Memorial Service - 2012

It’s just like moving into the next room, they say.

Or like crossing an ocean to a different shore.

It’s like being born into a new world.

Or moving down a dark tunnel towards a benevolent light.

It’s like a party, where all of the people you’ve ever loved are there.

It’s a golf course where the greens are perfect and the pensioners fourball in front of you all play like Rory McIlroy!

It’s everything you hoped it would be, and far far more.

It’s heaven.

We run out of language pretty quickly when we try to talk about heaven, and on this particular Sunday when we gather to remember the people we’ve lost to death over this past year, I feel a little bit like a tourist trying to describe a country I’ve never visited.

I can tell you what the guide book says,, but I haven’t got any personal experience to draw on.

And even the images we have in the Bible aren’t especially helpful because they’re just that – images. Clouds and harps and pearly gates are part of the iconography of heaven now, but we’d be daft to read too much into that.

The only person able to fill us in on how things really are would have been Jesus, who the Bible tells us came from heaven to earth to live among us.

And interestingly enough, he seems to have little or no interest in furnishing us with details. He’s far more interested in telling us how to get to heaven, and how to make the earth a bit more like heaven, rather than what it’s going to be like when we finally get there.

So for a few moments I want to set those interesting questions aside, though I promise to pick them up again later!

And instead, I want us to think a little about the threshold to the afterlife – this thing we call death – and how we respond to it. Seems to me we can make two equal and opposite mistakes when we’re thinking about death. We can pretend it away and belittle it, or we can make too much of it.

So let’s take the first of those – the danger of belittling death.

Sometimes at funerals people like to have particular readings that have meant something to them, and one of the most popular ones is the piece on death by Henry Scott-Holland which says:

"Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged”.  and so on.

And there’s a lot in that piece that’s helpful, I think, particularly the idea that there’s continuity between this life and the next. And I know that can be of great comfort to people, and rightly so. But I never use that reading unless I’m asked to because I just don’t agree with the first few lines. “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. Nothing has happened”. Is that really the case?

Some of you will remember the actress and comedienne Joyce Grenfell from the St Trinian’s movies and her regular appearances on Face the Music. Well, when her brother died she volunteered to write a poem for his funeral service because she so disliked the Scott-Holland piece.

"We can't have that thing about 'I have only slipped away into the next room” she said. “I mean, why go through the whole bother of dying just to find yourself in the kitchen?"

Of course, she’s being sarcastic, but I think she has a point. Doesn’t it belittle death, and our grief, to say that nothing has happened when someone we love dies?

Humans are physical beings, as well as spiritual beings, and if I want to hug you, or dance with you, or have a meal with you, or hear you laugh, or stroke your hair, it’s really not much comfort to my senses to know that your spirit’s only next door. It’s you I want. You as you were. And that’s the very thing that death has taken away from me.

That’s not nothing.

And the Bible agrees with me. In Biblical terms, death’s an enemy we’ll only get rid of at the end of days when everything that stands in opposition to God will finally be destroyed.

But until then, death has power over each and every one of us. None of us know when it's going to come or how it's going to affect those we love. And we're powerless to stop it

That’s not nothing.

But nor, secondly, is it everything.

We shouldn’t belittle death, but we shouldn’t give it too much respect either, because death is a beaten enemy. It just doesn’t know that it’s beaten yet.

In our Old Testament reading today, Isaiah prophesies that one day God will deal the death blow to death: “The Sovereign Lord will destroy death for ever. He will wipe away the tears from everyone’s eyes”.

But by the time we get to the New Testament, seven hundred years later, the writers are saying that the power of death is already broken. 2 Timothy 1:10 “This has now been revealed to us through the coming of our Saviour, Christ Jesus. He has ended the power of death and through the gospel has revealed immortal life”.

Now how could Paul write that? How could he write that death's power was over when all around him people were continuing to die just as they'd always done?

Well what Paul’s referring to here, is the work that Christ did on the cross; because he didn’t just die to deal with the problem of our sin. He died to deal with the problem of death.

Before Jesus’ time, people believed that death was like a prison, or a resting place. Your soul went down to the grave and that was it.  And if you read the Old Testament you’ll quickly discover that people in those days didn’t speak about heaven or hell. They spoke about Sheol – the grave – the common destiny of all, both good and bad alike.

But when Christ entered death through his own death on the cross he kicked down its back door and changed it from a prison into a tunnel. Death now leads somewhere – it leads us back into the presence of God.

And there, before him, one day all of us will have to give an account for the lives we’ve led. And I believe that where we have made room for him in our hearts, he will make room for us in his.

And that brings me back to the question of what heaven will be like.

“Who knows? is the answer! I’m sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for more!

But I don’t think it’s insignificant that when the Bible tries to talk about heaven it draws heavily on images and ideas that we’re familiar with.

The book of Revelation describes the new heaven and earth, as a city with streets, trees, fields and rivers. It talks about relationships – person to person and person to God. It talks about parties and feasts and celebrations and overflowing thankfulness. It talks about grief and sadness and tears being wiped away. It’s an earthy vision – a very human vision – of the life to come.

Whatever heaven is like, I think it’s going to have a strong flavour of earth about it – all that’s best in our human experience made more, in and through Christ.

I think that’s a helpful idea to hold onto today. and I’m going to end with a poem that expresses that thinking far better than I ever could. It’s called “When I’m in Heaven” and it’s by Adrian Plass….

When I’m in heaven,

tell me there’ll be kites to fly.
The kind they say you can control,
although I never did for long.

The kind that spin and spin

and spin and spin.
Then sulk and dive and die
and rise again and spin again
and dive and die
and rise up yet again.

I love those kites.

When I’m in heaven,
tell me there’ll be friends to meet
in ancient, oak-beamed Sussex pubs,
enfolded by the wanton downs.
And summer evenings
lapping lazily against the shore
of sweet, familiar little lands
inhabited by silence,
or by nonsenses.
The things you cannot safely say
in any other place.

I love those times.

When I’m in heaven,

tell me there’ll be seasons
where the colours fly.
Poppies splashing flame
through dying yellow, living green,
and autumn’s burning sadness
that has always made me cry
for things that have to end; for winter fires that blaze like captive suns
but look so cold when the morning comes.

I do love the way the seasons change.

When I’m in heaven,
tell me there will be peace at last.
That in some meadow,
filled with sunshine
filled with buttercups
and filled with friends,
you will – chew a straw?
and fill us in on how things really are.

And if there is some harm

in laying earthly hope at heaven’s door,
or in this saying so,
well – have mercy on my foolishness,
dear Lord.

I love this world you made.

It’s all I know.

John 3:16 - Part 5

I began this service by putting up the words "EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG" in bold lettering via Powerpoint.

Don’t take that personally! The last time I saw those words they were among hundreds of provocative sound-bites being flashed up on stage at a U2 concert in front of 60,000 people

But as we draw this series in John 3:16 to an end, I know I’ve had to shed some wrong ideas as we’ve got beneath the skin of this most well known of texts.

Is God fed up of this world he’s made? John 3:16 says 'No' – he loves it with a passion.

Is Jesus just another prophet, another good man? No – he’s the only begotten Son – made of the same stuff that God’s made of.

Is ‘believing’ just agreeing to certain propositions about God? No – it’s far more than that. It’s about deciding to trust God with everything that you are.

And is the word ‘perishing’ a metaphor for the fires of hell? Well, when you actually look at it, Jesus doesn’t use the word hell even once in John’s gospel, and only a handful of times in Matthew. He speaks about judgment a great deal in all four gospels, but he uses a wide range of metaphors to describe it; and it’s the idea of decay and destruction that are to the fore rather than punishment.

So in that vein, it’ll come as no surprise to you today, as we come to consider the words Eternal Life, that they’re probably not about heaven, and they’re probably not about a life that goes on and on and on for ever.

Let me try and explain why, and then go on to suggest what these words do mean.

The words we translate ‘Eternal Life’ in the Greek are zoe aionios which means – quite literally – the life of the ages. There are several words for life in Greek: Bios, your physical life; Psuche, the life of the mind; Zoe – spiritual life – part of your being that’s in connection with God. Hopefully we get that bit.

But aionios is a wee bit trickier. Our words ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’ don’t really do the trick because as soon as we hear them we think of time and duration, But that’s not really the sense of the word in the Greek. Aionios is more about where something originates, than how long it goes on for.

It’s more about the quality of something rather than the quantity.

For example, in the letter to Jude, mention is made of the 'eternal fire' which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. But those fires aren't still raging! The fire is 'eternal' because it comes from beyond, from eternity, not because it goes on and on and on.

So the phrase ‘Eternal Life’ isn’t so much about a geographical place called heaven, as a kind of Life that God wants to bless us with. A life that has its origins in eternity.

There are other places in the gospels where Jesus talks directly about heaven – there’s a perfectly good Greek word for heaven – the word ouranos. But he doesn’t use it here.

And that’s because he’s not talking about heaven at this point – he’s talking about this life that has its roots in eternity, in God himself. A life that deep down we all long for, even if we don’t recognise it.

Hard to get your heads round, I know, but bear with me!

Now let’s think about that longing for a few moments.

If you pay a little attention to yourself and to the people around you, it isn’t long before you start noticing what seems to be a universal truth about human beings…

Earlier this week I was in the bank, and it was quiet enough for the teller to start chatting to the woman in front of me in the queue:

“Is that you just back from holiday” she said.

“Aye – we were in Bulgaria”.

“Did you have a good time?”

“Aye it was great – lovely and relaxing. But then you have to come back home again don’t you?!”

“Aye it’s always the same – you look forward to it for ages and then it’s over before you know it”.

We’ve probably all had that conversation! But what I want you to notice is the wistfulness behind the words. There’s a longing being expressed; a gut-level longing for things to be different in some way.

And when you start paying attention to yourself and to the people around you, you start noticing that same wistfulness cropping up all over the place.

A man takes himself outside to sit on the back porch and light up a cigar. It’s a solitary sacrament he reserves for a bad day. Under the open sky he sheds the claustrophobia that comes with too much talk, or too many misunderstandings. He sucks in the bitter smoke and then, in one breath, consigns it to the breeze. In his mind he cradles the angry glow of the exchanges that led him here, but in the cool night air they quickly turn to so much grey ash. He finds himself wishing that things could have turned out differently.

A woman wends her way through the kitchen, clearing up the mess that everyone else seems oblivious to. She unloads the washing machine, sticks on the second load of the day, all the while rehearsing the mental checklist which tells her the kids are ready for school – packed lunch, water, snack, homework, gym kit, waterproof jacket.

Horseplay in the hallway doesn’t improve her mood; sometimes it feels like they deliberately try it on when their dad’s offshore. She carries so much of the responsibility she feels like a single mother sometimes, albeit a married single mother.

After the usual brinkmanship and cajoling, the children are finally ready to go. She’s tired out before the day’s really begun. She knows her life is more than this, but there are times when she wonders.

And today, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, families in many countries are kneeling at gravesides, or wishing they had a grave to tend, because their loved ones were spirited away in the black clouds that rose as the towers fell, and they were never found.

We have to step lightly around their grief this morning; keep a respectful silence in deference to their anger and their regrets. But rising up within all of us on a day like today is the unspoken yearning to live in a world where such things no longer happen.

We live in an age that’s very sceptical toward any claims about universal truth. And yet here, in the heart of human experience we find just that very thing. A universal truth. And it’s this.

We all long to be in a better place.

We wish our workaday life was a bit more fulfilling.
We wish our relationships could always be plain sailing.
We wish we could have things back the way they were before age, or illness or death crossed our threshold uninvited.

Some of our wishes are noble and others are less so; but in different ways we all long to be in a better place.

What would your better place look like, this morning? It’s worth thinking about. Here’s a little tool to help you chew that one over.

How would you finish this sentence… if only I could…..

Go back in time and do things differently
Get that break I’ve been waiting for for so long.
Get out from underneath that responsibility
Become a different person..
Make him or her into a different person

You can fill in the gap for yourself. But there’s a gap to be filled in all of us, I think. We all long to be in a better place, in some way.

And there’s nothing new under the sun. It was just the same back in Jesus’ day.

Jewish thought held that there were two eras of time. Two ages. There was ‘this age’, or ‘this present age’ in which life was a constant struggle between right and wrong, good and evil. It was this age in which we lived and moved, and in which the story of salvation was being worked out.

And then there was ‘the age to come’, an age of glory and wonder when God would finally be all in all – when evil would be put in its place and the world would become what God had always wanted it to be.

One age characterised by dispute and dischord. One by harmony and joy. One by fragmentation and one by reconciliation. One now and one still to come.

And according to the Hebrew scriptures, the primary quality of life in the age to come is right relationships. Things get fixed between us and God, between us and each other, between us and the creation.

21 They will build houses and dwell in them – says Isaiah.
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the works of their hands.

25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
but dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the LORD.

This is life in the age to come. And to a degree, it sounds like a fairytale.

But maybe that’s the thing about fairytales – maybe they keep popping up across cultures and generations because they’re an echo of a deeper truth that won’t be silenced. The truth that there is an age to come – an age marked by the joy, peace, meaning, loving and knowing that flow naturally when we finally experience God as our all in all. And when Jesus talks about Eternal Life - that's what he's talking about.

Life in the age to come, eternal life, heaven, whatever you want to call it, it all boils down to one thing - knowing God. And if you were listening carefully to this morning’s reading, you might have picked that up already. As Jesus prayed with his disciples on the night that he was betrayed he said:

“Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your Son, so that the Son may give glory to you. For you gave him authority over all humanity, so that he might give eternal life to all those you gave him. And eternal life means knowing you, the only true God, and knowing Jesus Christ, whom you sent."

Eternal life, at its simplest, is knowing God and receiving the life that he offers us.

And the twist Jesus brings to this story is to insist that that eternal life can start now, if you want it to. By the grace of God, you can bask in tomorrow’s sunshine today. You don’t have to wait for it. You can have it now.

What do you have to do? Jesus has already told us in John 3:16. Believe! Trust God with your life. Surrender. Then, as well as you can, develop the disciplines and habits that will keep you close to him: keep his life growing inside you. That’s what it means to really believe.


We started out by recognising that there’s something in each of us that wants to be in a better place. We all share that feeling in different ways. It’s part of the human condition.

But as I go on in life, I’m beginning to learn, ever so slowly, that very often the answer to that longing is not to give in to it. Sometimes it is, but often it’s not.

When I keep company with Jesus in prayer, I discover that although my desire is often to be in a better place, his desire is that I learn to be better in the same place.

If I live my life, following my desires I can end up like a fool, chasing the rainbow’s end. I never get where I want to be

But if I live out of his life, his age-to-come life, I grow. A little bit of the harmony and peace and love of the age to come spill over from the future into the now, and help transform it. A little piece of the kingdom begins to come.

The life of the ages would say to the woman in the bank queue

“Don’t pine for Bulgaria, darling! It sounds like you need to find a bit more peace and leisure in the life that you’re living”

“Don’t nurse your grievances, man on the back porch. You are forgiven. Now go and forgive and make things better”

“Your life is more than your tasks, busy mother. You’re far more than that, you know”.

“You have so much love to give, dear families kneeling beside those graves. You were, and are, deeply loved. Are there others around you who now need the blessing of the love that you long to give?”

This is what happens when the life of the age to come starts to take root in us. Ever so slowly, perspectives, attitudes and behaviours begin to change.

Think back to when I asked you to finish the sentence, “If only I could….” What would it look like if God’s eternal life could come and fill that place within you that longs for things to be better? What would that mean for you, and for those around you? Because that's what God wants for your life.


Today the building work at Ground Zero will pause for a few short hours. Progress over the past decade has been painstakingly slow, but at last the outline of the new buildings is beginning to rise above the Manhattan skyline, filling the aching void left by the twin towers.

May God, who loves the world, fill the spaces where we ache, where we long for things to be better, with his own eternal life. And may that life teach us to be better, and live for his glory, right where we are.

Amen, and thanks be to God for his word.