A Baptist, a Catholic and an Episcopalian were in a long line in front of the pearly gates. After they
finally made it to the front of the line, Jesus himself met them. He said, "I have only one question
that you must answer: who do you say that I am?"
The Catholic replied, "Well, the church teaches—"Jesus interrupted, "I’m sorry, I didn't ask about the
church, I asked about you! Please go back to the end of the line and think about it some more. "
The Baptist came up to the front and answered, "The Bible says…" Jesus interrupted, "I didn't ask
about the Bible, I asked you! Back to the end of the line, please!"
The Episcopalian then stepped up and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!" Jesus
said, "Well spoken!" The Episcopalian then continued, "But on the other hand…"
I’m afraid that in some circles within Christendom some in our blessed church have managed to
develop a less than sterling reputation for our theology. We’ve even had high-ranking bishops
questioning the bodily resurrection of Christ in favor of something a little more symbolic, and, well,
“sophisticated.” But I’d like to say right at the outset this morning that there is no such hesitation in
the Holy Scriptures, especially by those who were there and witnessed it all.
At Easter we talked about how the disciples had absolutely no question that Jesus had died on the
Cross. The Roman soldiers handled their duties with dispatch, and made certain that the man the
leaders in Jerusalem had identified as a threat to authority would never again be seen as a threat.
Afterward, the disciples spent a couple days in deep despair, convinced that Jesus was simply dead
and gone. But then they were rocked to the core by Jesus’ appearances to them. In today’s
reading from St. Luke’s Gospel we have a jaw-dropping account of an appearance in which Jesus
shows that his resurrection is indeed physical.
Two disciples had encountered the risen Christ on their walk to the village of Emmaus. Now, upon
returning to the other disciples in Jerusalem, they all breathlessly share their resurrection stories
with each other. In the middle of this, suddenly, Jesus is there!
Now please understand this: Jesus doesn’t just knock on the door and wait for Peter or whoever to
answer. He’s just suddenly there in the room. Understandably, this shakes up a few disciples. I
mean, if Jesus were a practical joker, he’d be having the time of his life!
Because the disciples are still trying to piece this all together, and their reflexive reaction is that they’
re seeing a ghost. They all turn white and Jesus says, “Why are you frightened? It’s me! Look,
flesh and bones. Does a ghost have these?” The incredulous disciples still aren’t quite sure what
to think. So Jesus takes it to the next level. He says, “Do you guys have anything to eat?” And they
give him a piece of broiled fish, And he eats it in their presence. This obviously made enough of an
impression on the disciples that it’s featured in this brief post-resurrection account in Luke’s
Gospel. It highlights and underscores that the risen Christ was no ghost, but a physical, risen
human being.
So is it important to believe in bodily resurrection? Obviously, St. Luke thinks so, as does St. Paul.
He writes to the Corinthians, “If there’s no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been
raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than
that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he
raised Christ from the dead.”
And Paul goes on to assert confidently that Christ is risen. He writes, “But in fact Christ has been
raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”
Do you hear that? “The first fruits of those who have died!” This can mean nothing other than that
we, too, will one day be raised from the dead in resurrection bodies. We’re the rest of the harvest.
A little later in the same passage Paul writes, “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is
imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in
power.” We can’t know yet what exactly this will be like. But we can be confident that it’s going to be
very, very good. St. John writes in today’s epistle reading, “What we will be has not yet been
revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he
is.” “We will be like him.” Having flesh and blood bodies that can eat and drink, yet apparently can
walk through doors and walls! I can only imagine.
This morning I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at what the Resurrection of Jesus means for our
future. As best as we can tell, what eternal life will look like. Really, there’s a fair amount of
confusion about this in the church, and quite a bit more confusion about this outside of the church.
If you were to ask some random reporter what Christians believe happens to them when they die, I’ll
give you dollars to doughnuts that they’d say something like, “Well, of course, you go to heaven and
live there happily ever after.” And they might even describe a place of clouds, harps, and haloes.
Many would think that we’ll be free spirits, floating from cloud to cloud unencumbered by bodies. To
be honest, that sounds pretty boring to me.
But you see, this vision is one that was tainted by the old Greco-Roman way of looking at things.
They more or less believed that matter is basically gross and inferior, and spirit is good. They had
no particular fondness for bodies, or for any kind of earthly matter. These were something from
which one day to escape and be liberated into a realm of pure spirit. This was a pretty
persistent perspective. But this isn’t what the scriptures teach. From the first chapters of Genesis,
in which God rested on the Seventh Day and saw that all he had created was “very good”, right up
through the New Testament visions of our ultimate destiny in Christ, matter—rich earth, water, living
tissue, and star dust—are right in the picture.
So we have St. Paul telling us that Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection, and that one day, in
the new heavens and new earth, entropy will be reversed, and “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.” Christ
has been bodily resurrected, and “when he is revealed,” that is, when he returns in glory, John
says, “we will be like him.”
So does this mean that there’s no such thing as heaven? Not at all. I mentioned Bishop Tom Wright
last Sunday, and no one that I know of writes more eloquently about this than him. He notes that
when we leave this life, there’ll be a two-stage process. (And of course he’s not the first—St.
Augustine wrote of the same thing a millennium and a half ago, and St. Paul wrote of this nearly two
millennia ago.) Bishop Wright calls this two-stage process “life after death” and “life after life after
death.”
The “life after death” part of the equation has to do with what happens to us after we die, but before
Jesus’ return. This is the part that we refer to as “heaven.” When we die, our spirits go to be with
Jesus in a place of rest and refreshment. St. Paul makes reference to this in his letter to the
Philippians. He says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the
body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between
the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you
that I remain in the body.” So the one who writes about our physical resurrection and the renewing
of the physical universe here writes about leaving his body and being with the Lord.
But this is just the first stage. Then comes life after life after death. Paul writes in his first letter to
the Corinthians of Jesus’ return. I picture him grinning, and nodding, and maybe licking his lips in
delight as he writes, “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will 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 will be changed. For this perishable body must put on
imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”
This is the general resurrection—the resurrection of the faithful. The mechanics of this is a mystery
to us. The God who created the universe knows how he’ll assemble the atoms and molecules and
compounds (or whatever kind of matter he uses), somehow integrating our identity, our spirit, our
“lifeprint,” into the whole, resurrected self that will be vibrant for eternity. The physicist-turned-priest
John Polkinghorne uses an image I kind of like. He says that when we die God will download our
software onto his hardware until the time when he gives us new hardware to run the software again
for ourselves. And my friends, there will be no glitches, because this will be performed on the
original and perfect operating system.
So, what are the consequences of Christ’s resurrection for us personally? Well, first off, we who
believe will never, ever be separated from Christ and from his love, in life or in death. We will one
day die and go to heaven. And after that there will be something even better! When Christ returns
we’ll reign with him forever in a solidly physical place of light and color and sweet fragrance and
unimaginable music, all within the eternal love dance of the Holy Trinity. These broken, weary
bones will rise to dance again, as we sang on Easter morning.
So Paul writes that when the perishable has put on imperishable, “the saying that is written will be
fulfilled, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. This is what Easter is all about! Where, O death
is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’” (Paul knew that a little heavenly taunting is good
for the soul!) And he concludes his discourse on the great resurrection by writing words that serve
as our own final coda of praise and encouragement: “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ. 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.”
Let us embrace these words gratefully in our hearts, taking hope and comfort in them, knowing that
our labors are indeed not in vain. Amen.
finally made it to the front of the line, Jesus himself met them. He said, "I have only one question
that you must answer: who do you say that I am?"
The Catholic replied, "Well, the church teaches—"Jesus interrupted, "I’m sorry, I didn't ask about the
church, I asked about you! Please go back to the end of the line and think about it some more. "
The Baptist came up to the front and answered, "The Bible says…" Jesus interrupted, "I didn't ask
about the Bible, I asked you! Back to the end of the line, please!"
The Episcopalian then stepped up and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!" Jesus
said, "Well spoken!" The Episcopalian then continued, "But on the other hand…"
I’m afraid that in some circles within Christendom some in our blessed church have managed to
develop a less than sterling reputation for our theology. We’ve even had high-ranking bishops
questioning the bodily resurrection of Christ in favor of something a little more symbolic, and, well,
“sophisticated.” But I’d like to say right at the outset this morning that there is no such hesitation in
the Holy Scriptures, especially by those who were there and witnessed it all.
At Easter we talked about how the disciples had absolutely no question that Jesus had died on the
Cross. The Roman soldiers handled their duties with dispatch, and made certain that the man the
leaders in Jerusalem had identified as a threat to authority would never again be seen as a threat.
Afterward, the disciples spent a couple days in deep despair, convinced that Jesus was simply dead
and gone. But then they were rocked to the core by Jesus’ appearances to them. In today’s
reading from St. Luke’s Gospel we have a jaw-dropping account of an appearance in which Jesus
shows that his resurrection is indeed physical.
Two disciples had encountered the risen Christ on their walk to the village of Emmaus. Now, upon
returning to the other disciples in Jerusalem, they all breathlessly share their resurrection stories
with each other. In the middle of this, suddenly, Jesus is there!
Now please understand this: Jesus doesn’t just knock on the door and wait for Peter or whoever to
answer. He’s just suddenly there in the room. Understandably, this shakes up a few disciples. I
mean, if Jesus were a practical joker, he’d be having the time of his life!
Because the disciples are still trying to piece this all together, and their reflexive reaction is that they’
re seeing a ghost. They all turn white and Jesus says, “Why are you frightened? It’s me! Look,
flesh and bones. Does a ghost have these?” The incredulous disciples still aren’t quite sure what
to think. So Jesus takes it to the next level. He says, “Do you guys have anything to eat?” And they
give him a piece of broiled fish, And he eats it in their presence. This obviously made enough of an
impression on the disciples that it’s featured in this brief post-resurrection account in Luke’s
Gospel. It highlights and underscores that the risen Christ was no ghost, but a physical, risen
human being.
So is it important to believe in bodily resurrection? Obviously, St. Luke thinks so, as does St. Paul.
He writes to the Corinthians, “If there’s no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been
raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than
that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he
raised Christ from the dead.”
And Paul goes on to assert confidently that Christ is risen. He writes, “But in fact Christ has been
raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”
Do you hear that? “The first fruits of those who have died!” This can mean nothing other than that
we, too, will one day be raised from the dead in resurrection bodies. We’re the rest of the harvest.
A little later in the same passage Paul writes, “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is
imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in
power.” We can’t know yet what exactly this will be like. But we can be confident that it’s going to be
very, very good. St. John writes in today’s epistle reading, “What we will be has not yet been
revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he
is.” “We will be like him.” Having flesh and blood bodies that can eat and drink, yet apparently can
walk through doors and walls! I can only imagine.
This morning I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at what the Resurrection of Jesus means for our
future. As best as we can tell, what eternal life will look like. Really, there’s a fair amount of
confusion about this in the church, and quite a bit more confusion about this outside of the church.
If you were to ask some random reporter what Christians believe happens to them when they die, I’ll
give you dollars to doughnuts that they’d say something like, “Well, of course, you go to heaven and
live there happily ever after.” And they might even describe a place of clouds, harps, and haloes.
Many would think that we’ll be free spirits, floating from cloud to cloud unencumbered by bodies. To
be honest, that sounds pretty boring to me.
But you see, this vision is one that was tainted by the old Greco-Roman way of looking at things.
They more or less believed that matter is basically gross and inferior, and spirit is good. They had
no particular fondness for bodies, or for any kind of earthly matter. These were something from
which one day to escape and be liberated into a realm of pure spirit. This was a pretty
persistent perspective. But this isn’t what the scriptures teach. From the first chapters of Genesis,
in which God rested on the Seventh Day and saw that all he had created was “very good”, right up
through the New Testament visions of our ultimate destiny in Christ, matter—rich earth, water, living
tissue, and star dust—are right in the picture.
So we have St. Paul telling us that Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection, and that one day, in
the new heavens and new earth, entropy will be reversed, and “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.” Christ
has been bodily resurrected, and “when he is revealed,” that is, when he returns in glory, John
says, “we will be like him.”
So does this mean that there’s no such thing as heaven? Not at all. I mentioned Bishop Tom Wright
last Sunday, and no one that I know of writes more eloquently about this than him. He notes that
when we leave this life, there’ll be a two-stage process. (And of course he’s not the first—St.
Augustine wrote of the same thing a millennium and a half ago, and St. Paul wrote of this nearly two
millennia ago.) Bishop Wright calls this two-stage process “life after death” and “life after life after
death.”
The “life after death” part of the equation has to do with what happens to us after we die, but before
Jesus’ return. This is the part that we refer to as “heaven.” When we die, our spirits go to be with
Jesus in a place of rest and refreshment. St. Paul makes reference to this in his letter to the
Philippians. He says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the
body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between
the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you
that I remain in the body.” So the one who writes about our physical resurrection and the renewing
of the physical universe here writes about leaving his body and being with the Lord.
But this is just the first stage. Then comes life after life after death. Paul writes in his first letter to
the Corinthians of Jesus’ return. I picture him grinning, and nodding, and maybe licking his lips in
delight as he writes, “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will 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 will be changed. For this perishable body must put on
imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”
This is the general resurrection—the resurrection of the faithful. The mechanics of this is a mystery
to us. The God who created the universe knows how he’ll assemble the atoms and molecules and
compounds (or whatever kind of matter he uses), somehow integrating our identity, our spirit, our
“lifeprint,” into the whole, resurrected self that will be vibrant for eternity. The physicist-turned-priest
John Polkinghorne uses an image I kind of like. He says that when we die God will download our
software onto his hardware until the time when he gives us new hardware to run the software again
for ourselves. And my friends, there will be no glitches, because this will be performed on the
original and perfect operating system.
So, what are the consequences of Christ’s resurrection for us personally? Well, first off, we who
believe will never, ever be separated from Christ and from his love, in life or in death. We will one
day die and go to heaven. And after that there will be something even better! When Christ returns
we’ll reign with him forever in a solidly physical place of light and color and sweet fragrance and
unimaginable music, all within the eternal love dance of the Holy Trinity. These broken, weary
bones will rise to dance again, as we sang on Easter morning.
So Paul writes that when the perishable has put on imperishable, “the saying that is written will be
fulfilled, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. This is what Easter is all about! Where, O death
is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’” (Paul knew that a little heavenly taunting is good
for the soul!) And he concludes his discourse on the great resurrection by writing words that serve
as our own final coda of praise and encouragement: “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ. 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.”
Let us embrace these words gratefully in our hearts, taking hope and comfort in them, knowing that
our labors are indeed not in vain. Amen.
Life After Life After Death
Third Sunday of Easter, 2009
Third Sunday of Easter, 2009
April 26, 2009
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton
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