The number now is over 100. 

Some in that number were popular, some were not. Some had boatloads of money, others were dirt poor. A few were murdered, a number were casualties of car accidents, while others simply slipped away in the quiet of a silent night.

Young, old, teens, tweens, parents, grandparents, lonely singles, happily married and a few babies. Now each one of the 100 is stone cold, buried under six feet of dirt.

One in that number was my dearest dad. One was my wife’s sweet mom. One was a good friend. One was a newly divorced man I was just getting to know. All of them…dead.

“Truly no man can ransom another,
or give to God the price of his life,
for the ransom of their life is costly
and can never suffice,
that he should live on forever
and never see the pit.
For he sees that even the wise die.”

I’ve helped bury Christians, Agnostics, criminals and Atheists. I once saw a man die who no longer knew his name so I am not even sure he knew what he believed. Everyone dies, irrespective of ideology, faith or obstinate stiff upper lip they think they can present to face off death’s real onslaught. I say, “Good luck with that!”

I just read this quote today given to exhort preachers like me, “Preachers need to challenge the current worldview, in ways that force us to see that we humans are not in charge of the world we call our own, that we are in the midst of a crisis we do not fully comprehend. Arrogantly convinced that we live, we do not fully appreciate the consequence of having been captured by death, walking unwittingly under its control…we are the living dead.”

So if that is true, then what? What is the answer for mankind? Dirt, decay, worms, dust and then nothing left but some forgotten fragments of bone? A random strand of hair?

Before you answer, ask yourself, what if Jesus never existed? Or what if Jesus was still dead and buried? What if you could no longer count on the hope everyone has stolen or expected from him? What then? No one knows. The brilliant minds are still baffled by the moment after you take that final breath. No matter how hard we try to fight it off, death still is able to sink its teeth in the hardest and most stubborn ones of us.

You see, there is no one other than Jesus who died and came back to tell us about what lies beyond. He alone went through the inky black curtain of Sheol and came back to report. Besides him, no one else offers any chance at hope, firm solid “bet your life on it” hope. People can only mutter faint whispers of childish wishes and a fool’s dream – but they have no good reason to believe these dreams other than ” because I want them to be true”. The Rolling Stones were right you know? “You can’t always get what you want.”

Atheists say we return to the dust from which we came. But they really don’t believe that, they can’t believe that. Their passion for living betrays their cold calculations on dying. Why do they fight for meaning if there is no meaning to be had? Because they live off the borrowed hope of Jesus.

That is why when a dear mother of the bitter stoic atheist dies they still long to hear their irrational wish spoken that “she is in a better place.” But c’mon man! Their belief doesn’t support that. The love they had was only a pipe dream, a mirage, a romantic tug on the heart. Nothing more, right? The love they had was only for a walking, talking piece of dirt. Our ultimate future is really what defines us after all.

Buddhists don’t believe in a real afterlife, for them, it is dreams and illusions … and yet they still pray to their ancestors long dead. They call on them by name, as if they really were and are real. Because they know that belief in nothing offers nothing. They too are stealing hope from Jesus. So too the Muslim jihadist, the Hindu monk, and the agnostic free-loader. All are being held up by the one possibility only Jesus procured.

It is here why I believe. Jesus alone will allow me to see my father again. Jesus will allow me to finally become my true self after I die. No one else can promise me that. Here is what Jesus promised, “I am the resurrection and the life, Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” Yet shall he live! Brian Blount says it like this, “For God to save us from death, God must invade. God’s primary weapon is resurrection.”

Resurrection is a weapon. God’s weapon against death.

It sets everything that has gone wrong, right. It is the only thing that gives my struggle, your struggle meaning. It is the key that unlocks the Christian message. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 that if resurrection was not true everything would implode. Preaching would become the occupation of liars, church would be a congregation of the fooled, and Christ himself would no longer be champion of the dead. His future would have been sealed when he was buried, and for 2,000 years he has been left to rot. Hope would fade back to wish, solid faith into meaningless dreams. And where do you think that would leave us? As sinners still under the wrath of an angry God.

The reason I am a Christian is because I am banking on one thing and one thing only, I have thrown all my chips in, put all my eggs in one basket, “On the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). That is all I have. That is why I am a Christian.

If you don’t have it, what else you got?