Eight months after Robert died, I listened to the Easter day morning service on the radio. It was led by Richard Littledale, a Baptist minister whose wife had died the previous year after a long illness. He memorably spoke of the previous Easter Sunday. He had left the house early to lead the sunrise service. He remembers calling good-bye to her.
But this year, he reckoned she would be up celebrating far earlier than he was. For she is now in another country where there is no day nor night, where the resurrection of Jesus is a constant source of celebration. He spoke about this land where she lives, with a border crossing that he can see, but cannot pass through. Not yet.
He was writing a blog about his journey of grief. This has now been published as a book, Postcards from the Land of Grief. It comes highly recommended. Remarkably I am writing this nearly two years since he spoke on the radio. I can still remember what he said and its impact upon me.
This morning, the journalist, Zoe Strimpel, was speaking on the radio in A Point of View. She told the story of the German Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin, living in Paris in 1940 and desperate to escape. (Strimpel’s four Jewish grandparents had all left Germany in the 1930s.) Most countries, having filled their strict quotas of Jewish refugees, had closed their borders. Eventually he got a visa to America, a transit visa through Spain but no exit visa from France. There was a delay at the French-Spanish border. This was the final straw. So fearful, he took his own life.
Thousands and thousands of appallingly tragic stories have since been told about borders throughout the world being closed to refugees. International walls are being constructed, not broken down. During this pandemic, national citizens, let alone refugees, encounter challenges in crossing their own border. Lorries transporting goods between Europe and the ports around the UK are having serious troubles. Few people are travelling anywhere. But when able to travel, more paperwork will be needed, possibly including the possession of a vaccine passport.
I really like Richard Littledale’s image of death as a border crossing, the transition from this earth to a heavenly country. The writer to the Hebrews suggests this in chapter 11, writing about the Old Testament heroes of the faith, living before Christ.
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They only saw the things promised and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth... If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.
Their understanding of this ‘better country’, life beyond death, could only be limited. What is more the right paperwork was not yet available. The apostle Paul develops this idea of border crossing when he wrote to the Christians in Philippi. The correct paperwork was now available.
Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Followers of Christ have the rights of belonging to the country where Jesus is King. They are part of his family. Gaining citizenship of heaven is open to all. The documentation is not complicated. It can be completed in any language. Stretching the metaphor further, it is completed using the blood red ink of Jesus Christ.
He invites everyone to claim citizenship of his kingdom. This is on the understanding that in accepting the invitation they accept he died for the whole world and rose to new life. Fragile human bodies will be transformed to be appropriate for citizens of heaven.
All followers of Christ hold citizenship of the Kingdom of God and live as his citizens on earth. But when they eventually cross through the heavenly border, whether when they die or when Jesus returns to this earth, whichever is sooner, there will be no delay or hold-up. The land beyond is indescribable. Richard Littledale’s wife is there, as is Robert. This is a wonderfully rich metaphor to dwell on.
This is my story and a work in progress. I wrote this on Sunday 7th February 2021.
Sudden death... then what? 