“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection . . .”
Requiem Mass
The Reverend Dr. Steven Peay
20th Dean of Nashotah House Theological Seminary
September 19, 2020
St. Mary’s Chapel
Homily Delivered by Garwood P. Anderson, Ph.D., President and Provost, Professor of New Testament, Nashotah House
“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection . . .”
A gathering of clergy and people of the church will no doubt recognize those words from our Burial Office. I trust you would also agree with me that, were it not for their familiarity, they are an unusual combination of words. In colloquial English, “sure and certain” . . . and . . . “hope” would be viewed as something like opposites, a study in contrasts. They would not normally make up a singular phrase. In our everyday language, “hope” is something more like a “wish,” and “sure and certain” are words used for what our empirical faculties can prove, in which case a “resurrection” is a remnant of wishful thinking from a people less empirical than ourselves.
How stunningly different, then, are the words of our Lord, which authorize the words of this prayer: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26 RSV).
Again, how markedly different are words of Saint Paul: “[W]e do not lose heart. Though our outer person is wasting away, our inner person is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:16-18 RSV).
These words also differ from the habits of mind of even “good Christian people” that we do well to let them provoke us before they comfort us. The claim here is that there is a more real reality than this so-called “real world” that we access by the limited means of our senses. There is more to the world than our finite bodies and our limited senses can access. The temporal world which preoccupies us, the empirical world that often overwhelms us, is not the entirety of the world. Transient and temporal, it is a fragment of an even more real and encompassing world.
From the vantage of that more real world, Saint Paul says our present troubles are but a slight, momentary affliction preparing us for an eternal weight of glory. But it is not, as is so often supposed, merely that we are destined to a life longer in duration than this one. It is not just that we await a trouble-free future. Thanks be to God, both are true. But there is more.
That very resurrection life of Jesus in which we hope and for which we are destined is already at work in us. Already we are alive in him and he is alive in us. We are already raised to newness of life, already seated in the heavenly places, already inhabiting a life eternal. While these slight and momentary afflictions of our decaying tents would tell us otherwise, they are not the whole story. Our Lord Jesus told us the whole story. More importantly, our Lord Jesus has lived the whole story, becoming our pioneer and pattern.
The whole story is that while we suffer the inevitable decay of these tents we call bodies, the resurrection life of Jesus is flourishing, coursing through, bursting forth, preparing us to be worthy inhabitants of a building from God, a house not made with human hands, eternal in the heavens.
And as we grieve the decline of these tents, as we mourn the temporal loss of a brother—as well we ought—we contemplate a life changed, not ended. And we fix our eyes ever more clearly on the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, our great High Priest who has passed through the heavens before us.
“Therefore, beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because we know that in the Lord our labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58 NRS).