Sometimes, In these later years especially, I think that we Christians have spiritualized what we believe a little too much. What I mean when I say that is that we look at the promises of God only insofar as they have to do with our spirits, or our souls. For example, when you think of your ultimate goal as a Christian, what would you say that that is? Nine times out of ten, the Christians of today will say “go to heaven!”
This differs from the Early Christians, that is, the apostles and the people they instructed. Ask them what the ultimate goal is, and they’d say It was the resurrection (1Cor. 15:12-28; Phil. 3:11; Acts 4:1-2; 2Cor. 4:14; Rom. 8:11; Matt. 22:23-32 ). While it is true, our souls do go to heaven when we die (Luke 23:46, Phil 1:23), that’s not the end of it. In fact, the scriptures teach that the same bodies (Job 19:25-27) that we have right now, albeit free from corruption (1Cor. 15:52), will be ours. We will walk, we will talk, we will see, we will hear, we will touch, we will feel. We will be ourselves again! But even better then that. We will be ourselves again in a world made new (Job 19:25-27; Rom 8:19-21; Rev. 21:1-5).
Jesus referred to the eternity as paradise (luke 23:43). He said in Revelation that the world will be made new (Rev. 21:5). Paul says In Romans that “Creation waits in eager expectation....” (Rom. 8:21) Right now there are thorns on the ground (Gen. 3:17), but the thorns will be removed. Our Christmas Song, “Joy to the world” which we sing to recall the entrance of Christ in the world and what effects he will ultimately have “No more let sin or sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground, he comes to make his blessings flow far as curse is found.... In other words, He’s not only going to fix us in the resurrection, but when he does he’s going to fix the earth as well. So as we walk, talk, breath, smell, see, and hear, we will do so in a world which is restored to its intended and original luster (Rev. 21:1-5). And people ask, “what shall we do in eternity?” We will not only enjoy our creator as we have never enjoyed him before, we will enjoy creation as we have never enjoyed it before (Matt. 5:5); we will enjoy each other as never before.
Why have we, at this juncture, begun to forget this? A lot of it, I think comes from the the influx of gnosticism and also the eastern religions. Both of which assume that that the soul is perfect....and it’s the body and sometimes also matter that hold’s it back...... And salvation according to those who teach this is for the soul to escape the evil material world and the evil body.
But this is not what we believe. Remember....At each step of creating the material world God paused and said “This is good”. And even a cursory examination of human history reveals that evil does indeed infect the soul and that is therefore not perfect. Both the body and the soul of every man has suffered the effects of sin and therefore both the body and soul need to be redeemed. That’s why Jesus came to us in body and soul, to suffer in body and soul so that he could redeem our souls and bodies.
In today’s gospel lesson, with the raising of Lazarus, Jesus gives us a taste of the kind of thing he ultimately came to do. He didn’t merely come to take our souls and lead us on a great escape from the material world, he came to defeat death and give us resurrection from the dead. If we listen to what the people who were there said in reference to the death of Lazarus, I think we will begin to get an idea of what has happened to our understanding of eternity and why it has been somewhat stunted.
The first person we meet is Martha, a sister of Lazarus. The first thing she says to him is “Lord, If you had been here my brother would not have died”. To which Jesus replied “Your brother will rise again” And then Martha says something rather telling. She says “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” In other words, she qualifies and corrects what Jesus says. Yeah, she had thought of the possibility of the resurrection, but that was such a long way off that it didn’t even deserve consideration at the moment.
Maybe that’s what has happened to us: We actually do believe in the resurrection, but its such a long way off we are not comforted by that now. Instead, we seek to comfort ourselves by trying to imagine what the souls of the departed loved ones are doing right now. “Grampa’s looking down at us from heaven” Really? “Uncle Billy Bob is still with us in Spirit” really? Grandpa’s playing baseball right now with the angels” Honestly.... Where in the bible do we learn any of this?
Over the years, people have just kind of made this stuff up in an attempt to comfort themselves. I suggest that instead of proffering theories about what our loved ones are doing “up there?” that we ought to instead be looking forward to the day when we will actually see them, talk with them, hug them, and laugh with them.
You know how it is when you are driving miles and miles to see someone you love? One thing occupies your mind: arriving at the door and seeing them. In a similar way that’s how we should think about the ones we love who have died in the faith. They still exist. They always will exist and one day we will see them. With these very eyes we will see them...with these very hands we will touch them... With these very ears we will hear them.
Another group of people that we meet in this account, in John 11:37....a verse that was not read as part of the gospel reading for today, are some of the local Jews, still smarting from their confrontation with Jesus over the blind man that he healed. They said “could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” In other words, they believed that Jesus might possibly could have healed Lazarus before he died, but they could not even conceive of what Jesus was actually going to do....that is raise him from the dead after days in the tomb. And martha too....when Jesus was asked that they open the tomb, she said “No No No, four days...in a tomb...it will smell” She too had no idea what she was about to see. Could not conceive of it!
And maybe, that’s us too. We’ve become very well acquainted with death during our time in this broken world.. Our plants die, our pets die, the people we love die. It ain’t pretty and we just accept it. That’s what this world has done to us. Our hands are completely tied when it comes to death. There is simply nothing left to be done. Death is final. The Body dies and then it decomposes and returns to dust, or it is submitted to the flames and is burned to dust. We prefer not to even think about that. Instead we join the eastern mystics and think about our souls escaping our body.
But you know what. God once made man out of the dust of the earth. And even though he returns to dust, the same God can and will remake, regather, and reassemble him. Is that not cool? We will all see something very much like what Ezekiel saw in the valley of dry bones if we are still alive on that day (Ezekiel 37). And if we’re not we will experience it. There’ll be a rattling sound....our parts will regather, reassemble, and will be reanimated by God’s Spirit. (Rom. 8:11) as Paul says.
That’s the whole point in Jesus coming! He came to reverse what human sin had done to the world. We die, we decompose, we dissolve into the dust from which we were taken. This dissolution of the bodies of men is symptomatic of the dissolution of man’s relationship to the Lord of life. The lesson we are to learn from all this death that we see is that something is wrong. And that something is not that the material world which we must escape, but rather that something is horribly wrong with our relationship to our creator. We are sinful in thought word and deed. Sin is the cause of death of both body and soul
Jesus came to fix that by taking the sins of the world upon himself. While he was on the cross, The full result of man’s disobedience was leveled on this one man suspended above the earth on the cross. You could say that he died a thousand deaths, or more correctly he died billions and billions of deaths. He died in place of every person who ever lived. His heart stopped beating. His soul had left his body. His body was put in a tomb. But then he rose again; making life and salvation a possibility for all who believe on him. And when I say life and salvation, I’m not merely talking about the life of the soul in heaven, I’m talking about life of the Soul and the Body. For we who believe in Jesus will follow his path: we will enter the grave, but we will call us out of the grave in much the same way he called out the dead Lazarus. As he said, he is the resurrection and the life; he will give those who believe in him resurrection and life. He will also resurrect and recreate the world (Romans 8).
What will it be like? What will we feel like to be Resurrected in a world made new? We’ll feel like Noah stepping off the ark into a world washed clean....but better than that, we too will be washed clean from every last vestige of sin and it’s effects. And it won’t be just eight people, it will be the multitude of Abraham’s offspring. We will breath deeply, we will see the Lord in his glory and his saints also glorified, having been washed clean of every last vestige of the old order of things. We will rejoice like we’ve never rejoiced. That’s our goal. That’s what we are ultimately looking forward to. AMEN
