Let’s picture two death bed scenes.
The first person smiles and says, “I’m so ready to leave this broken world and broken body behind. None of this really matters now–heaven is my true home.
The second one isn’t miserable exactly, but they are also not exactly happy. It’s bittersweet. You can tell that she doesn’t really want to go. With tears in her eyes, she scratches out her concern, “I’m going to miss out on picking my blueberries this summer.”
Now be honest, you’re at the bedside of each of these people, does one of them sound more Christian to you? Does one sound less so?
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I think at first glance we might be prone to think that the second one might be a little too attached to this world. The first one we may assume is ready to meet Jesus. What if I told you, I think there might be cause for both hope or concern in BOTH the statements.
Let’s actually begin with our second person. Now it’s very possible that ol’ Miss Jenkins is a little too attached to her blueberries. She may very well be saying, “I’d rather pick blueberries than walk the streets of heaven with Jesus.” If that’s what she’s saying…well, that’s obviously problematic.
But she might just really like picking blueberries. And she might very well be glorifying God through her love of this. In the early church there was a dude named Irenaeus who was doing battle with some goobers that were teaching that “real” life is disembodied, spiritual, and detached from the material world.
That might not exactly trigger your HERESY button because the reality is Gnosticism (which Irenaeus was fighting) is alive and well. We tend to think that ordinary pleasures are distractions at best and evils at worst. The Gnostics thought our human body and the physical world were obstacles to divine life.
But Irenaeus and the early church pushed back. That’s why he said something close to “The glory of God is a man fully alive”. His point is that humanity as embodied creatures isn’t a mistake. And God is glorified not when humans escape creation, but when they live fully as God intended (that means body and soul in communion with Him).
In other words, Miss Jenkins may very well be glorifying God by enjoying picking those blueberries. If what she is expressing is a simple, embodied delight of being in God’s world, where she’s enjoying the sun on her skin, that squishy feeling of blueberries running through her wrinkled fingers, the taste, the smell, all of it just poring out life…if that’s what she means, then her mourning the loss of picking blueberries isn’t somehow “less” Christian. It might be Christianity fully alive. And we should weep with her, while at the same time holding out hope that she’s going to a place where the blueberries are going to be positively awesome.
Which is why we might say that Maude (our first person) may not be exactly in the super biblical position we had her in at first. She might fundamentally be a Gnostic that’ll be quite shocked to see the new heavens and new earth filled with beautiful blueberries and bodies and banquets.
To shrug at death and say, “none of this matters” isn’t faith. It’s forgetfulness. It’s missing out on the reality of an embodied faith. That is what Christianity has historically argued for. That’s why things like a BODILY resurrection matters to us.
But I suspect that what Maude was really trying to say is that her bones ache, and the morphine is making her into someone she doesn’t recognize, and that she’s ready to be with Jesus and get the party started. And she’ll save a seat at that banquet for her loved ones.
Christian hope holds two truths together. First, an ache to be with Jesus and a longing for the day when every tear is wiped away and every body is made new. But also, secondly, a love for the goodness still woven into God’s world and that truly hates death because it IS the enemy that takes away your summer blueberry pickin’.
