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Sermon Apr 25th 2010 – Anzac Day & the Afterlife
Read John 20:19-20 / 1 Corinthians 15:35-44
Jesus taught us that there is no greater love than being willing to lay down your life for your friend. And so, keeping this in mind, some of us will be gathering at 3pm this afternoon at the Island Bay School to commemorate ANZAC Day and remember the sacrifice of our countrymen were willing to put their lives on the line for our future and in an attempt to make this world a more just and peaceful place.
Also, my brother is the speaker this year as an active member of the armed forces, and so you are all encouraged to come!
However, what I like about ANZAC Day and the general spirit of NZ is that we don’t gather to glorify war. Rather we gather to mourn – to mourn wars past and wars present, to mourn the lives that have been wasted, and to pray for an end to the cycle of violence, revenge and fear that has such a hold on the thinking of those in power in this world.
I remember the first time I visited Bob Colvin, a much loved and long term member of this congregation who passed away 2 years ago. He’d been reading the paper which was full of the atrocities going on in Iraq at the time, and he began to tell me about his time as a veteran of the war in the Pacific.
“Yes, we went to fight” he said, “but we went to fight to make the world a better place, and now it seems to be worse than ever.” He had tears in his eyes as he said that, it was a very moving and sobering moment.
That was the general pattern for me. I’d visit Bob to offer pastoral care, only for him to blow me away and minister to me with the depth of his grace and compassion and faith.
So, ANZAC Day, a day to remember and mourn those who have died because of the sin and brokenness of our world; and a day to pray in hope for a better future. But this year ANZAC Day falls quite close after Easter, a time when traditionally the church remembers the resurrection of Christ, and the hope for healing that event brings to the world.
Accordingly, today, a day to remember death, I thought we could combine Anzac and Easter by exploring our Christian hope of life after death, and what the bible teaches the resurrection of Jesus has opened up to us as believers.
I don’t normally preach on this kind of topic, I prefer to focus on this life and our call to live as Christians in the world before we die. For I do not believe that God wants to bribe us into behaving the right way with a vision of future glory; and neither do I believe that God wants to threaten us into doing good with the fear of hell. I believe that God wants a relationship with us, God wants to love us and be loved by us in return.
Living as Christians should then naturally stem out of the joy and gratitude and grace we receive from our connection with God – not out of bribery or threats.
However! God doesn’t keep us totally in the dark about what happens once we die – there are glimpses of what await us written into scripture. It’s there, it’s to be explored, and hopefully a better understanding of our eternal hope as Christians can inspire us to a greater love and reverence for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in our lives now.
Because, there is a lot of confusion about this topic!
From my background in the church, the belief that I picked up was that at the end of my life, my body will fall down dead but my spirit would remain standing and untouched – ready to fly off to Jesus and be judged, and hopefully then to spend eternity with God in heaven, as time and space and this physical world were done away with and ceased to exist.
However! Every Christian funeral I take I end with a version of the following committal…
We commit this body to be buried or cremated, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
a) The New Testament is full of this idea of the resurrection of the dead, of the resurrection to eternal life. My belief assumed that my spirit was eternal already and I didn’t require any resurrection – the words with which I commit the dead (“in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord”) made no sense to me.
b) Similarly, Jesus and his bodily resurrection marks the beginning of the end in the Christian view of time. It’s referred to in scripture as the fore-runner or the first fruits of many, and that our resurrection comes through his resurrection. Again, I believed that by Jesus’ death I received forgiveness for my sins, but his new life had no place in my beliefs about my on-going existance after death.
c) On top of that, my idea that on death I would leave this world and go to be with God in some distant heaven is contradicted several times in the Bible. The New Testament hope is the other way around – we aren’t going anywhere, God in Jesus will actually come to meet us. As a young man I hadn’t encountered that truth at all.
d) And lastly, I expected that eventually my body would be laid in the ground and be finished with. What was that in our reading from 1 Cor 15 about my present body being the seed of a new body I will receive when I am raised from the dead?
It’s all very confusing! Is anyone else confused?
That’s why I want to preach on it this ANZAC Day, try to introduce a little unconfusion! The view I’m about to preach is an attempt to recover the oldest Christian teaching on this topic, it’s totally rooted in scripture, and I personally find it very convincing. However, it’s up to you to listen, pray, search scripture and come to your own conclusions in dialogue with the Holy Spirit.
It’s always fascinating what we let ourselves see and what we ignore. I was a very keen Christian in my teens and read the Bible a lot, yet I never noticed the bits of the New Testament that didn’t fit my view of the afterlife. I had to start a theology degree, go to the Baptist college and have them directly pointed out to me!
There they showed me that many of my beliefs about the afterlife were actually based more on the writings of a Greek philosopher called Plato who lived a few centuries before Jesus, rather than on the Bible.
Plato looked at our world and saw that it was full of pain and chaos and decay. He wanted things to be perfect and tidy and under control, and so he developed the idea that the physical world around us was imperfect and bad. In contrast, he imagined that the invisible spiritual world (or heaven) where God lived was perfect and unchanging and good.
So, according to his philosophy our spirits are perfect and noble, but they are trapped in our bodies which are imperfect and base and in bondage to decay. Death for him was a good thing, a longed for time when our spirits could finally be free of our bodies and this physical world, and fly off to this perfect place where God lived.
When Christianity was brought from the Jews to Europeans, this was how most of them understood the world and it caused big problems as new converts tried to bring the two beliefs together. Platonists thought our bodies and this physical world was bad, while the spiritual world was good.
- However, Genesis says that God created the physical world… how could a perfect God create an imperfect world? Also, in Genesis God says that the world is very good! This was very hard for the Greek & Roman worldview to accept.
- On top of that Christianity teaches that God took on flesh and lived in this physical world; that Jesus was raised to new life in a new resurrection body, and that Jesus has returned to the spiritual realm to sit at God’s right side, taking this new physical body with him! Shocking stuff for these new converts…
So, as Europeans converted to faith in Jesus this caused a huge struggle between the Christian world view and Plato’s philosophy. My discovery as a young man that my beliefs about the afterlife were based more on Plato than on the Bible then showed me that this is a struggle that still goes on.
A good example of that struggle is 1 Cor 15, and I’d encourage you to read the rest of this chapter at home this week. That whole chapter is trying to combat Christians who were going back to Plato’s ideas and saying…
1) Firstly that Jesus hadn’t been raised in a physical body
2) and secondly who were also denying that we would be given new physical resurrection bodies in the age to come.
But now for some answers.
The main thing we need to get our heads around is that in the New Testament, life after death is described as having 2 stages.
1) The first stage is pretty hazy. It’s what happens to us immediately upon death, and is closest to what we usually mean by “heaven.” Paul refers to believers who are dead now, who are in this first stage as being asleep or being “in the Lord.” There’s a passage I’m going to read from Rev 5:9-11
9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; 10 they cried out with a loud voice, "Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?" 11 They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number would be complete both of their fellow servants and of their brothers and sisters, who were soon to be killed as they themselves had been killed.
These are specifically the souls of martyrs, but I think it’s quite cute. It’s almost as if God is giving them a blanky, tucking them up and saying hush now, go back to sleep – it gives the impression that this stage of death is a time of resting.
Jesus then adds to our picture with his words to the thief crucified with him – “this day you will be with me in Paradise.” This indicates…
a) that there was the possibility of him not going to Paradise…
b) But also that for the righteous this initial resting time of death is actually quite beautiful. Paul echoes this when he talks of how he yearns to go and be with the Lord which is much better by far, but how he stays for the sake of the Church.
Most Christian preachers, Christian books and even the hymns we sing stop here at Paradise, giving the impression that this is all we have to look forward to. However, the New Testament is pretty clear that there is more…
2) The second stage of life after death is still a bit hazy, but is explained a bit better than the first stage – this is the resurrection of the dead.
Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead (judgement is a big topic in itself that I don’t fully understand but plan to preach on next week); on the day of his coming the righteous dead will be raised to new life by the power of Christ’s resurrection and will be given new resurrection bodies, while those who are still alive will also be transformed.
The New Testament says that we will become like he is, implying that we will get the same sort of resurrection body that Jesus had, and that we get a bit of information about in the Gospels.
The Book of Revelation then ends with a powerful scene where the earth is renewed and God and heaven come here to us. The physical and spiritual worlds are then merged together. There’s a hint in this passage that rather than being poles apart, actually heaven and earth are made for each other, made to be in union together like a husband and wife. (Rev 21:1-5)
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." 5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."
So, our destiny as believers is not to spend eternity as disembodied spirits in some other-worldly heaven away in the clouds. The Bible teaches that our future hope lies here in a renewed and healed physical creation. There’s even a hint in Revelation that we may still have a mission to accomplish in this age to come. (Rev 22:1-2)
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
It might be stretching things too far, but why would the nations still need healing in this age to come? Could it be that we will again be called on to be agents of God’s healing and grace in that age, as we are called to be in the lives we now live?
So, to conclude.
This ANZAC Day, if we do go to a service, let’s remember and honour those who died. Those who fought and paid the ultimate price in the hope of making this world a better place – because God has decreed that this world is very good, this world is worth fighting for, this world has a hope and a future in God’s plan – as do we, thanks to Easter Sunday! Thanks to Christ’s resurrection and the empty tomb.
However, let’s also remember that at the end of the day, the only thing that can save us and our world, and put an end to suffering and injustice is Jesus.
So indeed let us also fight for our world, but fight by being agents of Christ’s truth, forgiveness and compassion. Let’s work and pray that God’s Kingdom might finally come on earth as it is in heaven.
Sermon May 2nd 2010 – Judgement
Read Romans 8:18-27 / John 3:16-21
Sometimes in church we read together the Apostle’s Creed which was written about 1,700 years ago. We read it a) because it is the shortest of the ancient creeds; and b) because it summarises the historic teachings of our faith.
The section on Jesus says this…
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
So, last week I attempted to lay out what I believe the Bible teaches about life after death, and the role of Jesus’ bodily resurrection in that. What the Bible teaches is actually quite different from what we usually sing or hear about in church, and I’m not sure why that is. The general belief is that when we die our bodies waste away and our disembodied spirits fly off to some fluffy paradise called heaven, far removed form this physical world which we now inhabit.
However, the New Testament is pretty clear in teaching that life after death has 2 stages.
Stage 1 is what Jesus called Paradise – an undefined yet pleasant time of resting or sleeping in the Lord.
However, stage 2 is when Jesus returns to this physical world, bringing the resurrection of the dead to eternal life. But I went on to talk about how the bible teaches that we will be given a new, in some way physical, resurrection body; that heaven and earth will be renewed, and that they will be united. God and heaven will come to earth, and we will spend eternity here, in a perfected physical creation.
Today I want to go further though, and look at another aspect of Christ’s second coming, laid out in the Apostle’s Creed by the words “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Again, the Bible can be read in many ways, and this is the way I think it should be read. It’s up to each of you open your hearts, engage your brains, bring this before God, and wrestle with it yourself.
I have never specifically preached on judgment before, and it isn’t a topic that I would naturally go for. It’s not a very pleasant subject, and it’s not particularly Politically Correct in our current tolerant age. But then, actually I think we live in a very schizophrenic age. On the one had we prize tolerance as a chief virtue – indeed, a diverse society like ours couldn’t survive without championing tolerance – but on the other had we are an incredibly judgmental country!
- Think of people’s attitudes to Destiny Church; To politicians and their expense claims; To rich people & poor people; to criminals and policemen; alcoholics and the unemployed; or to the directors of finance companies…
If I read the paper or watch the News I burn with self-righteous judgment against all these silly, greedy or evil people. Sometimes in fact it seems that the media in NZ is designed to encourage us into self-righteous judgment as a way of attracting us back.
So, I’d say that we are a judgmental society even if we claim to be tolerant, and that isn’t necessarily bad. Bad stuff needs to be judged as bad or inappropriate before it can be tackled and changed into something good. If we want to be a good parent, employee, neighbour or citizen, then we do need to exercise judgment.
But, as with our understandings of heaven, I also believe that our popular understandings of God’s judgment & salvation have become distorted over time, and don’t necessarily reflect what the Bible teaches.
1) Firstly, often we seem to make the same mistake that many Jews made in Jesus’ time – thinking that it’s all about us.
Jesus countrymen believed in the coming of the Messiah, the year of the Lord’s favour, the coming Day of Salvation. But, generally they thought that it was salvation for them! Most Jews expected the Messiah to be a man of war and worldly power who would humble their oppressors, save them, and make them great once more.
In contrast, Christians say that Jesus was the Messiah, but, Jesus was a man of peace and inclusion. Yes, Jesus was a Jew and so God’s salvation has come from the Jews and includes the Jews… but, it was for more than the Jews, it was for the whole world. In fact, it was for the whole cosmos. The Greek in John 3:16 doesn’t say “world”, it actually says “cosmos” – “For God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only son.”
So, similarly, we as Christians also usually believe that judgment and salvation is all about us. It’s all about me getting into heaven – even though as we saw last week the Bible teaches that heaven is on earth and it comes to us, we don’t go to it!
The New Testament however again undermines our popular understandings of judgment and salvation by painting a different picture. Judgment will indeed lead to our salvation – BUT, it’s a salvation that comes through us as Christians, that includes us as Christians, but more than that, it’s a salvation that is actually for the whole cosmos.
Let’s listen to Romans 8 again…
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 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.
The future glory to be revealed in us is our salvation, and here Paul is saying that all of Creation yearns and waits for that day. For on that day, not only will we be saved, but rather the whole cosmos shall also be set free through us and share in our glory.
So, point 1, salvation and judgment are not just about us!
2) Point 2!
Consistently in the Bible God’s day of judgment is good news, not bad news – it’s a day the world longs for and will celebrate when it arrives. As Mary says in the Magnificat, it’s a day when the proud will be scattered and the powerful brought down; the poor will be lifted up and the hungry will be fed! Justice will come, violence and oppression will end. The trees of the field will clap their hands and the lion will lie with the lamb – this will be a day of joy and healing for all of creation.
Of course, here in NZ we are among the richest third of the world’s population. We are on top, we have nice lives, and we benefit from global structures and trade rules that relegate most of the world’s population to lives of poverty and an early grave. This situation cannot stand the coming of God’s justice – we will be lowered and the poor will be raised up.
But, this isn’t something to fear. The new world that God makes is the way the world should be now, and the way Christians should be striving to make the world now. The final end to inequality and oppression will be a good day, a day to yearn for and look forward to.
Also, the one through whom God’s justice will finally come to earth isn’t some cruel tyrant, but rather is Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, the one who has lived among us and who can relate to our weakness.[2] Back to John 3:17…
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
So, Jesus’ mission and coming judgment is about saving the world not condemning it. Though just, his judgment will be merciful and compassionate, this is the good news of the gospel.
3) My third point this morning is about how faith and good deeds hang together.
The whole basis of the Protestant Church is that we are saved by faith and not by works. Nothing we can do can be good enough to win ourselves God’s approval at the resurrection of the dead. But then, there’s an awful lot in the Bible about people being condemned for not clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, or visiting prisoners. What’s going on there?
There seems to be a growing sense these days that the Biblical vision is one where we are indeed saved by faith in Jesus, but that at the end we will also be judged by our deeds.
Lot’s of verses today, and here’s another one. 1 Cor 3:12-15
12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw - 13 the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. 14 If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.
So, Corinthians 1 says the Day of Judgment will bring fire, but a fire of purging and refining. The work of our lives will be tested. That which is worthy will endure, that which isn’t will be burned away. But, the one whose work survives and the one whose work is burned up, both are saved – because they are saved not by their works but by faith.
When we have faith in Christ and accept the free offer of forgiveness, God declares that we are ok and assures us that we will be saved on judgment day…
4) My conclusion today comes from 1 Cor 15, the chapter we looked at last week and that I encouraged you all to read over the week!
55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
So, the vision of the Bible is that Jesus will come again, the dead will be raised and the living transformed; we will receive resurrection bodies and our works will be judged - though, we are already guaranteed salvation based on the death and resurrection of Jesus; God and heaven will come to us, the physical and spiritual worlds will be untied, and we will dwell in a renewed physical creation with our God forever! Yay!!!
Now, because this is all going to happen regardless, in the meantime does the Bible tell us to sit back, relax and do as we please?
No! Paul’s conclusion to his chapter on the resurrection is a call to action. “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
There we have it… Our labour is not in vain! So, go forth and love, create, sing, make music, nurture, teach, write poetry, pray, help people, work for justice, feed the hungry, preach the gospel, worship God… The German Reformer Martin Luther, when asked what he would do if he heard that Jesus was coming back tomorrow, said that he’d go and plant a tree!
Now, I might be pushing things here, but I’m not alone. I believe that the deeds we do that reflect God’s Spirit to this world will endure judgment, will be transformed, and will in some way become part of the building blocks out of which God builds our eternal future.
- This painting behind me by Beryl; this communion cloth. I’m sure they were created out of a spirit of devotion and a love of beauty. I believe that they will endure, be transformed and become a building block of our eternal future.
- The love and self-sacrifice out of which we nurture our children; the love and self-sacrifice that motivated David and Maria to go and be Jesus to the poor in the slums of Manila – these things too I believe will endure, be transformed, and become a building block of our eternal future.
“Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
So… our future hope, the joy we take from this vision of God bringing salvation to the whole cosmos through us on Judgment Day, and finally bringing about God’s coming kingdom of beauty, love and justice… This drives us as believers to also try and realise this beauty, love and justice in small ways in our lives now. Knowing that our work will endure and our labour is not in vain.