Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

In today’s Gospel lesson From John’s Gospel (5:19-29), we hear Jesus tell the disciples about serious realities. He states clearly that anyone who dies (all of us) will be raised to life, and that Jesus will judge the living and the dead: “those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation” (verse 29).

Drawing upon the funeral hymns of St. John of Damascus and of the Orthodox Funeral Rite for the Burial of Priests (John Tavener's Funeral Ikos, specifically), here are my in-the-moment contemplations on the process of death and whatever comes after it:

1) We know very little about what comes next. We also come face to face with the the absolute otherness and unfathomable nature of God. He isn’t simply a “greater” version of ourselves or a demiurge in the skies. We may console ourselves with various biblical or hymnic texts to explain what comes next, but the reality is that once our last breath crosses our lips, we are not in control. The adventure begins. And where will it lead?

2) Jesus will be our judge after the resurrection. The Scriptures repeat this idea, and Jesus iterates it in this Gospel lesson. Jesus (the “Son of Man”) will judge us based on the way we love and serve him by doing the same to the least in our midst: the hungry, the naked, the sick, the stranger, the imprisoned. Jesus was all of these things too.

3) What is left for us now but to “enter into Christ” in the here and but to live in the sacramental presence of Christ (baptism and Eucharist), to stand humbly before God in prayer (as one who does not comprehend God, but asks to be filled), and to serve the least.

4) Clearly, the culture around us is bonkers and is uninterested in the above. As we get sucked in, we become too busy chasing all of its impedimenta (wealth, accolades, and credentials) to want it either.

Nonetheless, we are all going to stand before Christ.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin