Our hope is not escapism

For several days now I have had the song “I’ll Fly Away” stuck in my head.  The cheerful gospel chorus goes “I’ll fly away, Oh glory/I’ll fly a way (in the morning)/When I die, hallelujah, by and by/I’ll fly away.”

There is no denying that it is a catchy tune, but I wonder whether or not it is a healthy song for Christians to sing.

I have been to enough funerals in my life to know that the most common word of comfort given is the condolence “S/he is in a better place now.”  Indeed, all my life I have heard that the Christian’s hope is to go [i.e. die] and live with Jesus forever.

Honestly, this rings very hollow to me.  I have experienced enough death in my life to know that my comfort is not found in the fact that the one who died is in heaven with Jesus.  The fact that they are no longer in pain does not erase the death that they suffered to escape that pain.

The idea that death is an escape from this world of pain portrays this world as little more than a stepping stone.  This minimizes the extent of the effects of death, for death is more than the cessation of brain activity or the stoppage of the heart.  Death is felt everywhere, everyday.

When one’s body aches as their joints stiffen with age, there is death.  When a child’s stomach rumbles for lack of food, there is death.  When parking spaces are deemed more important than forests, there is death.  When relationships crumble, there is death.

Death is chaos.  Death is nothingness.  Death pervades all that we are.

And death was Jesus’ reason for coming.  Even now as sin has been conquered and liberation is proclaimed, all things remain in the shadow of that last enemy to be destroyed.

With the destruction of death comes the resurrection of the dead.  This doctrine was so important to Paul that he declares, “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, then we are of all people most to be pitied.”

This is why Jesus came: to surpass the finitude of the physical.  The forgiveness of sins and the empowerment to live in the present are only temporary fixes.  While Paul proclaims, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” to those who are spiritually dead now, this proclamation’s fulfillment will only come fully in the end, when the dead shall rise and God will be all in all.

Therefore, our hope is not that we will live with Jesus as disembodied souls in heaven, but that there will be a physical resurrection of all the dead.  A physical resurrection means that those who suffered from arthritis, hunger, loneliness, and actual death will be raised in glory, perfected of those sufferings.  And this is elating because with the death of death there is no need to fear life, for we can truly rejoice in the presence of God and those who have gone before us.