For a number of weeks I have been travelling in unfamiliar places.

In all of them I am an outsider knowing it would be so much easier if I was an insider knowing the culture, speaking the language, enjoying the friendships. In every place there is one thing very familiar which almost everyone is unfamiliar with… death.

Everyone has some relationship with it but no one wants a friendship with it. It presents itself in inscriptions, statues of the departed, places of remembrance, tombs and plaques.

It presents heroes, slaves, the persecuted, and holocausts.

Death is everywhere. It favours no one culture, it speaks every language, and even the living are on its guest list. Confronting? Absolutely! Grievous? Certainly! Any hope? Well that depends. 

As we travel there is clearly no one living in the world you can depend on when it comes to death. Has there ever been someone on earth who now, from the other side of death, beyond death, can help us through death to life?

There have been many who claimed to have the answer or be the answer and we have seen their tombs, the repositories of their bones. 

While in Israel we visited what is suggested to be the empty tomb of Jesus. I emphasise empty because there are no bones there.

Consistent with the historical records and evidence, the empty tomb points to the one who rose from the dead overcoming this cross cultural terror.

The death of Jesus Christ was significant in terms of reconciling people with the God we will meet moments after we die.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was significant for many reasons: it was a vindication of His divinity and power as well as vindicating his life and death work on our behalf; it made obvious that death is not the end and that all will die and face the judgement of God; and it offered hope to all who put their trust in Christ for an eternal life with God.  

Confronted by the international reality of death and the closing gap between us and it, Jesus Christ offers great news for a better death that ends in life.  

Bishop Berggrav of Norway was once asked what death is like for the Christian.

He said, “It is like the father who was heading to the market in the town on the other side of the river.

He woke early and his little boy asked if he could come as well.

Waving goodbye father and son headed off and reached the river which was in flood and the bridge damaged by the flood.

The little boy was scared but his father held his hand and they carefully made their way across the bridge.

As is the case for most fathers, they stayed longer than expected in town and the sun was setting as father and son made their way home.

As they headed down the road the little boy could hear the rushing river and he began to cry. He turned to his father and said, “We made it across the river carefully in the day light but we will never make it across the river in the dark.”

The Father picked the boy up held him close and the little fellow fell asleep on his Father’s shoulder.

The next morning he woke up in his own bed with his Father standing at the door, sunlight streaming in.”

Bishop Berggrav then said, “That is what death is like for the Christian. What you most fear you never experience.

You fall asleep in the arms of Jesus and wake up at home with your heavenly Father.   

Now there is a message every culture, language and people can take comfort from if only we are held in the arms of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

What a foundation for living!