What a fitting and timely question.  I was first confronted with this question in 2019 during retreat #6 of the Coracle Fellowship.   The implications of this question for me were raw and profound as I was still grieving the loss of my wife to glioblastoma, a highly lethal form of brain cancer.  Bill Haley asked this question in the context of Hebrews 2:10 where Jesus is declared the archagon of our salvation, the one who goes first, the trail blazer who paved the way through death to become the first fruits (I Cor. 15:20 ) of those who will receive new eternal bodies, perfectly suited to never ending life on the new earth, united with heaven as depicted at the end of the book of Revelation (chapters 21 & 22).

Often when I ponder death, whether mine or of one dear to me, my imagination is drawn to the Pevensie children passing through the stable door at the end of the Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia.  Their transition from this landscape to the eternal Narnian landscape was so seamless that they didn’t even realize that they had died at first.  Dallas Willard was fond of saying with a twinkle in his eye that if we are anticipating a death experience, we are going to be sorely disappointed.  He suggested that our deaths may also be so seamless, that like the Pevensie children, we also may not realize at first that we have died.

I remember being taken aback initially by Bill telling me that upon receiving news of my wife’s death, he began to reassure her that it was okay to settle into the beauty of her new life  in God’s presence, free of the pain and weakness she had endured the prior year.  In light of the clear teaching of Scripture that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (Phil. 3 ), I am surprised by my surprise at Bill’s tender encouragement.

There is no bigger deal for us as humans than the removal of death’s bitter sting.  Pascal’s wager is cold consolation in a world riven with strife, abuse, contempt, neglect, abandonment, and the coercive abuse of power. Paul unapologetically proclaims that if Christ has not risen from the dead our faith is in vain.  (I Cor. 15:17)   One of the gifts of now co-leading the Coracle Fellowship in Baltimore is that I get to return to and soak in these rich images every year.  I am fortified and filled with hope when I imagine being welcomed by Jesus and those I have loved and those whom I have yet to meet who have  enriched my life by their words and witness through the ages.

If the conquest of death was the full extent of what Jesus accomplished for us, He would clearly stand alone as the greatest human being who has ever lived.  But there is more.  Jesus was clearly the wisest and most brilliant teacher who has ever walked the earth.  His responses to the four most fundamental questions all great teachers must answer:  (1) What is the nature of reality? (2) Who is truly well off? (3) Who is truly a good person? and (4) How do I become a good person? are the most transformative and enduring of all time.  Jesus, with calm self-assurance in the face of great opposition, said that if people would continue in (put into practice) his words (instruction), they would be his disciples (students/followers), and they would know experientially the truth, and the truth would set them free (John 8:31-32).  He invites us to put His words to the test and allow them to authenticate their reliability as descriptions of the truth.  Jesus offered a way in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7) to be free of anger, contempt, lust, anxiety, and greed.  This level of freedom, here, right now, in this life is a big deal!*

I recently discovered that according to the renowned developmental psychologist, Erik Erickson, I have entered the culminating stage of life where my formational challenge is to choose between integrity and despair.  The invitation for me in this season of my life is to pull together the meaningfulness of the various strands of my life and integrate them in a spirit of gratitude for the richness of my life.  For Erickson this process is at the heart of cultivating the virtue of wisdom.  After striving for decades to create value and break new ground, I’ve been given permission to look back and reflect on the faithfulness of God in unfolding a story of beauty in the midst of pain.

I am grateful to have lived long enough to be able see the simplicity and wisdom of the fundamental nature of life in this landscape.  As Jerry Sittser so courageously points out in A Grace Disquised and A Grace Revealed, we each are living a beautiful story whose author is God Himself.  Woven into all our stories, if we have the simplicity and courage to live with hearts open to God and the people and the world around us (MacDonald), is a blend of great beauty and of profound pain. 

“Though the wrong seems oft so strong”(Maltbie Babcock, This Is My Father’s World), evil does not get the last word.   Our acts of loving care for God, our neighbor, and our world are not in vain because of the triumph of Jesus over evil and death.  And so we have the opportunity to love courageously, sacrificially, and boldly because we know that death is not the end.  The powers who seem so strong today will pass.  God alone never changes and God alone suffices (Teresa of Avila).  God is not shaken, nor will He be mocked.  For those of us who have cast our lots with Jesus, our truest selves are hidden with Him in God.  And when He is revealed in all His glory we will be revealed with Him in the full glory of who He created us to be!  (Col. 3:4).

So how do we thrive now even as we continue the journey to our truest home?  First, we can go deep.  We need to carve out more time, not less, to be in intimate conversation with Jesus, Abba, and Holy Spirit.  Second, we need to band together more than ever.  I’m heartened by Curt Thompson’s encouragement that our brains (thus we) can do really hard things as long as we do them relationally connected with others.  I am coming off our third grief retreat in the past year.  The losses I’ve witnessed are gut wrenching, yet together we have found moments of peace and hope and even joy in our shared compassion for one another.  I have experienced a similar hope and joy traveling on pilgrimage with my brothers and sisters of color to historic sites of their ancestors’ enslavement.  I am regularly struck by the resilience of my brothers and sisters through great suffering across the centuries across cultures and societies.  Their testimonies endure!

Third, we can do the next good thing before us.  This is the wisdom of the saints through the ages.  Frank Laubach**, in a transformative encounter with God, was reassured by God that if he would keep his heart fully open to God and fully open to the world around him, Jesus would show him the next thing to do.  This is what we are designed for.  Tim Mackie*** brilliantly demonstrates through his faithful exposition of the themes of Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, and the Prophets that God’s intention has always been that we would join Him in the union of heaven and earth.  All of scripture has been pointing to Jesus as the archagon and Messiah who would make this union possible.   Jesus and Abba’s  gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us is the guarantee that His design will be realized (Rom. 8:9-17 ).  So we gratefully and courageously receive each new day free to ask what love would do (for God is love) if He were me living my life in my circumstances.  The reality is that He is living with me closer than my very breath.

*Dallas Willard dedicates chapters 4-7 of The Divine Conspiracy to exploring Jesus’s brilliance in answering the four fundamental questions posed to all great teachers who care about living a good life.

**Frank Laubach, Man of Prayer

***These themes are woven throughout the courses and podcasts offered by Tim Mackie through the Bible Project.  Great places to start would be the most recent podcast series on The Sermon on the Mount, Mountains, and Exodus.  These are available at their website or through the Bible Project App.