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Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
What Happens To People After They Die? with Pastor Ryan Braley
Ever felt the transformative power of pure silence and solitude? Join Pastor Ryan as he recounts his recent retreat in the serene mountains of Colorado. He shares how this period of quiet reflection not only rejuvenated his spirit but also deepened his sense of gratitude toward the congregation for their understanding during his time away. Get excited for Ryan's upcoming trip to Tanzania with church members, where they plan to support sister parishes and an elder care home with essential healthcare items. Plus, Ryan introduces a new interactive sermon series, "You Pick," allowing congregants to ask their most pressing faith-related questions and highlights the upcoming Alpha course as a welcoming space for exploring faith.
Ever wondered why the modern concept of the rapture is absent in traditional Jewish scriptures and Jesus' teachings? Pastor Ryan takes us on a reflective journey through the themes of life and death, sharing personal childhood memories of baseball and the innate human desire for continuity beyond this life. Dive into the profound hope for an afterlife, challenging the notion that life's richness could simply end without something beyond the grave, and ponder the deeper questions about existence and legacy.
Curious about where the idea of bodily resurrection came from? In our exploration of early Christian beliefs, Pastor Ryan contrasts the hope in the resurrection of the body with Greco-Roman and Jewish expectations of the era. Discover how Platonic thought influenced cultural perspectives and how the early Christian belief in bodily resurrection emerged as a radical idea. We also delve into Paul's writings in Thessalonians, often misinterpreted by rapture believers, to uncover his comforting message to early Christians about death. Concluding with practical advice, Ryan shares how to live out God's kingdom principles daily, embodying resurrection life through acts of compassion and support for others.
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Good morning. My name is Ryan, I'm the pastor here at Central and I occasionally carry around a baseball bat. So I just like bats. They're fun to play with. So, hey, a couple things before we get started. We're going to—so I was in Colorado for five days.
Speaker 1:I got back last Monday. I was supposed to come back last Sunday but my flight got delayed and I was up in the mountains, up past Montrose, colorado. Anybody ever been out there on the Western Slope, ever been out there on the western slope? Okay, yeah, beautiful area. And I was coming out of the mountains driving past Ralph Lauren's Ranch, which is a beautiful ranch, by the way. That's what I want to do when I retire is buy a ranch like that 17,000 acres in the mountains of Colorado. I think I'm in the wrong profession to afford it, but I might try. Beautiful I guess it's a real working cattle ranch. But anyway, I was coming out of the mountains, mountains and I turned on my phone to log in or check in at united and they're like oh sorry, man, your flight was canceled because of operational error and so you'll fly out tomorrow. I'm like well, great, so I spent time in montrose and came back, but great time of being out in the mountains.
Speaker 1:It was like a retreat. Um, I do, I do well if I get alone and experience silence and solitude, these these ancient practices, that kind of you know, I like to talk a lot and I'm around people all the time. So for me, if I can get alone with my thoughts and myself and my soul and God, I can. I do a lot, I do better, so anyway. So I feel like I'm a refreshed person, but I will be.
Speaker 1:We do a podcast here. It's called Reflections. If you sign on to any Apple or whatever podcast, you can download them. In the next coming episodes I'll talk about my retreat a little bit, or we can go out for a coffee. I can tell you about it, but it was an incredible time. So, thanks for your grace, let me be gone. Also, I'm leaving again in a couple weeks.
Speaker 1:I'm going to Tanzania with some people from Central. So the Nordmeyers are going with me, or I'm going with them, and the McCartys. And Jeremiah is actually he's Tanzanian, so we're going to stay with his family in Dar es Salaam on the way out of there and I would love your help. We're going to bring over. So, as you know, we have two sister parishes in Tanzania, in Kibena, and Madagascar, in the Njombe region. We've been partners with them for like 20 plus years and we're going to go over there and visit. I've never been over there, so I'm goingison and Anna Nordmeier.
Speaker 1:You know, through Operation Helper Village, you guys raised money for wells and for some health care packets. That's where we're going and so we're gonna go visit them, and a couple of you helped, you know, support them too. But anyway, we're going and so we're gonna bring over, like a little, some health kit stuff that they have an elder care home over there that we helped build so they have their seniors can now go into this beautiful home to kind of live and grow old and then eventually be ushered into the sort of the life to come. And, uh, we want to collect some basic like first care items like, um, oh, actually you got the card, didn't you get the card? Yeah, so can you grab. Yeah, if you're available, willing, able, could you grab, maybe just purchase a couple that you don't have to.
Speaker 1:But if you're able're going to bring as many of those things as we can over with us. It's like basic things like deodorant and antibacterial cream, earwax removal, which is very important, I guess, and so if you are like, hey, I want to do that, would you collect some of those, bring them in. They've got to be brand new, so you've got to buy them, I guess, and then bring before July 28th, leaving the 31st. So you got the card. If you need one, you can grab one by the ushers table on the way out of here. But that'd be awesome.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, okay, we are starting a brand new sermon series today. I'm excited. We call it our you Pick series. We do it every summer, where you guys get to ask any question that you want to ask and we try to answer as many as we can. We don't always get to answer all of them, because more questions come in than we have time to answer, which is a metaphor for life, I suppose, and so we're gonna answer as many as we can and do whatever we can. Now, if you're a person who loves to ask questions, don't ask one right now, but if you do, if you are, uh, or if you're new to the faith and have lots of questions about faith, like who is jesus and what's the Spirit and what about baptism and what is the point of Christian life I would encourage you to come to our Alpha course. We're doing an Alpha course this fall. I'm leading it and it is a calm. It's a safe place to ask any question.
Speaker 1:I think we grow and learn by asking questions. I don't mind you asking questions that you should know the answer to. I don't mind you asking questions that are a bit heretical. I don't, it doesn't bother me. I'm not worried about your faith. If you show up to something like this, you're fine. But that's how we learn, that's how we grow, that's how we wrestle with our faith, and this is what the Jews. They're called Israel, because they wrestle with God. This is part of it, to have you be a part of the Alpha course. It's 11 weeks long. Come to as many as you can. If you have to skip out because you're having I don't know heart surgery or something like that, then do that. But that's what we're going to be doing. So if you have any questions, come and grab me and I'll let you know what we're. I'll try to answer those that. Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 1:Question one here is a doozy, and I realized in the first gathering this is probably a five-part sermon. Sorry, I've only got 30 minutes, so I'm going to do my very best to get it in and get it going. But the question is what happens to people when they die, or rather after they die, and what is heaven? What is heaven like? What about the resurrection? What does it mean? Now she's asking because, as a council, it's Michelle Millis who's here. I think, right, michelle, yeah, michelle's over there.
Speaker 1:Church council, we read this great book by NT Wright. Read anything you can by NT Wright. He's incredible. But he has a chapter in this book called Following Jesus, about heaven, new life, new world, and we didn't have time to discuss it. And so she's like Ryan, I wanted to talk about this. So, okay, I'll do my best to kind of talk about it this morning. Then I'm going to, I'm going to kind of tack on at least a sentence or two about this next question. I'm going to kind of combine them.
Speaker 1:This person asked, melissa Trenton asked I'd be interested in hearing about the rapture. Anyone in here know what the rapture is? When I say the rapture, okay, a couple, okay, fine, that's actually that's fine. The rapture is this it's more of a kind of a modern theological idea that is mostly prevalent in evangelical Christianity and like modern evangelicalism. If you've read the Left Behind. Anybody read the Left Behind books by Tim LaHaye and okay, okay, sort of. Yeah, I saw the movie. Did you ask for your money back because you probably should have? Um, personally, I would say, don't go read the books, they'll just confuse your theology. But, um, the books are entertaining, they're fine. But can you put the the question back up there for me, sam? Um, okay, well, just about the rapture.
Speaker 1:So it's this idea that that when, when jesus so the bible talks about like the second coming of Jesus when he comes back he will take the righteous and sort of suck us out of here and we'll go somewhere else. That's the idea of the rapture. And then everything on earth will kind of begin to go into this turmoil. And it's actually a pretty modern idea. It's not really prevalent in the Jewish story or the Hebrew scriptures, nor is it prevalent at all in Jesus' teachings. I think what happens is that they took a couple verses people from Thessalonians, corinthians and Matthew's gospel one verse and they kind of combined this idea. Hal Lindsey, if you know that name, also wrote about it, but I'm going to throw a one-liner in there if you can't already tell what I think about the rapture. And what do we believe about the rapture? So fair enough, okay. When I was a kid, what do we believe about the rapture? So fair enough, okay.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid, I loved Ken Griffey Jr. Any junior fans in here? Okay, all right, thank you A couple. Now I was in like middle school, high school when he got really famous. He would have been one of the greatest baseball players of all time, I think, but he got injured and he was still incredible, but he had the smoothest, sweetest swing of all time, and he was a lefty I'm a lefty, so I thought we had a lot in common, except that he was a pro baseball player. I was not, but whatever, you know close enough, and when we were kids, he always wore his hat backwards during batting practice and he had like just this very fluid swing. And so we as kids, when we were in Little League, we would all wear our hats backwards during practice and our coach was like put your hats on right. And we're like Ken Griffey does it Anyway. And so when I was younger, I loved baseball.
Speaker 1:I remember going to the games and pretending to be Ken Griffey Jr and we would watch him play. There was a video game called Ken Griffey Jr Baseball. Anybody play that baseball game on Super Nintendo? Okay, peter, yeah, good, at least one person from each gathering. Great baseball game. Like in the game he's blowing bubbles. This big league shoe is awesome. And he always used a black baseball bat. Louisville Slugger it's pronounced Louisville, not Louisville or Louisville. Okay, and when I was older I always I just loved Ken Griffey.
Speaker 1:I went and got. I went to the Louisville Slugger Museum and I toured it around and I remember seeing they have bats you can buy of these great baseball players. I'm like I'm like I'm getting a Ken Griffey bat. Then I saw the price tag. I'm like, oh, I'm not going to get a Ken Griffey bat, I'll get just a black one. It's a Lycus. Even those ones that meet all the specifications of the Louisville that could be played with in the MLB, those are expensive. Then I saw the bin that was calling my name. It was like the bin of the bats that like didn't meet the qualifications. They weren't dense enough or the wood was wrong or they had some kind of a defect. I'm like those were $30. Give me one of those bad boys. So I got a Ken Griffey Louisville Slugger Museum baseball bat and I love it, and every time I hold it because I actually keep it in my office and I hold it a lot I think of Junior and my youth growing up and the whole thing begins to expand.
Speaker 1:I start thinking about my childhood and my high school days and my own son who played baseball for the high school here, some buddies of his who played baseball. It brings back all these memories for me and it raises the question for me, after all these things that we collect in our lives memories and experiences, friends and things you learn and how you grow after all of that and maybe hopefully, god willing, for most of us, several decades of a life that's rich and good, and all the things we collect what on earth happens when we die? Like what happens when we die? Just a quick question, if you're here, can I ask has anybody in here ever died and come back from the dead and is alive? Now, nobody Shoot.
Speaker 1:I was hoping I'd get some help with a sermon from someone who's actually done it. But what happens when we die? Now, a lot of modern science will say things like well, the only thing that's real is that which you can taste, touch and feel and measure under a microscope and kind of like you know, sort of have collect data around, like things are hard and tangible and empirically true. And so they say well, probably what happens when you die? The body dies and that's all there is and the lights go off and then you're done. But to me that's a great tragedy.
Speaker 1:Experientially, I want there to be more after we die, like after all I've done, after all these times and having kids and having memories and my Ken Griffey bat and all the things that we've learned and grown and relationships made. That's all we do. We just die, the lights go out and we all just go home or go somewhere into unconsciousness. It makes me deeply sad to think about that and my wife reminds me. But, ryan, if you're unconscious after you die, how would you know to be sad? That's a fair point, but I'm sad now. I want, I long for there to be something beyond the grave when we die. I want there to be something else, and I'm not alone.
Speaker 1:The great Steve Jobs once wrote this. Actually, he was interviewed in a book and he said this he said I like to think that something survives after you die. What, who knows? Maybe your consciousness, maybe something else, but it's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience and maybe a little bit of wisdom Some of us more wisdom than others. Don't point fingers, but some wisdom and it just goes away. How bizarre is that. So, really, I want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness in fact endures. And he goes on to say this is why, maybe I didn't put on off switches on apple devices, because I didn't want to just shut off and turn on. He never says, though, why they charge an exorbitant amount of money for these devices or why you have to buy adapters every four months to make your stuff work. But he didn't. He didn't say anything about that, just about this.
Speaker 1:But what happens when we die? See to me, if we don't live on, if nothing lives on, if we just turn the lights off and that's all there is, it's this tragedy. I mean that death wins and there's nothing beyond that. This whole thing sort of just burns up, and there's this universe that suffers this heat. Death, and that's kind of all there is. It to me would be a great tragedy, and here's the deal. Nobody's done it. No one brought back data from the afterlife. We don't really know, but there are all these mysterious things that happen when people are near death, that like kind of like, make us think maybe there's something else when death and life begin to bleed into one another.
Speaker 1:There's a story quickly about a woman named maria in 1984 who dies. She has a heart attack and they bring her to the hospital and she's being revived in this hospital room. Never been there before, never been there after, but she's there and the doctors revive her after being dead clinically this is in a hospital medical journal Comes back to life and weeks later, when she fully recovers, she begins to tell the doctors about her experience and she recounts the entire episode of them bringing her in, who was in there, what they looked like. She was never awake or conscious, she was dead, but she knew all these things. She's like I felt like I floated up out of my body, which is weird, I get it and then I looked down. I could see myself, I could see all the doctors and here's what they said and recounts all the things they were talking about and recounts all the things they were talking about. Then she's like, oh, and you were there and so-and-so was there, and it's like names all the doctors and it's like to a T, everything was going on.
Speaker 1:Then she floats up out of the building, apparently, and out around the building to the north side of the building and there, on this ledge that you can't see from the ground level, she sees a blue shoe and, very specifically, this blue shoe has like a hole in the toe and the lace was stuck to the heel. And she sees all this and then kind of comes, is revived. Well, when she's telling the doctors this story, they're like she's like, oh, I had this blue shoe. And they're like what blue shoe? So the doctor gets curious. He's like I'm gonna go check this out. So he gets up, goes to this door. The only way out on this ledge is by a locked window. They keep all the windows locked and they have a janitor. They open the window and there's this blue shoe with a hole in the toe. You can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1:So what happens when we die? Where does the body go? What about this thing we call the soul? What do we make of dying? And what happens when we do in fact die? As I mentioned, the elephant in the room realizes that nobody in here has done it, so perhaps we would do well to have some humility when we talk about dying and life after death, because in fact we don't really know what happens.
Speaker 1:Paul writes this, in fact, in the book of Corinthians about what we know and can't know. Go ahead for me, sam. He says this hey, for we know only in part and we prophesy in part on this side of death. But when completeness comes, whatever that looks like, what is in part will disappear. And then he says when I was a child, I talked like a child. When I was, you know, when I was, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. But for now we only see a reflection, as in a mirror. It's like it's not really clear, it's kind of clouding. Then, after the after you know, all things are made new again. We shall see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know fully, as I am indeed fully known. So there's this stage where we kind of know we have these experiences of the life after death or near death, or people that have these weird stories. What do we make of all these things? Well, we kind of know in part and we kind of don't know in part, so we would do well to have some humility. But I do want to say some things about what the Bible teaches about life after death and the Christian tradition and what it might say about it, and then I welcome any questions afterwards. You can come and grab me, because I only have about 20 more minutes to go, so we've got a boogie, fair enough.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid, I used to think when I died I'd go to heaven, and by heaven it meant some kind of disembodied bliss up in the clouds, somewhere right like my body going to the ground, my soul or like this inanimate thing would kind of fly up and go and spend time in this ethereal world where there were like streets of gold and crystal, diamond lakes and there was a chipotle on every corner next to a crumble cookie, and of course I would name it, and it was named Ryan's Mojo Dojo Casa House. Yes, please tell me, I'm not the only one who had this vision of heaven when I was younger. But I realized as I got older this is not really a biblical view of what heaven is like, or even how they would talk about heaven. I thought well, I like to fish, so then heaven will be like some giant lake where I fish all day long. Maybe you've heard this at funerals. Well, like so-and-so loved to bowl. So he's up in heaven bowling with God, as though heaven were just a manifestation of what we like and desire in our beings today. But that's not what the Bible says. Heaven is like. Heaven's something different. What happens after death is something different.
Speaker 1:Here's what the hope of the earliest followers of Jesus was. They had this hope. The first followers. They had this deep, intense, life-giving hope. And it wasn't. I'm just going to tell you. It wasn't heaven when you died, some kind of disembodied, ethereal floating around in the clouds. It was something different.
Speaker 1:Now remember the first followers of Jesus, and Jesus lived in this part of the world that was heavily influenced by Greco-Roman thought. Does that make sense? So the Greeks and the Romans had this way of thinking about the world and life and death and the afterlife, and it heavily influenced the entire area where Jesus was walking around. Jesus wasn't Greek or Roman, he was a Jew. But even the Jewish culture began to adopt some of his Greek, greco ways of thinking.
Speaker 1:And this very famous Greek philosopher named Plato you know who Plato is? Okay, nobody knows who Plato is. Okay, there we go. Man, y'all need to read some Plato. He wrote a great book called the Republic. Anyway, he was a very famous philosopher and he thought this, and and sort of those who came after plato thought this as well. This is very much like greco, roman way of thinking.
Speaker 1:He thought that the, the body, was this temporary. Am I echoing, or is that just me? Okay, they're having fun back there. Apparently he thought that the body, I had this ominous, ghostly voice for a second. It was kind of fun. Uh, he thought I'm in heaven, or maybe you're in heaven, or maybe not. Anyway, uh, he thought that the body was like this temporal, like suitcase, that was only temporary, that like dying, going to the ground, and that the soul, which is like a more elevated, like essence of your being, would live on forever and it would live on forever somewhere else, and so that the, the body was like a suitcase, like this right, sam, there we go, and that it was inanimate. It was like non-thinking, it was just sort of like this, like bag of bones surrounding your soul. The soul was more permanent, it was immortal, lived on forever and they were separate things and the body would go into the ground or die and decay and become worm food and the soul would live on forever. This was the, the setting that jesus followers, they all, the waters in which they swam. Does that sound good? Fair enough, you tracking, so far, great. But suddenly, and so for the afterlife was something about just the soul, this ethereal thing. This is very much what I thought when I was a kid. It's because platonic thought in fact does make its way into Christian thought.
Speaker 1:But we should do well to kind of look a bit closer, because around the second century there's this thing called the Apostles' Creed. So Jesus and his followers have been gone for a couple, you know, decades at this point, and the Apostles' Creed comes onto the scene. This is a creed, we say today, and it's this thing that they're trying to figure out. What do we as Christians, this brand new fledgling religion or movement, what do we believe in? So they're like well, we believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. You know the story. And then it goes on. It says I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic or Christian church. Same word, same meaning the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of the sins, the resurrection of the body.
Speaker 1:Wait what? Nobody talked like this in the first century. I'm just telling you Greeks and Romans, in this Hellenistic culture, they thought, oh, the soul was this ideal thing. The soul was the essence of your being. The body is this carnal, second-rate thing that can be tainted, it breaks down. Things like that are just like not as good. We need to disembody the body and go somewhere else, and these men and women are talking about no, we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. How in the world, in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting? How in the world in the first second century, do these people begin to believe in a thing like the resurrection of the body in a culture in which nobody thought that was true? How does this idea of a resurrected of the body, the body that was dead, this physical body was very much dead becomes very much alive? How do they start thinking that in the middle of nowhere, when the culture around them is like no, no, no, the soul is the only thing that lives on forever, and these men and women are like no, no, no, the body comes back to life and lives everlasting? How does it happen? How does this idea make its way into the orbit of christian hope, and it's a brand new idea.
Speaker 1:Remember, before, before Jesus, the hope of the Jewish people was not heaven. When they died, they never talked like that. It wasn't some disembodied bliss somewhere else. In fact, their idea of what was in the age to come, or when God's will was being done on earth, was for them as a nation, as a people group, to be restored. Remember the Jews, israel? They'd been conquered by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks. Now they're under Roman rule. They've been under the thumb of empire for many generations and they're like we just want to rule ourselves under God, have God rule over us and have our own land and be our own people. But they never did so. Their longing was for God to restore them as a people, like, hey, when God's will is done, then we'll live back in the land and we'll be our own people and we'll be free. But it never happened. Remember when Jesus was around, they were still living under Roman rule and there were Roman guards and soldiers everywhere. They were anything but free.
Speaker 1:And yet when Jesus shows up, they and Jesus begin talking about a new day dawning. Jesus is like hey, I'm bringing a new kingdom, a kingdom not of this world, and things are going to be different. What are you talking about? This is a brand new idea. And then, when Jesus leaves, they really begin to talk about this idea of the kingdom come and the resurrection of the body.
Speaker 1:How could a new day dawn? They don't win right. Jesus loses, he dies on the cross. The Romans win. How could they talk about a new day dawning? None of their hopes came true. They were never free from the Romans. The Romans essentially won. Jesus dies, they all scatter, they run for their, their lives and there's no one to be found. And then suddenly they begin talking about no, a new day has indeed dawned. How. Jesus was dead. A dead Messiah is a failed Messiah. He lost it's game over. What in the world happened? Well, here's what happened. It changes the course of the faith of these people and it changes the course of human history. Jesus, who they believe was very much bodily dead, somehow, some way a few days later, is now bodily alive and walking around. And they're like yo, what is this? And they've been talking about resurrection, that the body that was dead has now become alive. And it changes everything. And then it begins to seep into the culture of the, of the first christians and followers of jesus, like, hey, what happened to jesus will probably happen to us. So, paul, I think I have it on the slide.
Speaker 1:Paul writes this in philippians right, uh, sam, uh, there we go. Paul writes this hey, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, this is the goal of the cosmos. He will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body. Now check it out when Jesus raises from the dead, he's not a spirit wandering around floating on, you know, on the grasses, and that people can walk through and create, you know. No, he's actually in his body and he shows them his hands and his feet and they've got holes in them, like it's actually his physical body's been, like very much resurrected. He's back to life. That which was dead is now physically alive again. And then paul writes hey, what happens to him will also happen to us, which means the things in your life, for those who are in Christ, which were dead will suddenly somehow, someway at the resurrection, come back to being physically alive. Very much a this worldly, this spatially kind of a thing, not a disembodied ethereal floating in the clouds playing a harp all day. No, it's actually something quite different.
Speaker 1:See, jesus, they believe, was resurrected. Something dead had come back to life, and it wasn't just symbolic. They had all kinds of language for beautiful things, the Jews. They had language for forgiveness or for love, or for wonderfully symbolic things like the work of a prophet. They didn't use any of that language. They said Jesus was resurrected, he was dead and now he's alive again. And they said, hey, look, all of our hopes, the things we were longing for, our dreams, this idea of restoration, they did in fact come true, not how we thought, but they came true in Jesus. What's dawning? This new kingdom, this new way of life, this new resurrected, orderly life, man, everything's coming true that we had hoped for, just not how we thought. And so Jesus is bringing this way of life, this kingdom, this resurrection, life here and now. And it's not just the immortality of the soul, it isn't just that he survived the cross. No, he was dead. And then he was resurrected, a bodily resurrection, in fact.
Speaker 1:In the original Apostles' Creed it was written in the Greek the word is resurrectio carnis, and it really means just the resurrection of the flesh, or of the body, or of the dead, that which was dead becomes alive. In the Hebrew they would say it like this kol basar, which means the coming alive of all things that are living, so anything that's alive. So in noah's story, all living things, all the kol basar includes animals and things in the world that are alive. So the jewish and christian idea of like resurrection begins to expand, not just from humans, but all things that were living, that have died, will now become living once again.
Speaker 1:So paul writes this in rom 8. I love this. He says this. Paul writes go ahead for me, sam. He writes hey, we know that the whole creation, not just you as an individual person, but everything in creation, has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to this present moment. Not only so, but we ourselves, who are the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly. We long for God to fix the things that were broken. Maybe you're like me. You watch the news. You're like this is terrible. Buckle up because it's election season. So you're like, oh, this is a mess, this is not how things should be right. Well, because we groan inwardly for God to fix thingship or daughtership of Jesus, of God, the redemption of our bodies. We long for our bodies to know real life again. So their hope in the first century, the second, third in the early church, wasn't heaven when they died, some disembodied ethereal floating around. Rather it was resurrection and recreation. God would make all things new, restore all things and make them brand new again.
Speaker 1:Now a quick aside about the rapture, if you got a second. So the rapture comes onto the scene much later. Jesus never really talked about the rapture at all. It's this idea that, like when Jesus comes again, instead of bringing heaven to earth or redeeming and restoring all things, rather Jesus will take the people who are faithful and take us out of this place to go somewhere else, maybe in the clouds, somewhere, so maybe it's some, I don't know if it's disembodied or not, but and then this earth will kind of just burn up or fizzle away or those who are not righteous will kind of like suffer, and that's the idea of the rapture. And so this is really and it's only mentioned like something like this, only mentioned a few times in scripture. I want to give you one verse, if you, if you don't mind, which I think people just interpret a little bit wrongly, and then I'll, we'll kind of move on.
Speaker 1:But there's one verse that most folks read like oh, this is, this is what the people who believe in the rapture really cling to. So it's from thessalonians and here's what it says. Uh, paul writes this Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death. So Paul's writing to Thessalonica. He's like hey, you guys are a little bit nervous about dying. I'm going to help comfort you. Here's what he writes them about their fear of dying. He says for we believe that Jesus died and rose again. There's resurrection, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who fall asleep in him. So don't worry, when you die, you'll somehow go to be with Jesus. According to the Lord's word, we tell you that those who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who fall asleep.
Speaker 1:Now here's the part where many folks will kind of cling to this and start talking about the rapture, where God will sort of take us out of this place and go somewhere else. He says this, for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command. You have to know that Paul's using metaphors here that were existent in his day and age and I'll explain it in a minute With the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So somehow in the first century, in the second, the third, the hope of the early church was that God would bring heaven to earth, restore all things, make our bodies that were dead resurrected, and we'll have this new heavens and a new earth. Very much here embodied this place, but a bit different because it's going to be glorified.
Speaker 1:Rather than that, this rapture idea begins to talk about how Jesus will come and take people out of here and go somewhere else. Do you see the difference? Okay, what Paul really is getting at? Paul's using a metaphor, an image here of a king who would come and visit. This is very much prevalent in Paul's day and age that kings would come and visit people and when these dignitaries kings or queens or emperors would come, they would send out emissaries from this local place to go and meet them and then bring them back to their local place, and then bring them back to their local place. So Paul's saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, when the Lord comes again, somehow he will raise those in Christ to go and meet him in the clouds, and the idea Paul's imposing is and then come back down to this place. Does that make sense, okay? Thank you, emily. Okay, if you have more questions, come and grab me. That's all I can say about that.
Speaker 1:But this idea of rapture isn't necessarily, in Scripture, fleshed out that way. The hope of the Christians in the early church was not some disembodied abandonment, evacuation of this place. Rather, it was God coming back to this place, making things new again, resurrecting from the dead those things which were dead, and bringing them back to life, very much embodied life, here and now. That's the hope. Not us going somewhere else, but bringing heaven to earth. Now, here's the question, though In the meantime, what happens to those who've died? So you have death, then you have way down here, which hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1:This idea of the resurrection. What about the in-between time? Well, paul writes this in a couple of places To be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord. So somehow, between here and here, something's happening where part of us at least is with Jesus, with the Lord. Now we know that when we die, part of us, our bodies, goes into the ground and begin to decay, which is sort of good news, because then you have no more laundry to do, no more emails to answer, you can finally skip leg day, not feel guilty about it, right, but what else is going on there? Well, part of us goes to be with Jesus where I don't really know him but, and we wait, and we wait eagerly for the Lord to bring about resurrection. What happened in Jesus, we believe will happen to us as well. But there's this waiting time in between. What's happening in there?
Speaker 1:Well, jesus in John 14 says hey, I'm going to leave here, I'm going to go be with the Lord and I'm going to prepare a place for you. And when I do, there'll be plenty of rooms for all of you. And in the original language, this idea of like many rooms in this house the word there sort of suggests kind of a way station or a resting area, a temporary place. So Jesus is like hey. So Jesus is like hey, I'm going to go and prepare this waiting place for you where people will kind of live for a moment for the time being. Or also in the Gospels.
Speaker 1:In Luke, jesus tells the thief on the cross he's like hey, today, when you die, you'll be with me in paradise. Of course he would, because to be absent with the body is to be present with Jesus. But he says in paradise, what's paradise? Well, in the Hebrew culture, paradise was like this resting garden area. So he tells them hey, when you leave this place, when you die, your body will go into the ground and something of you will come be with me in a waiting resting area and there we will wait together. And the idea is, those who've gone before us you can rest assured that those who've gone before us are actually with the Lord and they're waiting and they're resting I don't know where on a map, if you were to ask me, I don't know where, but they're okay. And we all anticipate and wait eagerly for this day of the resurrection when God takes all things that were dead and brings them back to life. And here's how I'll close this sermon. By the way, if you have more questions, which I'm sure you probably do, come and grab me. And here's how I'll close this sermon. By the way, if you have more questions, which I'm sure you probably do come and grab me. But here's the deal Jesus brings this inauguration of this kingdom when he shows up.
Speaker 1:This idea of resurrection, of God, making all things new, shows up with and in Jesus Back in the first century. He's like, hey, part of this thing that we're longing for, waiting for, anticipating, you don't have to wait until the resurrection. You can have some of this life, this new life, here and now. And he goes around and starts doing it. He raises Lazarus from the dead, he heals lepers, he restores folks to their social lives, he's fixing and healing the broken parts of the world. So he's inviting his followers hey, be a part of the kingdom of God here and now. You and I don't have to wait until heaven when we die. That isn't the hope of the Christian anyway. It's actually resurrection life.
Speaker 1:You and I can begin to build for the kingdom here and now, which means this the things that you do on a daily basis to restore the world are super important. When you take care of the sick, that's the kingdom of God, and you're living in tune with and along with this resurrection life in the here and now. When you buy coffee for a stranger, that's the kingdom of God in the here and now. When you share your resources with those who don't have enough resources great. That's the kingdom of God, here and now. When you restore folks mentally, physically, emotionally and health-wise, that's the kingdom. That's resurrection, life here and now. When you adopt people who don't have families, when you care for your neighbor, when you care for the poor, when you usher those who are dying into the age to come, these are all things that are present in the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1:So the invitation, if you hear nothing else today, is to live that way, here and now. You don't have to wait. Live as though the resurrection were true and real and alive, and it can be made manifest in you, here and now and then. Also, of course, we do wait, longingly wait and hope for and long for the great day when the resurrection will will occur. Amen, let me pray for us. Jesus, we give you thanks for your resurrection, life and god. We don't know what's beyond the grave, but these pictures and images and thoughts in the bible and in the early parts of our tradition are wonderfully amazing. God, make them come alive in us and, holy Spirit, would you encourage us, inspire us, enliven us, enable us today to be people of the resurrection. May we love our neighbors and take care of the poor and look out for those who can't look out for themselves. May we be resurrection people here and now. Amen.
