I wrote this piece for the Raleigh News and Observer, I was asked to comment on what I believed would happen to me after death. I was told that my answer needn't be concerned with folks of other or no faiths. The editor asked that I focus on what do Christians believe will happen to them after death.
Here's what I said:
As an Episcopal priest, I consider one of my primary ministries to be pastoring to folks in life and death. To be sure, as Christians we believe the Gospel is good because of what it has to say to us about our mortality and our hope for eternal life in Christ.
We proclaim that Jesus was the incarnation of grace, the embodiment of God's self-giving love, the Son of God made flesh, who died for our sins on the cross, who rose from the dead, and who ascended to "sit at the right hand of the Father." We pin all our hopes on the basic message of Christ: who he was, what he said and what he did.
At every funeral, we recite these words from the Book of Common Prayer:
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.
For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For if we live, we live unto the Lord; and if we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.
This ancient anthem proclaims the Christian believer's confidence that our future existence is eternally linked to Christ by his birth, death, resurrection and ascension. We profess that those who submit to Christ's reign will enter into it now and be bound up with it forever. To borrow from the words of St. Patrick, when we bind unto ourselves the strong name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we enter into that divine life for now and for always.
Yet, while the Christian hope is to share in life eternal with the Lord, it is not necessarily the same as going to heaven to dance on clouds and play harps. The inspired writers of the New Testament, Paul in particular, do not say much about that cloud-dancing, harp-playing vision of the hereafter.
To read it all...
1 comment:
I find your entry quite interesting. I am the grandson of a Right Reverend in the Episcopal Church. He moved on in 1993. However, his son is also an Episcopal Reverend and my uncle's wife was at a book store and one John Holland was a special guest there that day conducting a book signing. This John Holland claims himself to be able to communicate with the spirit world. As soon as my aunt entered the book store this Holland character immediately announced that there was a daughter-in-law of an Episcopal priest that he had a message for, and continued to tell her specific details about joyous events in our family since he deceased and that he was proud of us. Ever since learning of this experience, it has profoundly affected my thought process regarding the afterlife. Do you have any light you can shed on spiritual entities and how one attains this status?
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