Hopeless funerals

Do we each have souls, i.e. the real you which, since conception, will exist independently of a pumping heart and a functioning brain? Put another way, when we are buried 6 feet under the earth or incinerated at the local crematorium, is that the end?

I’ve attended a couple of humanist funerals where there is no singing of hymns, nor prayers said. The celebrant, who acts as compere, won’t mention God. For me, such funerals are soulless and quite literally hope-less.

And yet… when friends and family bravely step forward at a humanist funeral to share their carefully prepared tribute we may hear things like, ‘I bet Grandad’s looking down now and having a right chuckle with us as we share these memories’ or ‘Mum, I know that you’ll still be watching over us’. Do such expressed sentiments, spoken at a time of sadness, indicate an ingrained sense that we have souls?

Henry Scott Holland’s poem, ‘All Is Well’, is sometimes read at funerals. It includes these lines: ‘All is well, Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped into the next room... there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.’

By what authority is this writer speaking? The words may meet an emotional need of the moment but do they speak truth? Do all the souls of the deceased exist in rest and peace and are they indeed awaiting us just over the way?

There are many voices which want to speak ‘peace, peace where there is no peace’. God calls such people false prophets. If there is more after we die, we need to be reckoning with it now. Is there an authoritative word someone can give us and if so, who is it?

It is Jesus, who is the embodiment of truth. Following his death, God raised him from the dead and so validated Jesus’ own identity and also his words of teaching and instruction. This means we’d do well to weigh up his words on matters like life and death, heaven and hell, peace and anguish, forgiveness and just punishment.

In summary, Jesus tells us to trust that he alone can forgive us when we turn to him; he is the way to a life with God for ever.

The Naked Truth

When I was a teenager, I developed an interest in the Second World War. I had a book about the Nazis in which there were some black and white photos. One of these has always stuck in my mind. It showed a number of naked women, of various ages and sizes, moving between huts with uniformed German soldiers looking on. Although some seemed uninterested, others appeared to be disdainful, sneering and perhaps uttering lewd comments. How humiliated and vulnerable those women must have felt.

The first man and woman were created naked. They had no sense of shame or humiliation; they were innocent. After they had rebelled against the word God had spoken to them, they realised that they were indeed naked. Their primary concern was not to be seen in this state by God and they hid from him whilst at the same time attempting to put in place a cover-up (the proverbial fig leaves).

This account comes to us in the Old Testament part of the Bible. So is it relevant to us today? The New Testament says emphatically ‘Yes’. We are told, ‘No creature is hidden from God's sight. All are naked and exposed before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.’ Our thoughts, words and actions are all seen and known by God and we will each need to explain ourselves; any attempt at cover-up will be seen for what it is.

Can you feel the weight of this? Jesus presses the matter home saying, ‘You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.’ He is speaking spiritually as the doctor of our souls. Happily, with his diagnosis comes a cure.

On Good Friday, Jesus was tortured, stripped naked and humiliated. In that state he was crucified; there was no cover-up - not even a loincloth. He took on our shame, our nakedness, suffering on behalf of people like you and me.

When our souls are exposed before God and the bare truth revealed, we’ll need to give an account. The Christian can point to Jesus who took our nakedness and clothed us in his own goodness. We do not need to find fig leaves but to trust that Jesus has paid the price to put us right with God.

Awesome

A team of more than 150 scientists has mapped out how a tiny portion of a mouse’s brain tissue functions. The map showed 200,000 cells, 523 million synapses (the connections between neurons) and more than two miles of axons (the part of a neuron that passes on the electrical impulses). The vast number of interconnecting pathways that these impulses may route is mind-boggling! ‘It definitely inspires a sense of awe, just like looking at pictures of the galaxies’ said one of the project’s lead researchers.

It is natural to be in awe, but of what/whom are we in awe? Surely, the answer is our creator God rather than mere ‘chance’.

Job was an Old Testament character who needed to recognise his creator God. During a season of great suffering, quite understandably he bemoaned his lot and God’s treatment of him. Throughout his pain, perplexity, frustration and sense of injustice, he had not given up on God. Unhelped by his friends’ well-meant but empty counsel, he looked for his complaints to be answered by God.

Towards the end of his ordeal, God did answer Job but indirectly. In effect, he said to Job, ‘Instead of you questioning me, I will question you’. God got Job to look heavenwards to survey the stars and then earthwards to the animals and birds, from the greatest to the least. He had also to consider both the terrors and blessings that come from the weather. ‘Where were you Job when I set all of this up? Who was my counsellor? Can you do anything remotely like this? If not, why do you query me?’ I’m paraphrasing here. Job clasped his hand to his mouth and was silent. He was awestruck, he was humbled, seeing anew that God was God and he was not.

In the New Testament we read that creation is a self-revelation of God’s wisdom, power and glory, making our unbelief inexcusable. If this sounds unreasonable, then God has provided another way of revealing himself to us. He has taken on human form and entered into his creation as Jesus the Son of God. In him, we meet God up close and personal in a way that Job did not. In the gospel of Mark, we read of a needy man saying to Jesus, ‘Lord I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’. Amen.