Luke
24: 1-11
Meaning
of resurrection
Christchurch,
30th April 2000
Joke
A lot of people have got some strange ideas about God,
and about where and what heaven is.
But, following on from what I was talking about last week, I want to think
a bit more about what our ultimate destiny as people is, and what God's plan is
for the world, and what the empty tomb, and Jesus' physical resurrection, has
to do with it all. Quite a tall order
in a few minutes, so you need to pay attention. But I believe that our view of our final destination profoundly
effects our understanding of what we are doing here in the first place. Let me explain a bit more.
The problem is that not many people think that Jesus'
death and resurrection has anything to do with real life. They don't get that excited by it. Marx said that Christinaity was the opium of
the people, it lulled Christians into apathy, it was a form of escapism, the ultimate
pie in the sky when you die. Freud said
it was all just wish fulfilment, a kind of escapism in that way. Both of them basically saw the Christian
message, especially the bit about what happens after you die, as being a way of
fleeing from all the pain and complications of the real world, a way of warming
our hearts while everybody else struggles on through.
Now for many people the idea of being delivered from
the pain of this world into perfect peace is understandably appealing, and we
shouldn't sell short the fact that heaven will be an end to all suffering. It's very common, I think, at times of
bereavement, that we tend to emphasise the ideas of escape, or
deliverance. But this version of heaven
raises two questions. The first one is
"Is that all it is?" Is this
the only hope God offers to people?
But the second question is more serious. If heaven is this kind of glorious escape,
then why are we here at all? Is it so
that we can wait for God to whisk us all away, while this earth is discarded
and burnt up? Are we just meant to hang
on by our fingernails - Negro slaves used to sing, "This earth is not my
home, I'm just passing through."
Are we just "passing through", kept here only just so we can
decide whether to follow Jesus or not?
I hope you can see that the view you have of what
heaven is about will completely undergird what view you hold of your present
life. So we need to go right back to
what God's plan was for this creation when he formed it in the first
place. Think back to what he was doing
when he first put Adam and Eve in the garden, and, as the Bible said, he
created the heavens and the earth at the same time. He intended for life on this planet to be
good. He intended for us to fill the
earth, not just with babies, but with history, with art, with culture, with
laughter, with love, with technology, with nouveau cuisine, with buildings,
with football, with everything out of which civilisation is built. He put us on his earth to develop the
potential that he had unleashed, not to sit back and gaze at it. It was never God's intention to get rid of
this earth, and to keep heaven. Why
should he? - it's good.
But while we continue to fill the earth, we know that
the civilisation that God initiated has gone badly wrong. Our sin has led us into a cycle of decay,
conflict, and dis-ease that makes us look at the world and often say "How
can this now be good? How can God want
to keep this? The sooner we can get
out, the better." Paul writes in
Romans that the whole of creation is "groaning", and is in
"bondage to decay."
Into this mess, God sent Jesus. But what did he come to do? How did he plan to rescue us? Most heroes, fictional or real, are involved
in some kind of rescue, and there are two main types of rescue they
perform. The first is getting people
out of a bad place or situation, like a building that's on fire, or a ship that
is sinking. The hero takes them out of
that place, and takes them to somewhere safe.
The second type of rescue still involves rescuing people, but rather
than rescuing them from somewhere bad to somewhere safe, it involves rescuing
the land they live in from "the baddies" so that they can once again
live in what is essentially a good place in safety. So, for example, Robin Hood rescues people by ousting the Sheriff
of Nottingham from the land, and Batman drives the Joker out of Gotham City -
that glorious city of justice, and of peace! - so that the people can live
there once again.
The question is, which kind of rescue did Jesus come
to make? Did he come to ultimately
rescue us from a bad place - earth - to a safe place - heaven or did he come to
rescue the earth from Satan's grip, its bondage to decay, so we can one day
live in safety on the earth? Did he
come to take the life of earth to heaven, or to bring the life of heaven to
earth? If we take the former, we might
as well plunder this fading earth for all its got.
But the picture the Bible gives us is one where one
day the earth will be redeemed - bought back for God, and that we will live
here in safety. Think of the imagery in
the Bible that describes our future - the lion will lie down with the
lamb...the earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the
sea...the meek will inherit the earth...the creation itself will be liberated
from its bondage to decay...there will be food, there will be music, there will be mountains, there will be
animals. So the New Jerusalem will come
down to earth - we won't be taken off.
And you know that story of Jesus where "one will be taken and one
will be left"? It will be the Christian
who is left to enjoy the creation as God always intended it to be. What a hope! A fully redeemed, resurrected, creation - the fulfilment of God's
plan. A physical resurrection where we
not only rest in peace, but we rise in glory.
So the point of Jesus's body being physically raised
is that it shows our future isn't the end of the physical dimension of our
lives, and the beginning of a new spiritual dimension, but the promised
resurrection of the world. The
resurrection didn't take the life of earth away to heaven, but Jesus brought
the life of heaven to earth, and his resurrection was the first sign that this
is what God wants to do.
If we believe that this world is only a passing thing,
destined to be ultimately done away with, the phyiscal resurrection doesn't
matter.
If God doesn't care about our physical lives, but sees
them only as superficial, the physical resurrection doesn't matter.
If Christianity has nothing to say about life on earth
excpet for "hold on, and wait for the better, spiritual existence that is to
come," the physical resurrection doesn't matter.
But if we believe that God is committed to his
creation, and has plans for it the raising of Jesus' body means everything.
If we believe that our resurrection will be a
transformed bodily existence, with a real continuity between the present and
the future, the raising of Jesus' body means everything.
If we believe that the first great answer to the
prayer "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven" was on Easter
day, the raising of Jesus' body means everything.
And if we believe that our faith has everything to do
with what happens on God's earth now, in the day to day stuff of our lives,
then the raising of Jesus' body means everything.
That is something that might even send us not walking,
sauntering, whispering, hinting, but running through the streets to tell
people, "He is not dead - Jesus is alive!"