Given by Sherry Black So, what happens to us when we die? Is there life after death? The Apostles creed says “we believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” What does that mean? Do we as Christians really believe it? What do you think? We’ll get back to that in a few minutes. In today’s gospel reading, the Sadducees are questioning Jesus about the resurrection. This is especially peculiar, because the Sadducees were a sect of Judaism that didn’t even believe in the resurrection. The Sadducees were a priestly aristocratic movement which accepted the Torah, the 1st five books of the Bible, as the only authoritative Scripture. All else was considered to be commentary. They were usually rationalistic and wealthy. The high priests were Sadducees. They were known be opposed to much that Pharisees stood for, but they agreed with the Pharisees that this Jesus was a threat to their way of life, and they worked with the Pharisees in order to find a way to trap Jesus. And that’s their plan today in asking this question; they were also trying to show that the idea of resurrection is pretty ridiculous. In Jewish law there was a rule for levirate marriage in order to produce children and populate the world. This law said that if a married man died childless, his brother would marry his widow in order to provide an heir in the brother’s name. In the Sadducee’s question, they took this to the extreme, saying each of seven marriages ends childless—who would want to marry that woman!—but when the woman finally dies, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be? There were seven candidates! One might wonder when Elizabeth Taylor dies, whose wife will she be, that of her last husband, or the one she loved the most? In any case, “the Sadducees really did not want an answer, for they are convinced the dilemma shows the lack of logic in a resurrection. They also assume that the afterlife is like this life.”1 But why is the question important? Because some Jews, including the Pharisees, did believe in the resurrection. Jesus had predicted his own resurrection. And resurrection is at the heart of our Christian hope. Jesus replies by saying that the afterlife is not like this life. There will be no marriage, no need for offspring. Relationships will be on a totally different level in heaven. He also says that not everyone will be resurrected. Finally Jesus says that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, drawing from the Torah which the Sadducees trust. Note the present tense. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is. God is the God of the living. If God is still God of the patriarchs, they must still be alive somehow. And this points to the afterlife. Job seems to speak of the resurrection in today’s Old Testament lesson. And this is a primary doctrine of our Christian hope. So, what is this afterlife? What happens when we die? One writer said If we were to ask a randomly selected sample of Christians the question “what happens after you die?” we would probably find a number of responses clustering around the following narrative: “when you die, your soul is separated from your body and it goes to heaven to be with God. Your body is buried in the ground or cremated; you no longer need it, and it is no longer relevant.” We tend to assume that we’re done with our bodies after we die.2 In fact, most of the ancient world would have thought that the idea of a bodily resurrection was repugnant. They thought that the body was basically excess baggage that weighted down the soul. And all that really mattered was the soul or spirit. Spirit good, body bad. You’ll see and hear those basic ideas throughout today’s society. As Christians we believe in the resurrection of the body. It makes more sense to us than reincarnation, or ultimate meaninglessness, or extinction. But we don’t talk much about this part of the Good news, because we have a love-hate relationship with our bodies. We too tend to think that spiritual is superior and flesh is bad. But this is Gnosticism, a heresy. Our bodies were created by God and pronounced to be “good,” like all physical creation. Our bodies are gifts from God, given for great and wonderful purposes. It is in and through our bodies that we know and are known, that we love and our loved. The writer above said that Our bodies are part of our identity; they make us who we are. . . .It is the necessary medium through which our most meaningful relationships must transpire. . . .The Christian belief in the resurrection of the flesh is our way of emphasizing the importance of the physical body, its important role in giving us an identity as a particular human being, and the endurance of this identity beyond the boundary between life and death.3 We also need to consider the real tragedy of death. Death is the loss of everything we have known. It is the result of the fall, a result of the power of sin tin the world. But Jesus’ death conquered death for those who believe in him. We will be raised like him and we will be like him. Our resurrection bodies will be imperishable, glorious, powerful and immortal. Our great enemy, death, has been overcome in Christ. Even Job knew this. He said “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!” Resurrection life is a continuation. In 1 Cor 15, it says “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor 15:51-2). Like much of Christian life and faith, our own bodily resurrections cannot be proved, but as Christians we trust in the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. If we believe that Christ was raised from the dead, and the quantity and quality of early witnesses seems to affirm this fact, then isn’t it possible to believe that we too will be raised? The apostle Paul also said: “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” (1 Cor. 15:20-23). I was recently asked if there would be Jews in heaven, because they don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. In the setting I was in I had to be pretty diplomatic, and I said that we don’t know God’s heart, we are not the ones to judge. Unknowingly, I echoed Jean Calvin, the great reformer and theologian, when I continued by saying that I think that when we get to heaven we will be surprised by who is there . . . and by who is not there. Calvin would have added we would also be surprised that we are there! And what is this heaven? All the words and pictures and stories sound so lame. Angels and clouds and harps, pearly gates, streets of gold, and so on. Revelation 21 tells of John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, and it seems like he works to find the words to depict the glory he saw.
If you think about the very best place that you can imagine, and multiply that by hundreds and thousands, that’s what heaven will be like. Marriage won’t matter because the quality and purity of relationships will extend far beyond what we can attain today, because sin will no longer cloud our relationships. The quality of life we will live in the light of the presence of God is simply unimaginable. And it’s not just where we are going that makes the hope so great, but who we will be when we get there, for we will be transformed, we will be like Christ. Let us give thank that our names are written in the book of life. For God is the God of the Living. Hallelujah. Amen.
1 Bock, Darrell L. The NIV Application Commentary: Luke. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996 (518). 2 Cunningham, David S. “Explicating Those ‘Troublesome’ Texts of the Creeds: The Promise of Realistic Fiction.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 42 (2003), 111-119. 3 Cunningham 116 |