I am at “that” age.  The second half has begun, there is more salt than pepper in my hair. I am living out Ed Sheeran’s prophecy where “…my legs don’t work like they used to”.  My focus has also shifted, now rather than think about what I am going to do with my life I am starting to think about what I am leaving behind, my legacy.  

Without the resurrection, legacy becomes an essential for the meaning of life.  We need to know that we will be remembered when we die so something will live on and our life, the suffering and sacrifices we have made, will have some significance.  

This is not a new idea.  As he explores the ancient world’s view of death and resurrection N.T. Wright makes this broad generalisation:  

“Many went further (at all levels of culture), and effectively denied the dead any real existence whatever. ‘I wasn’t, I was, I am not, I don’t care”: this epitaph was so well known that it was often reduced on tombstones to its initial letters, in Latin as well as Greek.  The only real immortality many decided, was fame. “A name and a beautiful image” was the most one could hope for.”¹  

This is highlighted in the decision that Achilles faces in the epic The Iliad:

“…two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies.”²

Does he chose the longer, ordinary life of comfort or a shorter life of eternal glory for his name?  Not-so-spoiler alert: he chooses the latter which is why we talk about in him 2023!  But his choice came from the desire to leave a legacy as a famous warrior, this is what drives him as a character throughout the saga.

This is not unlike the career corporate life today.  If there is no resurrection then I need to make a name that people will remember.  I need to be seen as the next “Steve Jobs” or the next “Bill Gates”.  The one who made a name that people will remember after I die.  This will involve sacrifice.  My family, even my health may suffer, but name will live on.  The spirit of Achilles is alive and well in the corporate office.  This is without stopping to acknowledge the literal millions of people who have tried to climb the ladder to recognition and been forgotten.  Some may have made it to a generation or two, but then no more.

The natural thing would be for us to reflect on how the resurrection changes the way we think biblically about legacy.  I am sure others have done this. But I would rather reflect more specifically about the pattern of legacy in the Bible.

Legacy, as a word, is not found the Bible.  But the concept is there, just not the way we are used to thinking of it.  Abraham had a legacy of the promises made to him, that he passed on to his descendants (Genesis 26:3).  Moses had a legacy of leading the people out of slavery and yet did not fulfil this legacy of leading them into the promised land, this was a leadership role he passed on to Joshua (Deuteronomy 1:37-38).  David wanted the legacy of building the temple, but this was passed onto his son Solomon (2 Samuel 7:13).  Elijah passed on his legacy to Elisha (2 Kings 2:9-12).  Paul commissioned Timothy and asked him to pass on what he had (2 Timothy 2:2).  The whole point of legacy in the Bible is that it is something that we pass on.

It is not about us, at least us as individuals who pass through time, making a name for ourselves.  It is about the community of God’s people had how he, as the timeless God, uses us and to pass on the work God has given to us to do.  What is remembered is the gospel, not our names.

In his book, Strength to Strength, a book written to people like me who are facing the second half of their lives, Arthur Brooks describes this as being like the aspen grove.  He described a walk through a forest where he is impressed by an aspen tree.  It is tall and impressive, like the legacy one might be aspiring to be in the corporate world.  But this is an illusion:

“The aspen tree, it turns out, is not a solitary majesty, as I learned by sheer coincidence later that day from a friend who knows a lot more about trees than I do. He explained to me that each “individual” tree forms part of an enormous root system. In fact, the aspen is the largest living organism in the world; one stand of aspens in Utah called “Pando” spans 106 acres and weighs 6 million kilograms.”³

It’s a part of a larger network of organic relationships.  Each tree might appear alone, but it is connected to others.  This is the way we need to view legacy as what is passed on rather than what is remembered.

Of course you do not have to wait until you are hitting that middle aged crisis to be able to begin this, in fact it should be a part of the air we breathe, the DNA we share.  When Paul asks Timothy to pass on what he has learned from others, he is not to wait till a certain age.  He is to do it now.  As we should, as you, reader should be doing now.

Footnotes

1. Emphasis mine. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p34.  I should note that Wright then goes to explain that the actual view of the ancient world was far more nuanced that this.
2. Homer, The Iliad Book 9, Line 500.
3. Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength, p104.