Message shared at SPILC, May 4, 2014 1 Third Sunday of Easter (Year A) This message is part of our SermonSuite subscription. https://store.sermonsuite.com. What Happens To You When You Die? is from the book PREPARATION AND MANIFESTATION, Sermons For Lent And Easter, by Dr. Mark Ellingsen, Lutheran pastor and theologian at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Georgia, USA The message we share today is based on the gospel text for this morning and is written by Dr. Mark Ellingsen, Lutheran pastor and theologian at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Georgia, USA, and is printed in the book PREPARATION AND MANIFESTATION, Sermons For Lent And Easter. The title of the message is What Happens To You When You Die? We begin with a prayer. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in thy sight, O Jehovah, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. "What happens to you when you die, Dad?" "Of course, son, if you believe in God, you go up to heaven where you will be with God and the angels." Does such a response sound familiar to you? Is not this the answer with which most of us were raised: That when you die, your soul, free from the body, will go to heaven. Is that what happens? Is that what you all think? Do not despair. I shall not call for a show of hands, but I do want you to think about your answer to the question of what we will be like after we have died (in faith). "And I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen." The resurrection of the body. Week after week you and I recite the creed. We say that we and all Christians believe in a resurrection of the body. We are not proclaiming the idea of a soul floating up there somewhere in heaven. Rather, we proclaim a resurrection of our bodies. Christians, what happens to you when you die? We believe in the resurrection of the body. In the modern church we have not been too inclined to grapple with questions
Message shared at SPILC, May 4, 2014 2 concerning some end time in the future (future eschatology). For me, it has always seemed sufficient to concern ourselves with our relationship with God right now. The supposition is that if you know that God truly loves you, then eternal life will take care of itself. However, lately it has become apparent to me, what with the media's attention to exotic forms of spirituality, to cults, to devil worship, that many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are struggling with the question of what happens to the faithful when they die. Then Easter came. Of course, Easter has an answer to our question; what it is all about is eternal life. This week, as I planned the sermon, this range of issues especially drew my attention. It struck me that in this morning's gospel lesson we have the real answer to our questions: What happens to you when you die, and what is the resurrection of the body? Perhaps in your thinking about the gospel story of Jesus' resurrection appearance to two of his followers on the road to Emmaus, you are prepared to challenge me: "Come on, Pastor, that gospel lesson does not have anything to do with our resurrection. It has to do with Jesus' resurrection and the difficulties that those two followers had in recognizing him. It is a nice story. But what does it have to do with the way things will be for us after we die?" Patience, friends. What happened to Jesus, what he did, and what he looked like after he rose from the dead have everything to do with the way that things will be for you and me after we die. How do I know that the Risen Lord is the paradigm for our resurrection? Paul told me. Here is what he said: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20)." Did you hear that? Jesus' resurrection from the dead on Easter is our guarantee that all of us who believe in him will have a resurrection like his. Hear the words of Paul once more:
Message shared at SPILC, May 4, 2014 3 "For if we have been united with him (with Christ in our baptisms - that is what happens in baptism, folks, we die with Christ) in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:5)." We shall be united with Christ in a resurrection like his resurrection. The biblical witness is about as clear as it can get at this point. If you want to find out what happens after you die, in one sense, Christians really do not know. The Bible does not say much about what will happen to us after we die until Jesus comes again. (Sometimes it suggests that the dead go right to heaven to be with God [Revelation 7:9-14; Luke 16:22-31]. Sometimes it suggests that the dead merely sleep [1 Corinthians 15:20, 51; 1 Thessalonians 4:14].) When Christ does come, however, we know that there will be a resurrection - that we will be raised to life pretty much in the same way that Jesus was raised on the first Easter (1 Corinthians 15:22-23; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; Romans 6:5). Consequently, if you want to know what it will be like for us when we, who have died believing in Jesus, are raised from the dead, then we find our clues by paying attention to what Jesus was like after he had risen from the dead. That is what life will be like for us when we are raised. What was Jesus like? Today's gospel lesson gives us some clues. First of all, we know that Jesus had a body, and he was walking right here on earth (Luke 24:15ff; cf. Philippians 3:21; John 20:27; Luke 24:39-40). No, he was not just a soul floating around in the clouds. He had a body! That is why we Christians do not just confess our faith in a heaven for souls, but in a resurrection of the body - of our bodies. Eternal life with God is always life with a body. Indeed, Jesus still had his body after the resurrection. Yet it must have been a little different from his body before he died. After all, the two men whom Jesus met that day on the road to Emmaus had been followers of Jesus. They had known him (Luke 24:13-14). Yet for some reason they did not at first recognize Jesus when he
Message shared at SPILC, May 4, 2014 4 joined them on that road (Luke 24:16). There must have been something different about him. Of course, Jesus had not completely changed; he was basically the same person that he had always been. And finally these two followers were able to recognize him; they recognized him when they all sat down to eat (Luke 24:29-31a).1 But once they had recognized him, Jesus vanished before their very eyes (Luke 24:31b). The events indicate Jesus was different. After his resurrection, nothing could stop him. He was no longer locked in by the boundaries of space and time. I imagine that there was a kind of glow of radiance, a glow of happiness, all around him (sort of like the way he looked when the transfiguration occurred [Luke 9:29; Matthew 17:2]). Perhaps that is why the two men never recognized him until they were eating that meal together. This morning's gospel lesson truly provides us with some clues concerning what our resurrected bodies will be like. When we look at Jesus after his resurrection we know that we shall still have our bodies when we rise from the dead. Basically, they will still be the same. I shall look like me (though perhaps a little better, I hope)! But I shall still be me and you will still be you. We shall be the same. However, just like Jesus, we shall not be "locked in" by anything, not even by our old hang-ups. At the resurrection, I shall be a perfect me - able to do everything I always liked to do and could do, only I shall be able to do them better. Paul has a beautiful way of talking about the meaning of death and what God will do about it. He says it in the 15th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. Here is what Paul says. He says that at the final resurrection, our bodies will be like beautiful plants that spring from grungy seeds (1 Corinthians 15:35ff). Of course, a beautiful potato, for example, needs to have a seed or it will never grow. But once it grows, where is the seed? To be sure, it came from a seed. But the seed
Message shared at SPILC, May 4, 2014 5 is not there anymore; in a sense the seed died. Paul suggests that our lives are a little like these seeds. The bodies that you and I have, the lives that we are living, are a bit like the seeds that God is planting. Someday a beautiful plant will grow from that seed. That beautiful plant which will stem from you is your resurrection body, the perfect you - the way God originally intended you to be. Of course, for all that to happen, in order for your resurrection body to grow, the seed has to disappear. It has to die. That is why even though Jesus died for our sins, we still have to die. We die, so that those beautiful plants, the perfect you and me, can blossom in the sunlight of God's love. The perfect you and me, without our hang-ups and short-comings, the way we would have been if we had not sinned, this is what we have to look forward to after we die - when Jesus comes again. That stranger on the road to Emmaus demonstrated to those two followers of his what our resurrected bodies would be like. There is something so wonderfully inviting in these images. In eternal life I am going to be me - to have a body like this one, to be able to do the things that I do well - only better. And God proclaims that even in death I shall still be me - only better! There is something beautiful in the Christian image of the resurrection life; it is almost majestic in its beauty. The message of Jesus on the cross is that God loves us just the way we are! He loves us so much that he wants us to be ourselves forever. When you think about the resurrection life this way, the words that Paul once wrote really make sense; they are the final word that needs to be spoken about death and resurrection: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting (1 Corinthians 15:5)?"