Some things never die

SOME THINGS NEVER DIE

A man of sixty had gone back to visit his hometown.  One of the places he looked forward to seeing was the primary school he attended more than fifty years ago.  While driving to the site, he planned his stroll down memory lane.  He would start by finding his first classroom, where at the age five he had begun school and then work his way through the other classes.

But this sentimental journey never took place.  When he arrived at the site, he discovered that his old school building was no longer there.  It had been demolished, and a brand new one had been built in its place.  He found himself thinking about the transient nature of life - how nothing ever stays the same.  Communities change.  Buildings are here today and gone tomorrow.  People live and die.  Even nations rise and fall.

Then he remembered how in that red-brick school house he had learned the multiplication tables.  2 X 2 = 4; 3 X 3 =9; 4 X 4 = 16 and all of the rest.  He had learned those when he was only a boy.  But fifty years later, they were still true.  And five thousand years into the future, they would still be true.  Though the old school building was gone, there was at least part of what he had learned there remained.  Simple arithmetic deals with ideas that are so basic that they never change.  Time cannot erode them, and death cannot erase them.  This means that in some ways we live in an eternal world right now.  Generations will come and go.  Empires will rise and fall. But in every one of them, 2 X 2 will always equal 4.  They always have, and they always will.  That simple little formula, which we all learned in childhood, belongs to a realm where death has no authority.

In a sense, that is the essence of our Easter faith.  We are saying that Jesus lived the kind of life that transcended the power of death.  His adversaries could kill him, which indeed they did, but they could not stop Him.  As Peter said in his sermon in the house of Cornelius, "They killed Him, hanging Him on a tree, only to have God raise Him up on the third day."  Our Gospel reading says, "Jesus had to rise from the dead."  It was imperative.  It was inevitable.  He belonged to that eternal realm where death has no authority.  Some things never die.

To think of death this way provides the only reasonable starting point for believing in immortality at all.  If nothing in this world lasted, why should we think that anything in the next world will?  But that is not a true picture of life here and now.  Many of us have said a final earthly farewell to our fathers and mothers.  Some of them have been dead and in their graves for years.  But the love that they gave to us did not die with them.  It is still a vital part of our lives.  The love that we felt for them is not in the grave.  We love them just as much today as we did when they were alive, perhaps even more.  Love has an eternal quality.  Death can take the lives of those we love, but it cannot touch our love.  That belongs to a realm where death has no authority.

That is what we mean by our Easter celebration.  We are not saying that death makes transient lives immortal.  We are saying that what is eternal is eternal and for that, there is no death.  This building, in which we are worshipping today, will someday be gone and completely forgotten.  Not one trace of it will remain, but the one whom we worship here will always be the same.  The quality that He gives to our lives will abide forever.  It is a kind of living with which death has nothing to do.  Some things never die.

To believe this is, of course, an act of faith.  It cannot be proven, but it is a reasonable act of faith.  If this is not the way life is, it is surely the way life ought to be.  There should be something that death cannot destroy.  There should be at least a few things that remain.  Consider the alternative.  If death was the end for our ancestors, then death will also be the end for you and me, and our children, and our children's children.  Someday, the last generation will die and the earth itself will also die.

On that point, all of science is agreed.  This earth is not eternal.  It had a beginning, and it will have an end.  Some think it will burn up, and others think it will freeze up, but all agree that it will come to an end.  When that happens, this great human adventure will be over.  What Bertrand Russell predicted will have come true, "All the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system.  And the whole temple of human achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins."

Is that where all of this and all of us are heading?  Towards nothing?  I cannot prove otherwise, but rational minds rebel against it.  I find it hard to believe that faith was born only to be frustrated, that hope was born only to be mocked, and that love was born only to die.  I find it hard to believe that nothing lasts except this endless process of not lasting.  That could be true, I suppose.  But it would not be the work of a rational universe.  Something ought to last and the message of Easter is that something that will last forever.

We know that Jesus died.  As Peter said: "They killed Him, hanging Him on a tree."  But the nails that pierced His hands and feet did not pierce His truth.  The spear that was thrust into His side did not extinguish His love.  The final spasm of His body may have ended his earthly life but it did not end His soul.  "They killed Him, only to have God raise Him up."  And He is alive today.  Yes, some things never die.

Lord Jesus, we live in a world of rapid change.  Things come and go quickly that we feel uprooted.  But Easter Sunday is a reminder that there are some things we can count on and that is that the truths of our faith never die.

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