A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Resurrect Your Faith

Luke 20:27-40, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, November 11, 2007

Fred Abernathy was a devoted reader of the obituary column of his local paper. Fred's friends knew of this habit, so one day they decided to play a trick on him by placing his name and picture in the obituaries. The following morning Fred picked up his newspaper, turned to the obituary page, and there he saw his name, his biography and his photo. Startled, he went to the telephone and rang up his pal, George. "Listen," he said. "Do you have the morning paper? You do? Please turn to the obituary page. You have? What do you see in the second column?" There was a pause, then George said, "Holy smoke! It's you, Fred! It's you all right! Hey, where are you calling from?"

Someone once said: “It's not the pace of life that concerns me; it's the sudden stop at the end.” And there was this sign outside of a church: How will you spend eternity—Smoking or Non-smoking? An evangelist walked up to a man standing on the street corner and asked, “Are you ready for the Judgment Day?” The man asked, “When will it be?” The evangelist said, “Could be today, could be tomorrow!” And the man said, “Well, when you know exactly, be sure to let me know. My wife will probably want to go both days.” An elderly mother, planning her funeral, told her pastor that she wanted to be cremated and her ashes scattered around Wal-Mart. "That way," she said, "I can count on my daughters visiting me twice a week." Pardon me for having a little fun with the very serious subject of death. But why should we reserve the best news humanity has ever received to one Sunday in the church year? Christ is resurrected! And because Christ is, we shall be too.

Our text today is about eternal life, life that is more and better than just a never ending continuation of this life. Now if you think that this life isn’t so bad and more of the same but a little tweaking here and there, easier golf courses, lobster and cholesterol free prime rib every night, will be nice, well then you are in the vast minority of those who have experienced this journey. If you have suffered greatly here, you don’t want it to be the same but just a smidgen better. You want God to reign mightily! Mightily indeed! Don’t get me wrong. God did create all this and pronounce it good; it’s just that a lot of things can and do go wrong for a large number of people, always did and so far always has. Just so we get this correct or shall we say biblical, I am not just talking about man’s inhumanity to man, as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously called the way in which “man” perpetrates excruciating injustices and dark violences against fellow men and women. But I am also talking about a larger picture.  Paul wrote in Romans: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility … in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Romans 8:19-21   Violence and decay are sewn within the fabric of this creation, a fabric that the resurrection, the new day, will reweave. What I am saying is that this resurrection stuff, this eternal life hope, is larger than just about our individual selves. So again if we want eternal life to be like this life, perhaps with less work and more reward but basically the good life here writ large, then we are in the minority. For the largest swath of humanity through history, things have not been this, well, swell. In fact, just the opposite, which is why Jesus says, “Many that are first shall be last; and the last first.” Are you ready for that because that’s the resurrection, that’s life that is truly life, Christ’s living water?

What we want to see this morning is that God has another plan, another option to work things out.

It may not be exactly what we want but God is God, and we are not. Before his death in 1981, American writer William Saroyan telephoned in to the Associated Press this final, very Saroyan-like observation: "Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?" This is where having a faith that is grounded in who God is makes all the difference in the world.

If you listen to NPR, you will hear a commercial that talks about the Community Foundation of Palm Beach or Broward county, depends on which county you’re in. It’s the one that says at the end: “For good. For ever.” The advertisement itself goes something like this Martha Stewart loved cookware. Martha Steward is gone, but her love for cookware continues. The Community Foundation of Palm Beach County can make your dreams continue after you are gone. Now we are all supposed to understand that Martha has actually, shhh, died. But, you know, who knows? Maybe she is on one really long cruise and wanted to make sure her cookware love continued until she got back. She is gone, maybe as in stepped out for a moment but will be back. The other one of course is passed. We hear this one a lot. Someone has “passed.” I guess this refers not to passing out, but passing beyond or passing on or passing through, as in passing beyond the great divide, like when the baseball players in Field of Dreams walked into the cornfield and passed out of sight. The problem with both of these terms is that they give the idea that life simply continues but in an unseen realm, which I know is what we want to believe. But I think the resurrection thing is much better than this.

If we can just be gone and pass onto the next stage, then where is God in all this? Do we really think we are the Energizer bunny and can just keep going? Jesus was resurrected by God. God raised Jesus up. He didn’t just wake up again, and heck even for Jesus it took a couple of days for God to accomplish it. Perhaps this isn’t the most comforting thought. We would prefer to have this all settled before we leave. We would like to have it in our possession already, like a corporate ID card hanging from our belt or a special pass looping around our neck, and we just walk right on through. Why bother God with the whole thing?  

It is important for us to understand that our reading lesson is about God and God’s power for life. So I want us to think of three things. First, eternal life flows from God alone. Death is real for us, biblically and existentially. There is no eternal life without God. There is no eternal hope in the Scriptures except that which flows from the love, power and faithfulness of God. If we are to live eternally, then it is God who must raise us. The dead are dead. They cannot pull themselves up. Only God can! Second, what we believe about God is crucial. We cannot ever begin a discussion of eternal life based upon its logic or its "proofs." Such a discussion always begins with God and our trust of his word. There is no question that the God of creation, who created us in the first place, can raise us up if he wants to. The hope of resurrection is always rooted in our trust of God. Since "nothing can separate us ... from the love of God," there is no grave out of God's reach. Third, in the same fashion, there is no living person, no matter what that person's alienation or sin may be, who is beyond the reach of God's power to redeem. And that's the best news yet. "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him." Paul, writing to the Christians at Thessalonica in the first century, provides for this good news a fitting benediction: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and deed.” 2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5 Let your comfort rest in God, not on your goodness or your loved one’s nice characteristics. Trust that the Lord raises up his children to his side according to his grace. Let us turn our hearts to God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, to whom all are alive. God’s power is to bring us into his peace.

In all of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, he clearly is not himself and yet is of course the same Lord. His disciples, those who loved him and knew him, simply did not recognize him physically. He has a body but it appears different and he has certain other powers and capabilities. This is a story way of telling us that in the kingdom of heaven after the resurrection, we will be different, vastly different, but also the same. How will God do this? Nobody knows exactly. Paul wrote an analogy that is one of the most important pieces of scripture we have. These wonderful words are the root and foundation of my ability to be persuaded both by faith and in my mind about a bodily resurrection, and so I want you to hear them in this context. In 1Corinthians 15:35 and following scripture reads: “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ (Now listen!) What you sow (as in planting) does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen.” And from v.42: “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.”

Now this sounds much better to me than what we are and have here, which reminds me of the little girl whose cat had died. She curled up in her father's lap and sobbed, "Oh, Daddy, Old Tom is dead." "Don't be sad," her dad said, "Old Tom has gone to heaven to be with God." The little girl stopped crying and looked puzzled. After a moment she asked, "Daddy, what does God want with a dead cat?" God doesn’t want anything to do with a dead cat, but a person, a changed person, an angel like person, a heavenly person, that’s a different story. So sow to the Spirit and reap everlasting life. Gal. 6:8 “Lay hold onto eternal life, the life to which you are called.” 1Tim.6:12 Believe in the Lord and live to God. “Keep yourself in the love of God, looking to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Jude 21 And remember: “‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.’” 1 Cor.2:9

Someone might ask, “When I get to heaven will I know my husband or wife or will our relationship be dissolved?" That’s a good question but heaven is so grand that earthly comparisons are simply not adequate. When we are this close to love incarnate, love eternal, in turn we will love one another even more intensely, even more joyfully than we do here. There will be between those who love each other now an even more powerful and more rewarding intimacy in heaven. You and I have much to look forward too. Heaven will be far more wonderful than we can ever imagine. Perhaps a way to think of this is in the saying, “God is good, all the time.” In heaven, we will truly, eternally know how true this is, forever.

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