The other day the Esther Circle was meeting and they had some questions in their Bible study. They invited me to come town and visit with them a little bit. It was an interesting visit and covered quite a bit of Biblical territory, but we seemed to focus in large part on what happens when we die.
That’s
fair. We all have questions about what happens when we die – after all, with
only a few exceptions that include Jesus, Lazarus, and several unnamed others,
there are few first-hand witnesses of death. Hollywood has done much to
entertain us but has done so at the cost of great confusion. Maybe you know
someone who has had that near-death experience. I know a man who was
technically dead for about thirty seconds. Weeks later when we visited, he
said, “You know…all that stuff that you see on TV and the movies – the lights
and the voices and stuff? I don’t remember any of that. Just rest-filled peace.
Was that heaven, Pastor?”
Yes…and
no.
So,
on this last Sunday of the church year, as our focus is on the return of Jesus
in glory to judge the living and the dead, it seems good for us to talk about
what happens when we die, and what happens when we rise.
I
had a teacher at the Seminary who loved to stir the pot a bit and say something
like this: “Don’t get me wrong – I love heaven and I’m looking forward to it.
But remember – heaven isn’t the end of the world.” Now, what does he mean by
that?
Too
often, we’ll hear something like this at a funeral: “Well, Grandma Schmidtke is
in heaven with Jesus.” And that’s the end of the sentence. Period. Das is
allis. But, while it is true that the faithful are asleep in Christ, at peace and
at rest, there is something more to come. We are not philosophers, trying to
throw off this body, thus making death the end goal of our lives. We are
children of God, waiting for the fulfillment of all of His promises given us in
Christ Jesus – especially our own Easter moment. It’s about more than dying and
going to heaven; it’s about dying and rising with Christ when the end of the
world comes.
We,
at the return of Christ, will be among “the resurrection of the dead” as we say
in the Creed. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15: “But in fact Christ has been
raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as
by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For
as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his
own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to
Christ.”
You
see here that what happens at the Second Coming hinges on Christ’s first
coming. Christ rose from the dead--that happened on Easter morning--and
therefore we who belong to Christ will be raised from the dead when he returns.
Christ is the firstfruits. It’s a harvest image – the farmer would take the
fruit that came first and gave it to the Lord, trusting in faith that there
would be more fruit to come. Thus, “firstfruits” means there’s more to come.
Jesus leads the way, and we follow. He rose, conquering death for us. We too
will rise, for he shares his victory with us. You and I have been joined to
Jesus and his resurrection in our baptism.
Do
you realize that Christ has redeemed your body? I mean this old bag of bones
that is falling apart and racked with aches and pains; this mortal body that is
subject to disease and death. These bodies that carry high blood pressure and
thinning hair; bad eyes and worse hearing; chicken arms, flabby thighs and
twelve-pack guts; kidney stones and broken bones; cancer cells and missing
appendages: these bodies, your bodies, my body…God is going to do something new
with your body, long after it has been laid in the grave. At Christ’s return,
the trumpet will sound and Christ will raise you up, whole and complete and better
than ever. The blood pressure will be perfect and the hair line won’t be an
issue; your eyes will be 20/20 or better and you can hear a pin drop from a
thousand yards away into a green grassy hillside; arms, thighs, and abs will be
pleasantly shaped – maybe not six pack, but they won’t look as though they
slugged down a six pack, either. Cancer and all other disease will cease to
exist. I, for one, am curious what my new shoe size will be. Now, I don’t know
exactly what our bodies will look like in every respect. The Bible doesn’t answer
those specifics. But I do know that you will be you, and that you will have your
body except in perfect holiness and whole-ness, the way Adam and Eve were
created to be - a body built for eternity - and that that body will no longer
be subject to all that ails you now. It will be glorious, in fact, fitted out
for eternity.
The
return of Christ. The resurrection of the dead. The final judgment. The reading
from Matthew 25 gives us a picture of that. Christ the King on his throne. The
sheep and the goats gathered before him, that is, the righteous and the cursed.
There will be a division, a separation, a sorting out at that time. And the
difference will be faith or unbelief. On the one hand, Christ will welcome in
the sheep, that is, those who have faith in him--a genuine, living faith, which
will have produced works of mercy in life as its natural fruit. On the other
hand, the goats--that is, those who had rejected God’s only appointed
Savior--they will be judged because they had no faith in Christ and thus had no
faith-produced works. It’s not that our works save us, no. But by God’s grace
you and I have been given the gift of faith in Christ, and that faith will
naturally produce good works in our lives.
You
have this faith, don’t you, dear Christian? You are not trusting in yourself
for salvation, for that would be a dead end. You know your sins would condemn
you. But rather you trust in Christ, the one God sent to save you. Kept in this
faith by the Holy Spirit, growing in this faith as the Word and Sacrament
sustain you, your life will produce works of love and mercy done in Christ. And
this is what will be cited as you stand before the throne of judgment. Not your
sins--they have been forgotten, nowhere in sight or memory. Only the good works
you have done, the product and evidence of a living faith.
Dear
friends, you have nothing to fear on the Day of Judgment. Christ has taken care
of that. Your judge is also your Savior. For us, that day will be a blessed day
of welcome, of homecoming, of entering into the eternal kingdom God has
prepared for us. Joyful, that!
And
so, when the end comes, that will be only the beginning. Death is destroyed.
Eternal life opens before us. Home at last, safe and secure with our Shepherd
in our midst. What a day that will be! All the company of heaven, gathered together,
alive and joyful, praising God and enjoying perfect peace and fellowship. The
grandest worship you will have ever heard. And you and I will be singing in the
choir, our voices blending in sweet harmony. I can’t imagine how good it will
be--only that it will be!
“Then
will come the end.” And the end, the goal, the place where all this is heading,
is the glory of God. Christ will deliver the kingdom to God the Father, having
accomplished everything he set out to do. Christ will have destroyed death, resulting
in our glorious, bodily resurrection. Christ will declare us righteous by faith
and welcome us into his eternal kingdom. What this does is give all the glory
to God. God has done it all. “Then will come the end,” which is, “that God may
be all in all.” When that day comes, when Christ returns and we are raised and
welcomed into eternal life, then God’s perfect plan will have reached its goal
. . . the end…which is only the beginning of eternity with Jesus in the
resurrection of the body.
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