November 11, 2007

Resurrection: The Church’s and Ours

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Luke 20:27-38

Opening Illustration

Question of what happens after death - most widely asked question of all time.

People have sought answers in various places: religion, science, philosophy.

Christian faith teaches there is life after death. Resurrection of Christ is the first fruits of our own resurrection.

This was not always the belief of people who considered themselves God’s chosen.

Until latest part of the OT most Jewish people believed all the dead went to Sheol – place of the dead. Didn’t matter how good or bad your were. All God’s punishment occurred during this life. (Slide)

After destruction of the temple and return from exile, question of whether or not to rebuild the temple arose.

Haggai say temple should be rebuilt; rebuilt temple would bring God’s presence in Israel again. Nation would be resurrected.

Haggai passage shows God’s promise to shake down neighboring nations for building materials. Temple being resurrected from the places where the material was scattered.

Questions about temple being resurrected turned into belief that God would one day resurrect the dead.

By the end of the OT resurrection of the dead in bodily form appears. Eternal judgment on people for their life choices. (Slide)

By the time of Jesus’ life there were various opinions among differing Jewish groups. (Slide)

Sadducees, Pharisees. Jesus’ disciples agreed with Pharisees on resurrection but disagreed as to what type of body people would have.

Sadducees brought question to Jesus – couched in question about marriage.

Levirate marriage – preserve the family of a man who died. Whose wife would she be?

Jesus says institution of marriage will not be a part of the age of to come; people will not marry, they will not reproduce, they will not die.

Existence like angels – spiritual, genderless bodies. Question of marriage is moot.

Also affirms continued existence of people who have died.

Moses at burning bush – God claimed to be God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Long after they had died.

Since the Sadducees only believed in the Torah, this was proof from the Torah of death after life.

Problem is that Jesus doesn’t explain in what sense they are alive.

Souls gone to heaven? If so, there is no need for resurrection.

Are their bodies waiting for Jesus’ return and the resurrection of all people? If so, where are their souls? How are they still alive?

If there souls are either in heaven or hell, why is there a need for a day of judgment? Haven’t they already been judged and sent to heaven or hell?

If their souls are someday going to be reunited with their bodies, wouldn’t this passage show us that their bodies are going to be transformed into bodies like angels? What point is their physical resurrection if their bodies are going to be transformed anyway? Besides, there is no place in the Bible where it says souls will be reunited with their bodies at the time of resurrection.

I’ve shown you a variety of ways of understanding the question of resurrection in the Bible. Because there are so many unanswered questions, we really have to admit that our own resurrection is a mystery.

Though we cannot explain it fully, resurrection is at the core of God’s work of salvation. Without resurrection we may as well stop meeting. Paul says that because Jesus came back from the dead, we can expect the same.

But tied to this expectation in the Bible there is always a sense of community resurrection – that God revives a community which has suffered devastating loss.

Important to churches who have been worrying about their own demise after decades of declining membership. Sense of despair, wondering if the Bible’s images of revival and salvation still apply.

As a congregation there were great concerns over the future of the church when pastor Bahr resigned after 38 years of leadership. And when Pastor Dick came to assume leadership here he had to remind us that God is not God of the dead, but of the live, and that our congregation was still living in God’s eyes.

Since then we have watched people in this church grow older and die, and their place was often not filled by new people attending the church. And we thought to ourselves, “What will become of us?” What should we do to reverse this trend?

And as time went on, somehow we always got what we needed when we needed it. And we were always able to stay true to who we were rather than selling out in order to bring in new people who would take the church in a very different direction. Because we believed we served the God of the living and not of the dead, and that we were all still alive to God.

These days we ask these same kinds of questions and harbor the same kinds of fears. We see ourselves aging and wonder what this congregation will look like in ten or fifteen years.

I can’t tell you what it will look like in ten or fifteen years. What I can tell you is that I have the hope of Haggai, who told the people of Judah, “Build this thing and watch what happens. You won’t believe what God’s going to do.”

We have to continue being faithful to the ministries of this church because this congregation gives life to the city of Waukesha. And that life is channeled through us to the people of this community not because we’re such great people, but because the God we serve is that God of the living, not the dead.

And if we are faithful to our mission, if we continue shining the light of God in this community and allowing it to illumine all the dark places of our own lives, we will accomplish our mission with God’s help. And that’s all anyone can ask of us.

St. Augustine’s attraction to Mancheaism – he was uncomfortable with mystery.

Christian faith embraces mystery of God. We don’t have to be able to explain how and when and why resurrection works. We have faith in Christ, in the eyewitnesses who saw him risen from the dead, and his apostles who told us the same would happen to us as Jesus’ followers.

And the same sense of eternal life applies to our hopes for our church. God has been faithful in the past. All we can do is be faithful in the future.