A Sermon Based Upon 1 John 3: 1-3
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
April 9th, 2017, The Apostle’s Creed 15/15
An airplane full of tourists was returning
from a cruise in Florida. The holiday mood and the party continued as they took
off. There was much excitement on the
flight, except for one woman who was clearly in some difficulty. One of the stewards noticed she wasn’t well,
and asked if there was a doctor on board. Two doctors immediately came forward
and started attending to her, but after about five minutes she died, right
there in her seat. Death came suddenly and spoiled the after-cruise party.
As you can imagine the mood in the
airplane changed in an instant. The
pilot made an emergency landing at the next major airport and the body of the
woman was taken away. After about ten minutes the flight continued, but the
sense of shock remained. There happened
to be a Christian minister on board, and he went to the chief steward and
introduced himself. He said if there was anything he could do to help, or if
any of the passengers needed someone to talk to, he was available. The chief steward said, “Oh I think everyone
will be okay. The captain has told us to give them all free drinks. That’ll
make them feel better.”
And that’s how the non-believing world
deals with death. “Let’s just give them
all free drinks, and they’ll feel better.”
http://howickpresbyterian.weebly.com/sermon-archive/i-believe-in-the-resurrection-of-the-body-and-the-life-everlasting-28-july-2013
Today we come to the concluding phrase
in the Apostle’s Creed: “The Resurrection of the Body and Everlasting
Life.” While ‘The Resurrection of the Body’ remains mysterious to each of us, I certainly
hope we have much more hope than trying to ‘feel better’ with ‘free
drinks.’ Most of us have some sort of
concept of ‘eternal life’. Most of us think of ‘going to heaven when we die’. It goes
to the heart of our Christian hope to trust that when we die, we will
immediately be in the presence of God: “To
be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6, KJV).” Also, when Jesus was on the cross, he told one
of the thieves crucified with him: “Today,
you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:43).”
Of course, as Christians, we believe
that when we die there is more to come.
But have you ever wondered why the Christian faith speaks of ‘the resurrection of the body’? What did Paul mean when the said ‘the dead in Christ will rise first?’ Why do we pray ‘thy kingdom come’, and why do we hope for ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ and most of all, why will we need a
body? And if all we are look forward to
is “going to heaven” why has the
traditional practice been to bury people in church cemeteries facing east? With our loss of faith, this practice is only
beginning to wane in the United States.
Still, over 70 percent of the cemeteries have graves facing East. Why? Both of our cemeteries, Flat Rock’s which was
established in the 18th century, and Zion’s which was established in
the 19th century, are both facing that way. Personally, I think most all cemeteries in
Iredell and Yadkin County face east.
So, here’s my question: If we are all ONLY going to heaven when we
die, then why did my forefathers and your forefathers decide to bury people in
hope that one day, when Christ returns, there would actually be ‘a resurrection of the body’? What is it about our Christian faith created
a respect, honor for the human body?
This faith included a hope that somehow, someway, the future would not
be reincarnation, not just the
immortality of the soul, and not only going to heaven when we die; but also had
some sort of hope in a coming resurrection of the dead with bodies similar to
what we have now, only better? What
fixed their hearts on ‘the resurrection
of the body’ as part of having everlasting life?
BELOVED,
WE ARE GOD’S CHILDREN NOW
To guide us in thinking about our
Christian hope of resurrection, I’m
using the wonderful, simple, and short text from the First Letter of John,
chapter three. These words begin where
we all should begin when we think of our hope for the future: “See what love the Father has given us,
that we should be called the children of God” (1 Jn. 3:1).
When we start to speak of the Christian
Hope of ‘things to come’, or about ‘last things’; we are must remember that
we are trying to talk about things for which Scripture says, ‘eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor
has ever entered the human heart, which God has prepared for those who love
him’ (1 Cor. 2:9). Here we begin
where the gospel begins, with God’s love:
“For
God so loved the world…” the great text begins, only to conclude: ‘whoever believes on him (God’s Son), will not PERISH, but shall have everlasting
life (John 3:16). Everything, not
just the last things, but everything that make a Christianity “Christian” and also
makes it differ from all other religions or beliefs in the world, is that ‘the greatest of these is ‘love’.
How love determines our faith and trust
was explained wonderfully by the great Austrian Sociologist Peter Berger, who
told of story of a child being frightened, and the mother picking up the child,
holding the child close and saying, “Everything will be alright.” Either that mother is expressing the world’s
greatest lie to that child, brainwashing the child against the dark, dying,
cruel world, or that mother speaks of a truth the heart longs to know and needs
desperately to discover. “Everything IS going to be ALRIGHT!” But how can everything be all right, if
everything ends in death? How does a
mother’s ‘alright’ become a sign that there more to life and more to come, than
a life that ends in death?
John reminds us that our hope has
already begun. “Beloved, NOW we are the
children of God.” Hope is here, now!
When God raised Jesus from the dead, the new life, the new reality, and
our hope of ‘newness of life’ and that
one day, ‘all things become new,’ is something that has already begun
‘now’. Now
God loves us. Now God’s love changes us. Now, we are being redeemed. Now, is the day of salvation! When a person responds in faith to this God whose
loves and when we turn toward and into this ‘hope’; a hope that has broken into
our present, forgiving all things past, offering us the first-fruits of His tomorrow,
even now. And because this eternal God is the source of
time itself, God himself can offer us a new day, a new hope, and a new life. This is the ‘new’ that is already breaking into our present time, now!
There is a wonderful scene in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, where a wealthy young
Russian aristocrat named Pierre, finds his life meaningless and empty, in spite
of his inherited wealth. He drinks too
much. He’s awkward in high society. His wife only loves his money. He’s lonely and angry about life. He’s too smart to believe in God. Then, one night, while traveling on business,
he encounters a Free-Mason. The Free-Mason
challenges his unbelief. He offers
Pierre a way to meaning and purpose that focuses on faith in God and service to
others. Pierre accepts the
challenge. Now, instead of limping through his life, he is empowered to care,
to help, and serve, even his own servants.
Pierre finds joy in putting new roofs on his servant’s homes, building
schools to educate their children. In a
faith that is practiced, he finds new hope and a new life because the kingdom has
broken into his self-centered life. By
giving, by losing, and by dying to self, he gains a way to a resurrected life, and
he gains it now!
WHAT
WE WILL BE HAS NOT BEEN REVEALED
A new way of living our lives was
revealed in Jesus Christ, and hopefully, you too have received the promise and
potential of new life; or you can, beginning now. But, still, as John
goes on to write, ‘What we will be has
not been revealed.” There something very important being said
here, even in this negatively shaped statement.
What is to come for us, for the world, and for the life to come ‘has not yet been revealed’; at least
not completely. We live in a waiting room of sorts, between what has
‘already’ come, and the ‘not yet’ of what is still to come. It is in this very place that some lose
faith, others over-speculate, and still a few will be tempted to lose heart exactly
because we must live by faith, and not by sight. Life as a ‘waiting room’ is not an easy place
to live. .
I have a friend who is a semi-retired
pastor, living in the mountains. I meet with him and several other pastors
monthly, as part of a peer-learning group.
We read books together. We talk about the challenges of pastoral
ministry together. We talk and pray about
life, as we all are growing older together.
Recently, his wife, who was a nurse, had to retire early due to an Alzheimer's
diagnosis. It is a disease everyone
fears. It is slow, difficult, and
heartbreaking on so many levels; physically, mentally, emotionally, and
spiritually. When my friend gives us
updates on her condition; such as telling us what she forgets, what she fears,
how she gets agitated, and how they struggle with simple tasks, we hurt with him. Along with his difficult situation, we must face
our own fears too.
How can a God who loves, redeems, and
makes all things new be in the midst of illnesses like this, or like ours? When I ask myself such questions about
sickness, disease, and suffering, especially as I also deal with it too, I must
remind myself that years ago, most people didn't have to deal with things like Alzheimer’s,
cancer, heart disease, or stokes. And do
you know why? They just died. They either died much younger before such
problems developed, or they died, not knowing what they died of. But today, because we have longer lives, we also
have greater risks of what happens to our bodies. As one doctor told me once, “Your back was designed for you to live until
you are about fifty”. If you live
past that, you will most likely have some kind of ‘back’ issues, along with
other health issues too..
Our days in this life are numbered. We should have three score and ten
years. If we are strong and healthy,
maybe eighty or ninety. A few go even
longer. The other day I read about an
Indonesian fellow who was 148 years old.
That’s hard to believe, because the truth is that our minds, our bodies,
our lives, will and must eventually decline and die. But surprisingly, and against all odds, there
is still hope, even in this. As
Scripture says, “What you sow does not
come to life unless it dies.”(1 Cor. 15:36 NRS). The
old must die, before the new can come. But
how can a Christian think, believe, or say such a thing? Some
say this is just wishful thinking? How do
we face the ending of our lives with faith, hope and of course, with a love stronger
than death? And if a whole new life and
new world are coming, why doesn’t God just give it to us now? Why do we have to wait? Why do we have to live by faith and wait for all
things become new?
When we ask questions like this, it is
most obvious that we are thinking mostly of ourselves, which is
understandable. But what if we could
find a way, in faith of course, to think on a much grander scale? What if we could understand that life is bigger
than just what happens to me, to you, to us, or only thinking just about our
own people? I realize this is not easy, and
we still wonder about what will happen when we die. And we certainly do and will miss our loved
ones, but thinking on a bigger scale is most important for hope because only
thinking of ourselves can be deceptive, cause us to become delusional about
life, and treat diminutively the grand scope of God’s great will and purpose.
So, now, think about this: What if what God is doing in this world now,
and what God is taking us all toward, is something that includes us, but is also
much more than ‘just’ about us? What if
what life is about, what we should hope for in God is so big that it only began
to be fulfilled in ancient Israel, it culminated in what God accomplished in
Jesus Christ, but It continues with us and in what is still unfolding in the future
of our world. What if this purpose has
been unfolding in the millions of years before life arose on earth? What if what God is doing is as big as God
himself, and it will take all history, and is as large, maybe even larger than the entire universe? Can you think of ‘hope’ so big, that hasn't
been revealed, because it can’t be
revealed, because it is not finished
yet? Didn't Jesus even hint this to his disciples that
their own eternal future is ‘a place’
he had to ‘go and prepare’ for them
until he returned. As the , majestic King James translation puts it,
Jesus said: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not
so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And
if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto
myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (Jn. 14:2-3 KJV)
So, how big is what God has in store for
those who love him? You might think of
it this way: Long before Jesus, the very first traces of humans living on this
earth included primitive cave drawings of the dead traveling on journeys to another
world. The pyramids of Egypt are
stairways to heaven. In that ancient
world the religions had only shadowy, limited, impersonal, foggy pictures of
what ‘hope’ for the ‘afterlife’ might look like. Still, clues about ‘eternity’ were written
into the ‘hopes and fears of all the
years’, as the song says. These were
hopes of reincarnation (Hinduism); hopes for the immortality of the soul (Greek Philosophy), and even more philosophically,
hopes of some type of eternal blending
into the greater purpose or spiritual mind
behind all things (Hinduism, Buddhism).
These are what we might call natural
and humanistic ‘signals of
transcendence’ (Peter Berger) that there is ‘more’ to our lives than what ‘meets the eye’. Negatively, when you walk through the
experience of loss, grief, and struggle, or more positively, when you look at
the sunset, the sunrise, or the vastness of the stars or the sea, you too might
gain a perspective for hope of life to come, even without the aid of the a religious
imagination or divine revelation. But
how will you gain a sure and solid hope when you staring directly into the unknown
of the grave itself?
Even Judaism, out of which Christianity
was born, had only vague (Sheol, Hades), or general hopes for the future of
human existence. One of those was a young,
tentative, but developing hope for a coming, general ‘waking’ of the dead. Daniel
wrote: “Many of those who sleep in the
dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and
everlasting contempt…. (Dan. 12:2). A
more specific hope of ‘resurrection’
continued to develop during the period between the Old and New Testaments. But it wasn’t until the time of Jesus that a
hope of ‘resurrection’ exploded onto human history. In Christ, God catapulted human hope to a
new level of promise and possibility when God raised Jesus from the dead.
But even then, and still in our own time,
this resurrection ‘hope’ had, and still has, its cynics, detractors and skeptics.
Their negatively is fueled by what is ‘not yet revealed’ or what is still
being prepared. In
Jesus’ day the Jewish religious leaders called Pharisees believed in a coming
resurrection of the dead, but the more politically motivated, earthly oriented,
wealthy Sadducees, did not want to believe, speak of, or be changed by such
hope. They liked their lives the way
they were. They used as an excuse for
their unbelief that Moses did not speak of it.
Trying to trick Jesus into contradicting Moses, the Sadducees asked him strange,
hypothetical question concerning the coming resurrection (See Mark 12: 18ff,
Matt. 22: 23ff, Luke 20:7ff). “Rabbi, Moses wrote,” that if a women
has several husbands, because died and she had to remarries several times, “In the resurrection whose wife will she be? (Mk. 12:23 NRS)?” Even
though we might not be as skeptical, we too, in our own way and for our own
reasons and questions about eternal life, and may become doubtful, skeptical,
or even cynical about hope beyond this
life. The view of many, even the smartest
among us is that ‘when you are dead, you
are dead.’ In light of all that
happens, or might happen, sometimes, even for us too, hope makes little sense
to our situation in life.
What is most amazing about Jesus’ answer
to those “Sadducees” is not how he specifically answers their questions, nor
how Jesus dared to try to answer something that is ‘unanswerable’ or that might
be refuted today. Jesus does not answer
that way. What answer Jesus does give,
is to give an answer that is as unprovable
as it is non reputable. By doing this Jesus took them and takes us
straight to the main issue at stake.
After Jesus scolds these Sadducees for not believing in the Scriptures or
the power of God, he validates the
truth of resurrection in the very nature of God himself. Jesus answered: “As for the dead being raised, have you not read how have you not read
in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, 'I am
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is God not of the dead, but of the living
(Mk. 12:26-27 NRS).
Jesus point is clear: If you
believe in God and that God is at work in our lives; then all things are
possible, and resurrection is logical, and should be expected. If God lives, those live in him are
alive. But if your God is dead, or God
means nothing to you, then you will struggle to believe in resurrection. To have faith, belief, and most of all trust in a ‘living’ and ‘loving’ God
is the key to all hope in both life and death. And even though the resurrection hope has not
yet been fully revealed to us, but it
is a hope that has been fully revealed in him. As Scripture says, Jesus Christ and his
resurrection, is the ‘first-fruits’ of
what is still to be revealed for us: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and
become the firstfruits of them
that slept.
For since by man came death, by man came also
the resurrection of the dead.
For as
in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that
are Christ's at his coming” (1 Cor.
15:20-23 KJV). This all means that when
we live in him, and our life is hid with
Christ (Col. 3:3), we live in hope of what has not yet been fully revealed, but
in the hope that it is being prepared to be revealed, so that just as God
raised Jesus from the dead, we ‘shall
all be made alive’ in him at his coming.
WHEN
HE IS REVEALED, WE WILL BE LIKE HIM
Beyond dispute, the resurrection of
Jesus is the foundation of our
Christian Faith. It is also how we come
to focus upon our Christian hope for
the resurrection of our own dead bodies. As we all know too well; one day we
will be dead. But, as Scripture says, God
‘proves his love for us, even while
we are still sinners, Christ died for us.”
And because Jesus died for us and was raised for us---through Jesus we
gain not only the promise of our forgiveness, but we also gain the promise of
our future life in him. When the resurrected Jesus revealed himself
to his disciples, God gave the greatest indication of how and when this
resurrection hope will finally and fully be revealed.
HOW: “WE WILL BE LIKE HIM…” Even though the language of
the New Testament says that Jesus was raised from the dead, it better fits the
actual NT accounts to say that Jesus was transformed, changed, altered, rather
than merely brought back to life. The
body Jesus was given in resurrection was not ‘alive’ as we know life now—it is
new life. Yes, of course, it was his
body, including scars and all his human characteristics, but it was also his body
with new qualities. ‘They
are…like angels’ (Lk. 20:36) Jesus
said of the dead, not limited to time or space as we are. Even though the resurrected Jesus did eat, he
may or may not have had eat and was able to walk through locked doors, to appear
and disappear at will, and was also able to make himself unrecognizable or
recognizable to those who saw him.
The New Testament goes on to say that
this new, transformed body is no longer subject to illness, pain, sorrow or physical
decay or corruption. As the apostle Paul
wrote, it was a ‘body that God has…
chosen’ (1 Cor. 15:38). As Paul
described: “So it is with the
resurrection of the dead. What is sown
is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is
raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a
physical body, it is raised a spiritual body…(1 Cor. 15:42-44). He continues: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from
heaven.” Notice Paul cannot say what
this ‘man from Heaven’ is made of. He can only say: “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the
trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be
changed. For this perishable body must
put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality
(15:51-53).
To put this another way, to be
like Jesus, means, as the gospel song says, we will have a ‘new body, praise
the Lord, we’ll have a new life…a home eternal where the redeemed of God will
stand….’ This is a spiritual and eternal life, but it also a life that can have
physical traits that will be improved, enhanced and much advanced beyond the physical
limitations we have today. As one
Christian physics scholar, John Polkinghorne has imagined, it must be something
like when you get a new computer and you save the software to load it into all
new hardware. If we, being human, can already imagine something like this with
machines, just try to imagine what God has in store for those of who will be translated
and transformed into the life of God’s son. Science is already capable of raising up new
and improved animals, cloned from the ancient past. Interestingly this work is called, “Project Resurrection.” Now, where do you think scientists got this
idea. It is a great project, but even
as great as it is, it still imperfectly and insufficently mirrors what God is
preparing when he makes ‘all things new’!.
WHEN HE
IS REVEALED. Exactly how this transformation happens is still hidden ‘with Christ’ just
like the when is hidden ‘with God’. The closest biblical answer we have to when this, the greatest of all transformations
will happen was described by Paul in his very first biblical letter that was written
to the Thessalonians. He was trying to bring comfort to those who had lost
loved ones and wrote: “through
Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died”…(4:14)…. For the Lord himself, with a cry of
command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will
descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (4:16).
Clearly, what Paul envisioned echoes what
Jesus expressed as it came from the Book of Daniel and from other Jewish expectations
current in his day. The dead are kept with God until they are called to rise at
the end of time and history. Jesus answered more precisely the ‘when’ of this
resurrection when he spoke directly of the ‘eternal life’ only the Father gives: “Very
truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead
will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (Jn. 5:25 NRS). Did you catch the ‘now’ in Christ’s
voice? The ‘hour’ is both ‘coming’ and
is also ‘now is’. What does Jesus mean
by this?
Jesus means that beyond this life there
is no time, only now, ‘the eternal now’ (Paul Tillich), so
that when we die, we see him, and become like him to be immediately resurrected
into God’s new world. This is what NT
Wright calls ‘Life After Life After Death’,
but is misleading, because after death there is only life. In the coming resurrection when God gives us
all spiritual bodies we are all either raised or changed to live, to serve, and
to reign with Christ in his kingdom in the world to come. We will have new bodies, to live in a new world,
transform from this one, without sin, without evil, and without death, but with
more freedom, with more possibilities, and filled with God’s eternal light of redeeming
love.
So, God’s promise of resurrection for
our bodies ought to do more than think, rejoice, or be comforted. John finally says, “…All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure
(1 Jn. 3:3 NRS). Here, John does not
just mean that we should live hopefully, but we should already begin to be
changed now, as we live the rest of our
lives in hope of what is still to come.
Tim Keller, a Presbyterian minister in
New York says “Imagine two different people who have the exact same job. They
work in the same place. They have the same job description, situation, and
conditions. It’s monotonous, boring
work, with no possible chance of promotion. They are both in the same jobs
until they retire.
However, the first person is told that
at the end of his career he will be paid a bonus of $15,000. The second person
is told that when he retires, his bonus will be $15,000,000.
So they both go to work, but what
happens? They face the same situations
very differently. They are basically the same people, but before long the first
person is saying, “I can't bear this.
It's too much.” The second person is saying, “I can take this, it's worth it. Boring, but I can handle it. Difficult people, no problem. It's worth it.”
The first person says, “It's too much.”
The second person says, “No problem.” Why?
It has nothing to do with the present. It has everything to do with the future
that breaks into the difficult ‘now’ of their lives—changing them, encouraging
them, and making all things look different, even now. The one who lives in hope, lives completely
influenced by the promise of hope.
Now this is a very materialistic and
earthy example, but the principle is still true. When you have great hope you
can face anything, and your life is changed, even before it is changed. Do you have such hope? The faith of the
church, the Apostle’s Creed is faith that should already give you and me the
greatest hope---hope of life eternal through Jesus Christ. Amen
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