'By his rising to life again hath restored to us everlasting life': Easter faith and the life everlasting

Above all we praise you

for the glorious resurrection of your Son

Jesus Christ our Lord,

the true paschal lamb who was sacrificed for us;

by dying he destroyed our death;

by rising he restored our life ...

The above is the proper preface for Easter in the Church of Ireland BCP 2004.  There are a number of significant contrasts with the 1662 preface but what has particularly caught my attention this Easter is the final line.  1662 ends with "and by his rising again hath restored to us everlasting life" (emphasis added).  Indeed, this is also seen in the equivalent preface in the CofE's Common Worship, TEC's BCP 1979, and Canada's BAS.  Ireland 2004, however, appears to be embarrassed by the idea of connecting the Resurrection with everlasting life.

That said, perhaps Ireland 2004's Easter preface does have the merit of more accurately reflecting the contemporary emphasis in much theology and Easter preaching, what we might describe as the 'we believe in life before death' emphasis.  To give an example of this, consider the closing paragraph of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Easter Day sermon:

We can go on as before Covid, where the most powerful and the richest gain and so many fall behind. We have seen where that left us. Or we can go with the flooding life and purpose of the resurrection of Jesus, which changes all things, and choose a better future for all. The overwhelming generosity of God to us should inspire the same by us, in everything from private acts of love and charity to international aid generously maintained. We have received overwhelmingly, so let us give generously.

This, of course, is not in itself wrong.  The Resurrection does have consequences for life now.  But the Easter proclamation transforms our understanding of the human horizon, for in the Resurrection our Lord Jesus Christ has 'become the firstfruits of them that slept' (1 Corinthians 15:20).  In the Resurrection we see the One who 'who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light' (2 Timothy 1:10).  The Easter proclamation must necessarily, therefore, be oriented to the creedal affirmations which are the primary expression of the Easter hope:

The Resurrection of the body; And the life everlasting (Apostles' Creed);

And I look for the Resurrection of the dead, And the life of the world to come (Nicene Creed).

To give a classical example of preaching which proclaims this hope, we might turn to a sermon by Tillotson:

Again, we have hereby full assurance of a blessed immortality in another life, because in our nature, death and all the powers of darkness were baffled and overcome. The death of Christ, which could not have been without his incarnation, and likewise his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, are sensible demonstrations to all man kind of a blessed immortality after death (Sermon XLVI, Works Volume III).

A contemporary proclamation of this hope would also have significant cultural resonance.  As the 2013 Theos report The Spirit of Things Unseen: belief in post-religious Britain showed, 54% of British people had some form of belief in an afterlife, with 33% of the nonreligious agreeing with some form of afterlife compared to "only 25% of the non-religious agreed that 'humans are purely material beings with no spiritual element'". As the report concludes, "Such beliefs are to be found across the age ranges" and "are clearly not the preserve of the 'religious' but are to be found across religious and non-religious groups".

In other words, the contemporary Church's 'we believe in life before death' emphasis - an embarrassment concerning immortality in the light of the Resurrection - fails to connect with or recognise the not insignificant ongoing cultural beliefs in some form of life after death.

Graham Tomlin, Bishop of Kensington, has also drawn attention to the need for the Church to speak into the cultural context shaped by Covid-19.  Writing in The Times in February, he said:

Mortality, which we normally keep at arm’s length, has come muscling into our living rooms and thrust its ugly face right up to ours.

In such a context, the Church should be confident in confronting the realities of mortality and death with the hope of 'the life everlasting':

Christians who approach death believe that Christ walked this path before them, will walk this frightening journey alongside them, and will even be waiting with a welcome on the other side as the one who conquered death.

Tomlin ended his article with a reaffirmation of the Church's hope in 'the life everlasting', demonstrating how this could be done in a tone suitable for a secular newspaper and a secular culture::

Maybe the lesson of these times is to be prepared, to look at this life in the light of death and strangely find it can mean more when we remember it won't last for ever, and that death, like birth, could even be the gateway to something even more wonderful than this world that awaited us on the day we were born.

Mindful of wider cultural openness to belief in life after death, mindful too of the current context of a pandemic which has confronted modern societies with the reality of mortality in a manner not witnessed in recent times, a confident proclamation of the Resurrection which "hath restored to us everlasting life" should mark the teaching of the contemporary Church.  In its absence, not only does the Church appear to collude with a desiccated, materialist understanding of the human person, but it also fails in its central vocation to bear witness to the Resurrection of the Lord.

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen.