Some people criticize religion as make-belief comfort for people who are afraid of death. Personally, I have never longed to live for ever. A long life, yes please. But eternal life?

A boring afterlife?

As a fourteen year old child, the idea of life everlasting did not appeal to me at all. I could not imagine how living on and on and on could be a good thing. Worse, it scared me. I remember many nights of lying in my bed, fearing my sleepless incapacity to deal with infinity or eternity. The idea that there was no end to the universe (at least so I thought), that after every boundary there was another space, or time, or both would open up a dark hole within me, somewhere in my chest. It would grow and grow, and I would feel like falling down without ending. Even the memory of it, as I write this down now, unsettles me. In order to escape, I read my parents’ novels that would transport me to a different world – away from this time and space. I got really good at hearing them climb the stairs. I would switch off the light and continue with a flashlight under the blankets, until I would fall asleep over the words – as evidenced by my waking up the next morning. One night my mother came to me and asked me about it. Then she told me about the death of her older brother, when he was still in his twenties. He was terminally ill. As he died, my grandmother saw how his eyes lit up as if he saw something beautiful and welcoming. (Perhaps, I think now, he had had what researchers call a ‘Near-Death-Experience,’ for which there are competing explanations, when some people experience a welcoming light, sometimes in the presence of deceased loved ones.) That night, I slept better.

But I remained convinced that if there had to be a heaven, I would rather hope it to be a state of being, rather than the infinite recycling of time. I had to wait until I turned eighteen before I read Augustine’s Confessions and felt truly understood when I came to his beautiful book XI on the question of time and eternity. For Augustine the two are very different concepts: time is part of this created universe, but God’s eternal presence is beyond it. In him, time does not pass.

Jesus does not look down on those who long to meet their loved ones again 

The Sadducees formed a religious elite around the high-priestly families who ruled Judaea in co-operation with the Roman governor. They were well-bred, well-educated and well-to-do. The life of this 1% was so much better than that of the masses who struggled in poverty and slavery. The Pharisees, their political opponents, took their strength from the masses. They painted a hopeful future in which the righteous poor would be resurrected and raised above their oppressors. Many Sadducees looked down on the people who clung to such beliefs. For them, only the Thora provided the basis for a good life - their life - in this world. They did not take prophetic visions or poetic language in the psalms literally. Why would they?

And then there is this Jesus, the latest peasant-turned-prophet whom the masses follow. Obviously, he must be as misinformed as the others. Now he has come to the temple - the temple they control - to teach the people about God. A group of Sadducees goes out to confront him and paint a scenario to expose the resurrection as something that is contradicted by the Thora itself. The Thora assumes that a farm would be inherited by the same family throughout the generations, to care for aging parents and preserve their names. Therefore, the Thora encourages a man to marry his brother’s childless widow, to father an heir (literally, ‘a sperm’) in the name of the deceased, to preserve his name and give the widow a future (Deuteronomy 25:5-7). “In that scenario,” the Sadducees ask, “can you imagine the disorder and shame if the deceased would be resurrected from the dead and claim his wife and property?”

Jesus does not allow them to present a strawman that misrepresents and mocks the faith of his people. No sane person would want to be resurrected to live a life of suffering forever and ever. It is through death and reproduction that life is renewed on earth. For Jesus the resurrection is already about living as the angels before their heavenly Father’s throne, but that does not mean that what is referred to is not real - it is just a different reality. And then he does something that nobody expected: he turns to the basis he shared with the Sadducees – the Thora itself. Jesus’ faith is not based on our mortal reality, but on the character of God as revealed in the Thora, when Moses had the profound spiritual experience that sent him off to liberate his people out of Egypt’s slavery. For God, who reveals himself as the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the generations before us have not passed into oblivion. They are alive in his presence. Not in some distant future, but today. Always.

Some Thora-teachers, likely Pharisees who had been arguing with Jesus before, were positively surprised: “well-said, Rabbi!”

Throughout the history of mankind, people have experienced continuing bonds with their deceased loved ones. Some people look at the stars and imagine their parents looking down on them with kindness. Others keep their memory alive, as no one who is still remembered has truly died. Yet others build monuments for themselves to be remembered by, both today and in antiquity. Well-to-do citizens in early Roman Egypt had portraits of their loved ones painted, just after their death. When these were rediscovered in the desert oasis of Fayum, archaeologists were stunned. Here were men, women, and children of all ages and a variety of ethnic backgrounds looking at them, just as they could have met them in the streets of modern Cairo. But the people who had wanted to remember them have long past away. If their eyes could truly see again, they would not have recognized the place and certainly not the museums in which we can admire them today. But something can happen to us when we look them in the eye. 

God keeps the memory of David alive

The 56th Psalm revives David’s fears as a refugee among his enemies. He has no place to call home, no people to protect him. He has nothing but this inner knowing: ‘God is with me.’ But while he clings to that, his fear is not miraculously taken away, the dangers are still very real. Knowing he might die and that his memory may be damned by his opponents, there is one thing that gives him comfort (56:8):

My wanderings you did count,
my teardrops you caught in your wineskin
These are in your book.

David’s legacy does not have to depend on human memory and doubtful appreciation. For David, the one stable thought is that the eternal God will not forget him. Because God lives within him, his live is preserved within God. That is what gives the last line a deeper meaning, beyond the fact that he survived his ordeal (56:13):

For you have delivered my soul from death and my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before God in the light of the living.

To know God is to live

So what then is eternal life? The apostle John, the last of the apostles to survive, taught his community that they had already been given eternal life because they had come to know the Son of God (I John 5:11). In John 17, in his farewell prayer for his disciples, Jesus says that “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” And sending them into the world, he concludes his prayer (John 17:25-26):

“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and [my disciples] know that you have sent me. I have made your name [your true character] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

For John, God is love (I John 4:8). And Paul, in his ode to love, describes the ultimate form of Love as knowing God intimately (I Corinthians 13:12):

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

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Suggestions for dialogue

A moderator can explain the dialogue steps and invite people to contribute:

• Check in with yourself. Share with each other how you are in this moment. Then take a moment again to seek stillness, humility and openness. 
• First round: Share something from the text or image(s) that stood out to you and that you would like to explore with the group, briefly indicating the thoughts and feelings that it evoked within you. Listen to the others do the same: what resonates with you? Responses in this round should be limited to questions for clarification.
• Second round: Name one or two things that resonated with you from the things that others just shared. 
• Third round: Having heard the group, the moderator names the main topics for exploration. The moderator may also propose a common thread that emerged in several topics. The exploration normally starts with asking the person(s) who brought up the topic to expand on it.
• Leave room for silence and contemplation. 
• Check out by sharing what you take home from this dialogue.

These suggestions are an adaptation of the Estuary protocol. Look for more at https://www.estuaryhub.com