be raised" and "We shall be changed." Life begins and ends with God. If we have a death like Christ's, we will be united in a resurrection like his.
Essentially, that's the biblical message to us. It all hinges on our belief in Jesus' resurrection. But what can we know about the resurrection? There are a minimum of known historical facts about that event. We do have the disciples' eyewitness experiences of the risen Jesus. We know the tomb was empty. We know for a fact that the Jewish leaders could not disprove the message of the resurrection of Jesus, even though they had the power and the motivation to do so. We know for a fact that the church worshiped on Sunday.
But is all that our only strength? Mohammad spoke repeatedly about Jesus, too. The Koran accepts the Virgin Birth. Jesus' miracles are explicitly acknowledged there. Jesus, says the Koran, predicted the coming of Mohammed. In fact, it says that which descended upon the apostles at Pentecost was Mohammad.
At the most basic level, as my time runs out and I am powerless to stop the flow, I want to know, "Is. . . there any ... hope?" What is the compelling evidence that there is indeed life after death? The Old Testament vision does not comfort me. The disciples' eyewitness experiences of the risen Jesus are not conclusive. Buddha claimed repeated existences. Hinduism and Mohammadanism and Confucianism point to their heavens where life goes on in rebirths or with ancestors. The fact that the church worshiped on Sunday is scant evidence; the pagans also worshiped on Sunday and often in the same places.
What is the irrefutable evidence of life after death? I think it is this, is it not? There is no greater evidence than the transformation of the disciples from self-serving, disbelieiving,
pragmatic men and women into bold witnesses who were willing to die for their convictions.
Think of this and think very seriously. If we had in our history books a claim that in 1805 15 people in New Jersey saw a 100-foot high green fog with a spaceship in the middle of it, we'd have to wonder. No scientific evidence could back it up. History would laugh at it. The written records would certainly be disputed. Psychologists would have a category in which to place the mass hysteria.
But if the current chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (which Nicodemus was in his day), the mayor of High Point (which Barnabas was), the head of the Internal Revenue Service (which Matthew was), the Secretary of Defense (which Simon the Zealot was), Lee Iacocca (which Peter was), Cybil Sheppard and Jessica Lange (which Mary Magdalene was), the president of IBM (which Andrew was), and the sons of Aristotle Onassis (which the Zebedee boys, James and John, were) went to New Jersey tomorrow and came home, gave away every single dime, every single piece of property they had, walked this nation loving and helping everyone they saw with such power that it led to their executions before a firing squad, their being crucified upside down, their being hauled before a chopping block to be beheaded, and their being able to sing and laugh and forgive the people who did it because they said they saw a 100-foot green fog with a spaceship in it that guaranteed life after death; and if, 50 years from now, the head of the KGB in Russia, our arch enemy who had had Americans murdered (such as the Apostle Paul had done to the Christians), were suddenly to give up his post, walk the streets of American helping us debug every Embassy in Russia, be tortured 42 times for it, be thrown in prison in Siberia and as he lay dying in his cell, smile and say, "The 100-foot green fog with the spaceship in it gave me the transformation" - then, if all that happened, you and I would stand naked on the shore of death, with it howling in our face, and say, "No matter what may come, I can say with certainty that there is a 100-foot green fog with a spaceship in the middle." The irrefutable evidence for life after death is the transformation of self-serving, pragmatic people into bold witnesses who are willing to die for their convictions. And that is precisely what you and I have.
She was in her mid-80s. The pain was fresh and raw. Her malignancy was advanced. Her son called her on the phone. "Are you afraid?" he asked. "No," she said. "My mother went like this; my brother went like this; hundreds of thousands of people go like this each year. If they can do it, I guess I can." Sensing his fear, she said, "It's all right. I have more people over there waiting to say hello to me than I have here to say goodbye to."50
And that is precisely what you and I shall have, kin and friends living in a home, waiting for our arrival. As I quickly reach a point in life where I realize that the earth will go on without me, death begins to lose much of its sting. I no longer preach the message of hope and home just for the older folks in my congregation or for those of us who have lost loved ones. I no longer preach to provide assurance for some of the biomedical decision-making that appears to bless and curse modern technology. I preach the message of hope and home because I believe it to be true.
