What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.—Psalm 116:12-15 (ESV)I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.—1 Corinthians 15:50-57 (ESV)It’s been a long couple days. Sunday I had a meeting after church and places to be all afternoon, and then yesterday was my first funeral here in Indiana, as we buried one of the lovely old saints of this congregation, someone who’d been a part of the church here for 44 years. On the one hand, it was a real celebration of a woman who’d lived a remarkable life and blessed a great many people; we did not grieve as those who have no hope, nor did we weep for her, because no one had any doubt at all that she died in Christ. On the other hand, that doesn’t make our loss right now any less real, and it was a very emotional service.Still, I would have loved to have been able to bear witness to the Resurrection the way Sir Winston Churchill did at his state funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral. For most of the service, it was a very traditional Anglican funeral, but after the benediction, a bugler positioned high in the dome of St. Paul’s began to play Taps: “Day is done, gone the sun from the hills, from the earth, from the sky. Go to sleep, rest in peace, God is nigh.” Not typical procedure at an Anglican funeral, but normal for a military funeral, and so certainly fitting for Churchill. But no sooner had the last note faded to echoes than another bugler, positioned across the dome from the first, began to play Reveille—“It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning!” It was Churchill’s final testimony, that at the end of history, the last note will not be Taps, it will be Reveille—a Reveille to wake the very dead, as the trumpet will sound not an end but a beginning, not death but resurrection, and the end of all death. That is the promise of Easter; that is our hope in Christ.
