The last battle

To my old parish of Holy Trinity, Redhill for the funeral of John, my former church manager, colleague, friend and brother in Christ - and a full church which had gathered to give thanks for John's life and say farewell to him after his long and arduous battle with a cruel disease.

John had chosen all the component parts of today's service and he particularly wanted the sermon to focus on the words of Revelation 21.4: ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

It was an apt choice and it focussed our thoughts - as John's thoughts had increasingly focussed - on the life of the world to come, on the new heaven and the new earth, and God's own ultimate antidote to the sufferings of this life.

On the last page of the last book of the Narnia series, The Last Battle, CS Lewis writes as follows, in an echo of Revelation 21,words which I shared it with the congregation today:

“There was  a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are–as you used to call it in the Shadowlands–dead.  The term is over:  the holidays have begun.  The dream is ended:  this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.  And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page:  now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read:  which goes on forever:  in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

In Tom Wright's phrase, Christians believe in life after life after death - not eternity spent floating on a heavenly cloud- but life in newly re-created universe: 'Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and......  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.'

That was John's hope and that is our Christian hope.