A time to be born, and a time to die... Ecclesiastes 3v2

My father-in-law Len’s funeral was on 8th April.

First, let me tell you about another 8th April, a long time ago, which fell on a Good Friday:
At about 1.30am my wife Cindy began to feel a bit uneasy and started wandering around the bedroom. So we got the neighbour to come and look after our little daughter Sarah and drove to Hospital in the firm’s Mini. Cindy didn’t sit on the seat for the whole journey, the traffic lights were all thankfully green. Ten minutes after we arrived, our son Matthew was born. Five minutes later, the call went up… 'Quick, there’s another…' and Stephen came into the world. We went in expecting one baby and came out with two! It was an unforgettable day !

The 8th April this year was also an amazing day…. The little chapel at Huttoft was packed with 200 people (it only holds 150).People remarked later that they had never been to such a funeral. It was a real celebration of Len’s long life. Many memories, yes, but also a resounding affirmation of Christian hope…. ‘Len is now with his Lord’. As Mother-in-law stated when she viewed his coffin the day before… ‘He’s not there, y’know’ and not for one moment did she doubt that we should be celebrating his promotion to glory.

Len’s brother’s funeral was on 22nd February, a number of years ago. It was a sad day for him. He propped himself up in a corner of the church and endured a grim memorial service. He came away thoroughly depressed by the whole thing.
While he was there, Cindy and I had been visiting the hospital again! Joanna was born in the afternoon and Sarah phoned to tell Len and Joyce just as they arrived back from the funeral. Len’s low spirits evaporated and he was full of joy.
Jo was to be the last of his grandchildren…(thereafter great-grandchildren began to appear...no.8 is due next month). It was a day he always remembered and often spoke about.

O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Psalm 30 v3-5

The really good news gospel

If you are a watcher of the blog of Martyn Atkins, President of the Methodist Conference, I apologise for repeating what you have already seen.
But for the sake of a wider audience....

The really good news gospel - Easter message from the President

Donald English used to say that death and resurrection is not simply what happened to Jesus but is the deep movement God implants in all creation. The Christian God is a God of death and resurrection.

Like many I have been challenged by poignant examples of death - its reality and hard consequences - and blessed by wonderful examples of resurrection - and the hope and joy it brings. I will never forget a conversation with a Sierra Leonian man, bearing the scars of the rebel war in the 1990’s so powerfully depicted in the recent film Blood Diamond. He thanked me fervently for bringing the gospel to his land - he talked to me as if I was one of those first Methodist missionaries to West Africa! He explained with deep emotion how he had received Christ quite recently, in the war years, and this coming to faith had enabled him to begin to forgive those who mutilated him - and, as I learned a little later, killed his wife. I was moved to tears. In all his pain and lasting disability he knew that Jesus was alive, and there was hope in his life. He knew in a deep way that the gospel of Christ truly is good news.

More recently, when in Uganda with MRDF, I met Christian folk who have so little, who live with the reality and proximity of death and suffering in a way I do not, yet who remind me more than most of the life and hope of Christian faith. Death and resurrection belong together.

Or I think of some friends who have died in recent times. They knew their prognosis. They lived with the stark consequences of their impending death, for themselves and especially their loved ones. And at just the time when hope might be most lacking in these dear people and those who love them, they talk of the nearness of Christ, the wonderful love and forgiveness of God, the comfort of their faith, their trust in Jesus, the salvation he freely gave and their hope of heaven. In the most traumatic situations of life, it is often those going through them who embody and make clear that the Christian gospel truly is good news.

Death and resurrection is also evident in the life of our churches. I was at Walworth Methodist Church some weeks ago. A church with a venerable past, ‘Clubland’ had a great ministry among local youths and others in that London neighbourhood. But there came a time when almost all signs of life disappeared, and a long three days of darkness ensued. But resurrection has come and new life bursts out everywhere. Methodist Christians, young and old, many (originally) from various parts of West Africa and beyond, share life and worship that exudes the good news gospel. “Our world lives with death and resurrection in many ways and in many places. An ‘average’ news broadcast gives cause to both weep and rejoice. In places of death and darkness we must continue to weep with those who weep and ‘look for the morning’ as people of resurrection faith and hope. With those who rejoice in life and hope we must celebrate and point to God, the giver of it all.

Our Easter faith is not death or resurrection, it is death and resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is not a reversal of death. It is much more than that. The risen Jesus is known by the scars of crucifixion. He is the Living One Who Died. But now he is alive forever. And, marvellously, he stands today with this needy world in the reality of death and the promise of new life. This ministry he shares with us, his Easter People Church, a people bearing the marks of both death and new life. A people who know and live out the profound truth that death and resurrection life both lie deep in the purposes of God, in whom all things will be well.
Alleluia!

blog of President and Vice-President:
http://www.methodist-presandvp.blogspot.com/

He is not here. He is risen

ON 16 FEBRUARY 1977, Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda had a meeting with President Idi Amin, whose murderous regime he had opposed outspokenly. After the meeting, the Archbishop was driven away, along with two government ministers. Uganda Radio announced that the three of them had been arrested, and the following morning it was stated that they had died in a car accident.
In fact, they had been shot on the orders of Amin. A funeral service planned for the following Sunday was forbidden by the government, and the Archbishop's body was not released. Nevertheless, thousands gathered at the cathedral on Namirembe Hill, and the service went ahead around an open grave.

Standing over the empty grave, Luwum's successor, Archbishop Wani, repeated the message of the angel that we hear at Easter: "He is not here. He is risen!"

"He is not here. He is risen!"

And, according to Matthew, the angel adds: "He is going ahead of you to Galilee."
To seek the risen Christ is about moving on; "to go ahead to Galilee".
to live
in hope..
"Christian hope", Jürgen Moltmann writes, "sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands." "Those who hope in Christ", he continues, "can no longer put up with reality as it is. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present."

Janani Luwum understood that belief in the risen Christ entails a commitment to a better world, to"the Kingdom of God". Such a commitment will mean from time to time challenging the powers that be....resulting in our unpopularity, damage to our reputations, desertion by our friends, and worse. For Janani Luwum, it meant martyrdom.

As they gathered round the empty grave of their Archbishop, murdered and risen, they sang of another world, better than this one at its best. That world, too, is promised, and Moltmann will forgive us for sometimes pining for it. But - one world at a time - it is in this one, this Easter, that we must seek the risen Christ.

thanks to John Pridmore. I have edited and added to his article at http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=53492