The Resurrected Life

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio earlier today.]

Luke 20:27-40
In Romans 10:17, in the New Testament, the apostle Paul says that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Every Sunday in most churches at worship around the world, in this century as it’s been during the twenty centuries that came before, after God’s Word is proclaimed, pastors and priests, confident that this Word from God about Christ has the power to bring or deepen faith in Christ within those who hear it, invite worshipers to confess their faith.

In the Apostles’ Creed, we say that we believe “in the resurrection of the dead.”

In the Nicene Creed, we say that we “look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

And in the barely used Athanasian Creed, we say that at Jesus’ return to this word, “all people shall rise bodily to give an account of their own deeds.” (The only “deed” that will matter, of course, is whether we have believed in Jesus. As Jesus Himself puts it, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent [that is, to believe in Jesus] (John 6:29).”)

But for all this talk of the resurrection life with God that you find in the New Testament or in the Church, there are few passages of Scripture, except maybe in Daniel and Revelation and a few other scattered places, that talk about what that resurrected life with God will look like.

That’s undoubtedly as it should be.

For one thing, our call is to trust that anywhere Jesus is will be wonderful. Period.

Our call is to turn to Jesus and trust Him to take care of both the journey and the destination.

As Jesus told Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness [This refers to when, in the Exodus, God instructed Moses to forge a bronze snake like the ones that were biting and killing the people, so that the people could, in looking on the bronze representation, acknowledge their sins and look to God for forgiveness and life.], “so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him." (John 3:14) Our call is to turn to Christ when His Word calls us to faith in Him and live, knowing that He’s got us in His hands even beyond death. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus tells us. “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

When you live in a world in which death seems to have the final word though--when you listen to the sin and death of the world more than you listen to the Word of Christ--belief in the resurrection of the dead can be hard. I have even heard church-goers say things like, “When you die, you die.”

The second-largest bloc of Jewish believers in Jesus’ day, the Sadducees, thought in just this way. Jesus encounters them in today’s gospel lesson, Luke 20:27-40. Like the Pharisees, who, unlike the Sadducees, believed in the resurrection of the dead, the Sadducees were concerned that Jesus’ popularity, demonstrated in the welcome He had received on what we now call Palm Sunday just a few days before our lesson takes place, would cause the Romans to come down hard on all of God’s people. The Pharisees and the Scribes have gone up against Jesus, hoping to discredit or even kill Him, just before our lesson begins. Now it's the Sadducees' turn. Take a look at the lesson, please.

Verse 27: “Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. ‘Teacher,” they said [In Luke’s gospel, the only people who call Jesus teacher are enemies who use the term sarcastically or to butter Jesus up with fake respect.], ‘Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

The Sadducees only accepted the first books of the Old Testament--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, all thought to be from Moses--as God’s Word. So they loved to appeal to Moses whenever they were engaged in religious debate. And the Sadducees are right here: The law God gave to Moses, concerned with ensuring that every one of God’s ancient people received their inheritance in the promised land, said that if a husband died before he and his wife had a son who could be an heir, the next unmarried man in the deceased husband’s family was obligated to marry his sister-in-law. Their first son would become the heir of the dead man. But, trying to ridicule notions of a resurrected life beyond death, the Sadducees create an absurd scenario of a woman who has married seven brothers. Then they ask Jesus, in the resurrection Jesus talks about, whose wife will this poor woman be?

If the Sadducees with their tall tale here appear to have vivid imaginations, Jesus shows them they’re not vivid enough. They can’t imagine what the resurrected life God has in mind for His people will be like. Like most people in the history of the world, from the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, the Mayans, Buddhists, and Hindus, right on through to modern people who bury their loved-ones with six-packs of beer and money, when the Sadducees imagined a resurrected life, they imagined it as being pretty much like this one.

Jesus’ response to them shows that, for the disciple of Jesus Christ, the resurrected life is in some ways beyond our imagining. (Which may be another reason why Jesus and the Scriptures spend so little time telling us what it will look like.)

Verse 34: “Jesus replied, ‘The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.’”

Marriage won’t be a thing in the resurrected life, Jesus is saying. God instituted marriage in this world, in part so that mortal humans could live on in their offspring. In an eternity composed of people “considered worthy of taking part in the age to come” because they believed in Jesus Christ, there will be no chance that his new human race, made new and eternal by grace through faith in Jesus, will ever die out. Marriage, in that sense, will be unnecessary.

In the resurrection, the raptures of marital intimacy, sometimes plagued by difficulties, disagreements, and griefs, will be replaced in by the eternal ecstasies of immediate intimacy with God and His everlasting kingdom of perfection.

In the Old Testament, there are hints about life in the resurrection that Jesus brings.

• Job, the man who suffered much but kept trusting in God says centuries before Abraham and Sarah “I know that my redeemer [God] lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes--I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27) 
• Also in the Old Testament, Daniel 12 gives a vision of the resurrection of the dead. 

But, since the Sadducees only believed in those first five books of the Old Testament, Jesus decides to show them that the resurrection is real by referring to Moses.

Verse 37: “[Jesus says] But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ [that’s Exodus 3:6] He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

The living God of the universe isn’t the God of dead people, but of people made alive by grace through faith in Him, the One revealed to us even today in Jesus.

The living God is the God of the resurrected life.

While those imperfect old saints--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--haven’t yet risen from the dead, they are alive in the presence of the God in Whom they believed.

They’re like Moses and Elijah, who could confer with Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration though centuries dead.

They’re like the thief on the cross who begged repentantly to be part of Jesus’ eternal kingdom and was told by Jesus, “Truly I tell you, today [not tomorrow or some day] you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

They’re asleep and dead to this world, but awake and alive to God, and one day bound to rise when Jesus closes down this tired old creation and brings the new one in its fullness.

The resurrected life we who daily persist in turning from our sin and trusting in Christ are going to one day enjoy will be, in the apostle Paul's phrase, “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

But even now, the resurrected life, the fully burgeoning and consummated Kingdom of God that Jesus gives to all who believe in Him has invaded our world and give our lives God’s hope, peace, and joy. Wherever the Word of Christ is heard and believed, wherever the sacraments are administered and received, that invasion takes place.

In His high priestly prayer, offered to God the Father on the night of His betrayal, Jesus says, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3) If you trust in Jesus, the resurrected life He died and rose to bring to sinners like you and me has already begun. The “resurrection of the body” is just around the corner!

For that, you can trust Jesus, the risen One. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

It's All About the Truth

[This message was shared during Ash Wednesday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, last night.]

Ecclesiastes 3:20
As we all know, before the risen Jesus ascended into heaven, He told the Church to tell the world about Him and to make disciples. But, from a marketing standpoint, Jesus has made that a difficult task.

For example, the passage of Scripture that informs the designation of this as Ash Wednesday is Ecclesiastes 3:20, where we’re told: “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” The Message translation/paraphrase of the Bible renders that verse this way: “We all end up in the same place—we all came from dust, we all end up as dust.”

Happy talk, huh?

Want some more happy talk? Here’s a terrible Valentine’s Day confession on my part: I’m not keen on having floral arrangements in my house. Flowers are pretty outside. But when they come into a house and fill the place with their fragrance, all I can think of is funerals.

Most of us don’t really like funerals. Funerals may give us strength, encouragement, peace, and hope from God’s Word and the fellowship of the Church. But they wouldn’t happen if people we cared about didn’t die.

I'm willing to be that if you and I had the choice between going to a movie, a game, a restaurant, or a funeral, I doubt that the funeral would be anyone’s first choice. Death isn’t a topic we like to consider, whether it’s the death of someone else or our own deaths. (As someone has said, "I don't mind dying as long as I don't have to be there when it happens.")

And yet, we set aside a day on the Church calendar every year dedicated to reminding us that you and I are dust and to dust and you and I shall return, that we’re going to die.

That’s a marketing problem for Christians.

When I look at how other things are marketed on TV, radio, and the Internet, I don’t see the promise of death.

The commercials for resorts market fun in the sun, an endless party.

The weight loss people market a new you who will attract the opposite sex.

The beer people do much the same.

The insurance companies, furniture stores, car dealers, diamond merchants, online retailers: Not one of them feature death in their marketing.

If anything, they tend to pitch their products as being able to help us fend off death, overcome our human limitations, even make us godlike in our control of aging, illness, money.

This applies even to the funeral home people whose commercials make only oblique reference to how hard, relentless, and unforgiving death is.

But we Christians gather each year at the beginning of Lent to put ashes on our foreheads.

So, why the difference between the Church and the world?

Here it is: The world wants to believe a lie; the Church seeks to live the truth.

There are actually two lies that the world, along with the devil and our sinful selves, wants to believe.

The first lie is that everything is vain and futile, that we’re going to die, so just “eat and drink and be glad.” This was the futile conclusion reached by King Solomon, a man who used the wisdom given to him by God to make himself wealthy and powerful at the expense of his own integrity, faith, and salvation.

This lie is rooted in the notion that there is no way out, that all are going to die, and that the grave or the crematorium will be the inevitable end of us. So, this way of thinking goes, you should do anything and everything you want. Nothing matters. Just grab whatever your version of the good life is and enjoy it till you die.

The fact is that for the person who trusts in the God you and I meet through Jesus Christ, this life isn’t the whole story.

Even Job, the man in Old Testament times who endured so much sorrow, could say centuries before Jesus died and rose, as a person of faith: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”

Job trusted that despite his own sins and mortality, the God Who made the heavens and the earth, could also give life again to those who repented and trusted in God.

What Job believed by faith is now available to all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, God in the flesh, Who offers us beyond the grave or the crematorium.

The New Testament tells us: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

We are ashes and dust. We must understand that. It shows us how finite and dependent on God we are, how much we need Jesus to save us from ourselves.

But as surely as God scooped up dust from the earth and animated it to give life to the first human being, He gives new, eternal lives to those who turn to Christ for life. This life isn’t pointless or futile when we seek, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to live it for Jesus Christ!

The other lie the world tries to sell is the idea that death isn’t that big a deal. It’s just a speedbump to eternity. In this view, everyone’s going to have life with God, whether or not they’ve paid any attention to Jesus, the only One Who can give us life with God, in their whole lives on earth. These people see death as a hiccup.

This lie is the very one that the serpent told Adam and Eve in the garden. When the serpent learned that God had told the couple that if they partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die, the serpent said: “You will not certainly die” (Genesis 3:4). He chose not to add the fine-print caveat, right away. “You will not die right away…” Instead, he portrayed God as being stingy with His blessings because he didn’t want Adam and Eve to know about or experience the consequences of evil.

The serpent then said: “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Again, the fine print was missing. The serpent should have said, “you will be like God, knowing good and evil. But because you’re creatures, not the Creator, you won’t be able to handle the knowledge of evil like God, Who is perfect and holy, can. It will be like kryptonite in your hands. It will be like a flame to a moth. It will kill you.”

This neglected fine print reminds me of the ten to fifteen seconds in the middle of every prescription drug commercial. After telling you how wonderful their product is, the advertisers add a bunch of disclaimers including one that can be summarized: It could kill you.

In the garden of Eden, the FDA hadn’t been invented yet. So, naively cynical, Adam and Eve bought the lie of endless life apart from God hook, line, and sinker.

Christians know that death is a big deal.

Death is real.

We must reckon with the reality of it.

We are born sinners and sinners die.

Medicine may extend our lives for a time. It may enhance our lives for a time. And that’s wonderful.

But in the words of that twentieth-century poet, the late Robert Palmer, we know that “no pill’s gonna cure my ill.”

The gospel tells us that we must turn away from our sin (we must repent) and trust that Jesus will give us life even after we die.

Jesus, the One Who rose from the dead, promises: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

So, why ashes? Three reasons.

First, ashes remind us of our dust-iness, our mortality, of our utter dependence on God. Dust could never turn itself into a human being made an image of God. Only God could make something as magnificent as human beings from a clump of dust. Every human being can say with King David, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).

Second, ashes remind us of the judgment which this old creation will undergo. The apostle Peter tells us that when Christ brings down the curtain on this creation: “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” (2 Peter 3:10) We must not grow too attached to this creation as it is.

Third, ashes represent repentance and renewal. Sometimes, our forestry service conducts controlled burns. Forests often erupt in natural fires. They’re God’s way of bringing renewal. Foresters cooperate with natural fires by confining them to certain areas, allowing old brush and threatening plant life to be burned away and for new life to emerge. From the ashes emerge the sprigs of new trees. Jesus once spoke of the resurrection life that would emerge from His death: “...unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24) Just so, when we repent, dying to our sins and our sinful desires and, instead seek to live in utter dependence on Christ, we are given new life from God. As often as we repent and trust in Christ, God will keep renewing us all through eternity. (Martin Luther said that the Christian is to live in daily repentance and renewal.)

We commemorate Ash Wednesday each year because we believe in telling ourselves, each other, and the world the truth: Death is real, but death is not the end for those who trust in Christ.

These ashes--you and I--have new life through faith in Jesus.

Paul puts it better in Romans 8:1: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

If the ashes on our foreheads remind you of that tonight, then this symbolic beginning of the Lenten season will have done its work. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Did Jesus refer to all of Psalm 22 when He was near death on the cross?

Today, I made a passing comment during the noon 'Journey Through the Bible Class' regarding Jesus' recitation of Psalm 22:1 from the cross. (Jesus said, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?")

A question was asked, "Did Jesus have in mind the entire psalm when He recited its grim beginning?" I believe that He did.

This notion is buttressed by the fact that there are scholars who believe that Psalm 22--the entire psalm--was part of the Scripture recitation appointed for the time of day--3:00pm--when Jesus cited verse 1.

So much for my comments during class.

But I could have also added that it's also likely, I think, that Jesus had the entire psalm in mind because of the content of the psalm. It can be outlined, more or less, in the following way:

1. Despair (vv. 1-2)

2. Remembrance of God's past faithfulness (vv. 3-5)

Acknowledgment of others' mockery of the psalmist's faith (vv. 6-8) 

(Of course, Jesus endured similar mockery both before and during His crucifixion. As was true for the psalmist, Jesus endured the jeers of those who said, if Jesus was so great and so dependent on God the Father, "let Him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in Him. He trusts in God; let God deliver Him now, if He wants to..." [Matthew 27:42-43])

3. Affirmation that only God can help and the psalmist's need of help (vv. 9-18)

4. A confident plea for help (vv. 19-24)

5. Words of praise to God the deliverer (vv. 25-28)

6. Celebration of new, I would say, resurrected life (vv. 29-31)

In these last verses, the psalmist affirms that He will live beyond suffering and death:

"To him [God], indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him." 

People who place their hope in the God we meet in the crucified and risen Jesus, will live to praise God, even after they have gone to the dust and we will bow down to worship God. They also know that as they go through suffering and death, they have by their sides a God Who has been there and conquered both sin and death for them, so that they can look forward to eternity with God.

Job, the tragedy-plagued believer in the Old Testament, makes an affirmation similar to that made by the psalmist: 

"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another..." (Job 19:25-27)