Ninth Sunday after Trinity

It’s an unlikely contingency, but if I’m ever asked to complete one of those questionnaires that appears in the Sunday supplements then I shall enjoy being scandalous. My answers about when and where I was most happy, and about with whom I would most like to have dinner will pass unnoticed. But when I am asked ‘do you believe in life after death?’ I shall fix the interviewer with a steely glaze and say ‘I believe in life’.

I shall do that because I believe that there’s a pernicious myth abroad about the faith of Christians that I should like to nail. It is that ours is a life-denying religion that exalts death; a religion that is so intent on what lies beyond the grave that it all too easily neglects what precedes it.

In his best-seller The God Delusion Richard Dawkins tells the story of the moment that Cardinal Hume told the Abbot of Ampleforth of his approaching death. The Abbot apparently replied ‘Congratulations! That’s brilliant news! I wish I was coming with you’. Dawkins concludes that the Abbot was a sincere man of faith, and concludes also that, as professed Christians do not on the whole react in such a fashion to such tidings, their profession can offer them little consolation, and that it therefore cannot really be sincere.

What Dawkins has touched upon is the conviction that Christians must infinitely prefer death to life; that the promised rewards of heaven must far outshine the inconveniences of the present and dazzle us with their lustre; and that our eyes are so firmly fixed on the far horizon that there is no chance of their slipping earthwards and lighting upon the miseries (or the beauties) of our time.

And the parable that comprises our Gospel reading this morning seems to give comfort to that critical view of the faith. God speaks to the rich man, telling him that he is to die, and almost mocking the labours of his life. ‘The things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ The rich man has given no thought to his own mortality and he will pay for it. The message seems clear. What really counts is what lies beyond death, when all else is forgotten.

A conclusion not dissimilar emerges from the Old Testament reading. When I complete my Sunday supplement questionnaire it is very unlikely that I will say that I want to have dinner with the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, who has a special line in doom-laden self-righteousness. If the rich man of Christ’s parable has though insufficiently about his own death it appears that the Preacher has thought of little else. So constantly has he dwelt on it that he has reached the famous and oft-repeated conclusion ‘vanity of vanities; all is vanity’. What is the cause of his grumbling? That when he dies he will no longer be able to benefit from the fruits of his life’s exertions; that, to coin a phrase, he can’t take it with him when he goes. The result is that the Preacher despises life; just as it might appear that the rich man of the parable is being urged to despise life; and just as Richard Dawkins and co. would like to think that we do today.

Were that to be the case, were we despisers of life, then there would be a number of immediate implications. One would be that Christians would cease to care about the thousands who will perish this week because they have no access to clean drinking water. Why would that matter if heaven beckons so urgently? Another would be that Christians would set about consuming the earth’s resources with feckless impunity. Why would the climate or our delicate ecosystems matter if global meltdown is in fact the gateway to Paradise? A third would be that Christians would begin to think again about the ethics of their response to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and war. Why would a response to any of those seem so difficult if we thought as Dawkins and many others seem to think we think?

In the face of an apparent pincer movement from Gospel and Old Testament St Paul does not appear to be of much help. After all, today’s passage from Colossians opens with the words ‘Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth’. Perhaps Dawkins has a point, and perhaps, if we are serious about any of this at all, we ought to go and sit on a mountain top imploring the Lord to finish the job quickly. But we do Paul an injustice if we stop reading at that point. Continue, and we get into an exhaustive moral instruction of his readers. We are advised against anger and foul talk; against lies and impurity, slander and covetousness. Why, we must ask, why does any of this matter? If our minds are properly fixed on things above then why should they be troubled by these questions of behaviour? Surely they slip into irrelevance once our hearts are engaged on loftier business?

Well, no, they do not slip into irrelevance. They do not, and this explains my heretical answer to the Sunday supplement question. They do not because, as Paul says ‘you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God’. We have died the death of baptism, and in so dying we have received the new life that is God’s gracious gift to his people. The new life has begun; the new life is now. It has no end. It will be changed by death, of course, but it will not be ended by it.

Hence I feel discomfort at declaring my belief in life after death, and hence also I have a passion for declaring my belief in life and in the sanctity of life: in the potential for holiness of every life. Of course the starving of Africa matter; of course the threats to our planet’s survival matter; of course the debates over morality matter. They matter to Christians because it is in life today that God makes himself known; in life tomorrow that we will grow into our full stature as his children; and in life everlasting that we will stand before his throne. Amen.

Sunday 5 August 2007
Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 12-14, 18-23;
Colossians 3: 1-11;
Luke 12: 13-21.