“Now we do not want you to be uninformed, believers, about those who are asleep [in death], so that you will not grieve [for them] as the others do who have no hope [beyond this present life].” – Paul, 1 Thess. 4:13

This summer, many families of the Redeemer have been touched by death. I feel it is important to name the terrible and devastating reality of death, while also reminding us of the quiet, fierce hope that lies in the grave - hope woven deep within the story of Christianity.

Every human life will one day meet death. Religion, in its many forms, carries deep and enduring truths that have shaped human consciousness across time - truths that seek to help us name this mystery and craft rituals sturdy enough to hold its weight. Death, though inevitable, is understood and interpreted in countless ways. Christianity, however, is built upon a death - one so shattering, so steeped in mystery, that it opened a whole new world of meaning unforeseen, though glimpsed in the ancient prophecies of Israel. The crucifixion of Christ is inseparably bound to His resurrection, a sign that human nature itself will one day be raised - transformed - after it passes through the shadowed valley of death.

Unlike many other traditions, Christianity does not see death as a neutral inevitability but as the cost, the side effect, of creation and human nature “falling short” (hamartia, sin in Greek) of its deepest aim: to be a clear and radiant mirror of the Source that created us to reflect its endless love, life, and abundance. This is not easy to understand in light of evolutionary theory, where death appears as the very mechanism through which life arises and consciousness awakens.

What is important to hold here, though, is that God - the Source of everything - never intended death for creation. Death is not what beats in God’s heart. What beats there is life. And that is a revelation indeed, for when we look out at the world, it often seems that death and life are endlessly entangled.

And yet Christianity makes a startling claim: though God allows death, it is not God’s final intention for humanity or for creation. In Christ, God speaks another Word - a Word of life, abundant and inexhaustible. We know this not because of the crucifixion alone - though the cross reveals the depth of pain, violence, and death wrought by sin - but because of the witness of those who encountered the Risen Christ.

They testified to what the early church called “life after life after death” (as N.T. Wright so beautifully names it), and what St. Hildegard of Bingen called viriditas - greenness, freshness, the pulse of living hope. Resurrection is not some disembodied spirit floating away into the clouds. It is the breathtaking promise that our embodied humanity - our flesh, our stories, our loves - will one day breathe again in a wholeness and glory beyond anything we have yet known. This “new and strange” hope was, and still is, the heartbeat of the gospel. It is the good news.

Death, then, does not have the final word - not over the meaning of a human life, and not over anything at all. Yes, death is awful. It speaks a devastating word to the human race. Christians do not romanticize it, nor do we call it simply “natural.” Instead, we name it for what it is: an enemy—an enemy that, in the mystery of Christ, becomes a strange kind of sister (as St. Francis so tenderly said), but only in the radiant light of the resurrection of the dead. The last, final, and loudest Word of God is Life -true, endless, beautiful Life - that is already waiting for us, even now, on the other side of every ending.

And so we live here, in the in - between - in that sacred liminal space between the word of death and the final Word of Life - waiting for the sound of resurrection to echo through every shape and form that death takes in our lives.

Rev. Mike and I are here for you in life and in death, to hold space for you in the thresholds you face - whether that be miscarriage, the loss of a loved one, the death of a dream or hope, the loss of health, or the painful death of the hope of family. Please, never hesitate to reach out. Part of this vocation of ministry is the willingness - indeed, the longing - to be present with you, with loving attention, in this in-between time: the time between death and the undying Hope of Life.

With deepest sympathies and love,

Barrie Rose Bliss