All Souls Day
"Where do we go from here" is a question we hear so often. The question is often born out of confusion and being at a loss. It was a question on the lips of the people of Israel every day spent in exile in Babylon. It was in answer to that question that prophet of the exile, Isaiah, presented his confused people with a vision of their future. They wandered in the desert for forty years in search of that vision, that Promised Land. But in the desert the question only intensified. They tormented Moses with their questions, almost to the point of insanity. 'Where do we go from here? Shall we turn back? Is the Promised Land sufficiently attractive to impel us to go on?'
The Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy concludes with the death of Moses, on the banks of the River Jordan in the valley of Moab. The author tells us that he was one hundred and twenty years when he died, 'yet his eyes undimmed, his vigour unimpaired.' Moses, despite his great age, died with a massive sense of disappointment. He left the main project of his life unfinished: He had dedicated the greatest part of his life to leading his people towards the Promised Land. He died on the banks of the Jordan, just short of realising his dream.
But the experience of Moses is common to humanity in general: from our perspective on this side of the Jordan, death robs us of our dreams, the dreams we had for our friends and loved ones, and the dreams we had for ourselves. But, like the Israelites, we cannot remain forever with the body of our fallen friend or leader. We must move on. The Israelites buried the body of Moses in the Plains of Moab; wept for Moses for thirty days. They then pulled up their tents, left his grave unmarked and moved on under a new leader, Joshua, to cross the Jordan for the Promised Land.
The next book of the bible, the Book of Joshua, takes up the story. The Ark of the Covenant, containing the book of the Law, is being carried by twelve Levitical priests. The ark always goes before the people. "When you see the Ark of the Covenant being carried by your priests, you will leave your positions and follow it, so that you may know the way to take since you have not gone this way before." At harvest time the Jordan is in spate, a ford forms and the people of Israel follow the Ark of the Covenant into the Promised Land across a bridge they had never walked before and would never walk again.
The Jewish believer saw this is the great symbol of death. 'You have not passed this way before'. Death will be a whole new and experience for us all. But, like the Jews, God will travel that bridge with us. This is the Good New that we so often hear about.
Perhaps the Promised Land, or heaven, or whatever it is, is wishful thinking? Pie in the sky when you die, as Marx held? Yet this conviction has been notoriously persistent in every culture? But what it then? Another chance to play the game, but this time with an infinitely better pack of cards? Hardly, but we just can't imagine what it will be like. But we do know that we are notoriously reluctant to cross the Jordan bridge.
We can no more imagine what heaven will be like any more than a baby in the womb could imagine what life will be like. How could a baby imagine how its days will be filled, or that it will even have days? No wonder the baby screams on being ejected from the womb? Where do we go from here, it might well ask? How could it imagine cycling, skateboarding, growing up, going to school... But, from all this speculation, there is one certainty: Would you go back to the womb? Would the dead come back? Very few would elect to go back to the womb. There are very few who reject the life that has been offered.
When faced with death, we are as ignorant as the baby in the womb. We know for sure that we can only reach our destination by leaving where we are. The bridge we have to cross is death. Like the people of Israel, we have not walked this way before. But when we leave this side of the Jordan for the Promised Land, we know that we travel with God. We travel over the bridge that is God's Presence and we are prayed God's Speed on our way by a host of brothers and sisters who have gone before us already to the Promised Land, and those who remain behind us in support on the banks of the Jordan. We will survive while the question, where do we go from here will evaporate.