But To God All
Are Alive!
Sermon for
November 7, 2004
1. Good Morning. Let’s pray – O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
2. Opening Remarks: Well I had a bit of a challenge trying to discover what our Lord wanted to say to us this morning and then when I realized what it was I had a tough time unpackaging it so that it could be presented in a 20-25 minute reflection. So hang on to your hats – we’re embarking on a rather strenuous treck that’s going to cover some pretty diverse and mired ground.
In our two primary readings this morning first from the Dueterocanonical book of Second Maccabees and the second from the Gospel of Luke the issue of our ultimate resurrection is raised and this morning we’re going to delve into it.
Now to frame our reflection let me ask us a question:
Does the thought that you’re an eternal being and that
you’re going to live for an eternity with God in a most pleasant place called
What does that thought do for you? Frankly, for many of us of the 21st century this thought doesn’t do very much to motivate us at all. But the fact is that it was a major motivating point in centuries past but it has come to move most of us less and less as secularism has become the dominant religion of the world.
The reason I ask this question is that our Old Testament scripture and our Gospel lesson both reflect upon the great Christian birthright of resurrection and eternal life. Clearly in both readings it’s assumed that this belief is critical to a radical and robust Christian faith and after all we want to be radical Christian disciples and therefore we want to be motivated by what God wants to motivate us with.
Let me clarify what I’m getting at here. Suppose a father wants to bless his son and he comes to his him on his 18th birthday and says lovingly,
“Well son it’s your 18th birthday and I want us to go on an adventure together. You and I are going to go on a hunting and horseback expedition into the rockies together. Everything has been arranged – the airline tickets, the horses, the rifles and the supplies for a week. What do you think?”
But instead of a joyful response from his son, the father receives what amounts to a response of indifference. The son, you see, really wants an all expense paid trip with his friends to Los Vegas! How do you think the father would feel about this?
God, our heavenly Father, desires deep communion with us and promises to give us the ultimate reward – eternal life with Him. But all too often our response to this sublime offer is indifference. The here and now world and all of it’s seductions is often far more attractive to us than a time of deep communion with Him for ever!
This morning God wants to remind us of this great gift - this great reward - that He has already given us and the challenge for us is to grasp the enormity of this gift and to live out the rest of our lives in the joyful anticipation of receiving it!
Jesus Himself was profoundly motivated by it. Listen to Hebrews chapter 12 verses 1 and 2:
Heb. 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud
of witnesses, let’s throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so
easily entangles, and let’s run with perseverance the race marked out for
us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on
Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who
for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat
down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Did you hear that? “who for the joy
set before him endured the cross.” What
was this joy set before Him? It was the
profound reality that this isn’t all that there is – there’s more and it’s
eternal!
This is what motivated Jesus – but how much does it motivate you and me?
Rom. 8:18 For I
consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with
the glory that is to be revealed to us.
2Cor. 4:17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an
eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
How many of us actually look at life like this? In sweet anticipation of
“an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison?”
You’ve heard me say this before but for us who are
Christians the end of our life’s story end “And
they lived happily ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever
and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever after! Amen!”
But the terrible fact of our times is that even we Christians don’t spend a whole lot of time
really looking into what it means to be eternal beings whose home will
eventually be in paradise after our own resurrection from the dead!
But I’m convinced
that God is wanting us to grasp today the full wonder of our inheritance as
Christians and this includes the fundamental reality that each and every one of
us are going to die and then be resurrected to live forever with our precious
Lord!
I’m convinced also that as we begin to grasp this fact we will begin to live our lives here and now with a new found freedom – a new audacity! a new courage!
3. OK – are we ready?
Now it needs to be said
here that the half hidden issue in all of this is that of “death.”
“Death” the great hidden issue of our times.
Christianity promises
resurrection from death and eternal life BUT how many of us think about our ultimate death? How many of us look for an answer to this
most terrifying reality?
The terrible truth is
that in this culture most of us never or very rarely ever ponder death.
Let me quote from
Alexander Schmemann’s book “For the Life of the
World” as he comments on the faith of this world – secularism:
Schmenann
writes:
“Secularism is in fact a religion and as such an explanation of death and a reconciliation with it.
It’s the religion of those who are tired of having the world explained
in terms of an ‘other world’ of which no one knows anything,
. .
Secularism is an ‘explanation’ of
death in terms of life. The only world
we know is this world, the only life given to us is this life – so thinks a
secularist – and it’s up to us men to make it as meaningful, as rich, and as
happy as possible. Life ends with
death. This is unpleasant, but since
it’s natural, since death is a universal phenomenon, the best thing man can do
about it is simply to accept it as something natural.
As long as he lives, however, he need not think about it, but should
live as though death didn’t exist. The
best way to forget about death is to be busy, to be useful, to
be dedicated to great and noble things, to build an always better world. If God exists and if He, in His love and mercy wants
to reward us for our busy, useful and righteous life with eternal vacations,
traditionally called ‘immorality,’ it’s strictly His gracious business. But immorality is an appendix
(however eternal) to this life, in which all real interests, all true values
are to be found.
Have you noticed for instance that the
American funeral home is indeed the very symbol of secular religion, for it
expresses both the quiet acceptance of death as something natural (a house
among other houses with nothing typical about it) and the denial of death’s
presence in life.
Secularism
is a religion because it has a faith, it has it’s own
way of understanding what happens at the end and it has it’s own ethics. And it ‘works’ and it ‘helps.’ Quite frankly, if ‘help’ were the criterion,
one would have to admit that life-centered secularism helps actually more than
religion. To compete with it, religion
has to present itself as ‘adjustment to life,’ ‘counselling,’
‘enrichment,’ it has to be publicized in subways and buses as a valuable
addition to ‘your friendly bank’ and all other ‘friendly dealers’: try it, it helps!
But Christianity isn’t only about “helping” but rather it’s about “truth telling” - a truth telling that will set us on a path that leads from now into eternity!
If it were only about “helping” us get through this life then there are other religions who quite frankly do a better job but Christianity is about
reconciling us to the Creator of the entire universe so that we can commune
with Him here and now and into eternity!
Christianity is much much more than all of this – Christ defeated death:
2Tim. 1:10 but it has
now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has
destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
4. Analyze Scripture: Now the men in Second Maccabees – Old Testament heroes - believed in resurrection:
Seven brothers had been tortured by a terrible king and each of them faced their death with faith and the courage that came from this faith.
You see, they knew that their God would resurrect them after their brave death – they knew it and thus died gallant heroic deaths. They lived and died knowing that they would live forever with God!
As the final one was on the point of death he said: “It is my choice to die at the hands of men
with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be
no resurrection to life.”
Such courage! Would a modern
man or woman have such faith in eternal life that he or she would be able to do
as these brave brothers did?
Listen again to the author of Hebrews:
Hebrews 12: 2 Let us
fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of
our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning
its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Can you sense the joy that is set before you?
Can you really?
In our Gospel reading from Luke chapter 20 verses 27 through 38 we hear
Jesus being interrogated by some Sadusees.
Now the Sadducees are like the secularist of today. They were few in comparison to the Pharisees and scribes but they were very wealthy and powerful.
They were the governing class;
and they were largely collaborationist with
The Sadducees accepted only the written law of the Old Testament and in the Old Testament they stressed only the law of Moses and set no store on the prophetic books. They therefore had no belief in resurrection – they were utterly committed to this world – here and now!
The Sadducees, then, came with this question about who would be the husband in heaven of the woman who was married to 7 different men. They regarded such a question as the kind of thing that made belief in the resurrection of the body ridiculous.
Jesus gave them a brilliant answer and it was this.
“That the dead will rise
even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord,’
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaaac, and the God of
Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are
alive.”
God said I am the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. They were supposedly dead! No No No! Not dead! For our reading concludes with these astonishing words – “for to Him all are alive!”
This made His point most brilliantly – but do you really think that any one of the Sadducees were converted – became followers of Christ? I don’t think so! Argumentation rarely wins the day!
Think about it – even the 7 brothers dying so bravely as they did didn’t convert the king or his attendants even though they marveled at their courage.
4.
So what do we learn from this for today? Secularists
have bought into the terribly false belief that life is only about here and
now! It in itself is enough and death
may be ignored and life beyond death may be or may not be but here and now is
what’s important.
Such people can’t dream
bigger dreams than this world – their dreams are circumscribed by the length of
their lives here on earth but our dreams – AH!
Our dreams have no limits – no boundaries.
When our lives are lived out in this fundamental truth we know that beyond all trials and sufferings there is life eternal!
When we lose everything we can laugh in the certain knowledge that
our Lord – our precious Lord - has already prepared a most excellent room for
us in heaven in which we will live forever!
When we’re deserted by all we can grin and rest in the certain knowledge that our Lord is with us always to the very end of the age! He will never desert us nor forsake us in this life nor in the next!
We Christians have this fantastic promise frees us to dream beyond the limits of our lives – dreams that have no end! We can joyfully anticipate a life that will go on and on and on – in the presence of our Lord and each other!
TCC is not just a temporary
gathering of like minded people – we’re a gathering of eternal beings who will live on into eternity with one another and this
ultimate reality should motivate us to live robust and daring lives for our
sovereign and eternal King! Amen and
Amen!
And we can say boldly
with
(Phil.
1:20) I eagerly expect and hope that I
will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as
always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. Amen and Amen!
Let’s
pray . . .