We Share Hope (Luke 20:27-40)

Sunday, November 10, 2019

          His name was Wendell.  Everyone called him ‘Rip.’  Rip  was in the same church for over 40 years.  I was the under 30 pastor of just a couple of years. 

          Be patient with pastors under 30.  They’re full of energy and excitement.  They want to win the world for Jesus.  Let their energy energize you.  But, they don’t know much.  So, give them a lot of grace.  One guy in the church affectionately called me their “boy” pastor. 

          Ninety-year-old Rip was much healthier than a lot of the octogenarians and septuagenarians in the church.  His beloved wife Elizabeth, 87, was not in good shape.  Shortly after her funeral, Rip, clearly, shaken, came to ask me, his “boy” pastor a theological question.  “Rob,” his trembling voice said, “Do you think in Heaven we’ll get to see the people who died before us?” 

          I don’t remember how I answered.  I could see that Rip was trying to cope with the deep sadness he felt in burying his bride of more than 60 years.  The question is one that’s been asked since the beginning of time.  Once this life is over, will we see our loved ones again.?  In his song “When I Get Where I’m Going,” Brad Paisley sings, “I’m Gonna walk with my Grandaddy.  And he’ll match me step for step. And I’ll tell him how I’ve missed him every minute since he left.  And then I’ll hug his neck.”  It’s something we all want.

          Five weeks from today, we relaunch our congregation as Hillside Church.  What will this new thing be all about?  It’s about what we say and do.  At Hillside, we follow Jesus, love others, and share hope.  Zoom on that last word – “hope.”  What is the substance of the hope we claim to have and share?

          Will I get to see my loved ones when I get where I’m going?  Will Rip still be Elizabeth’s husband?  Can I play catch with my great-grandfather, the only Detroit Tiger fan I know who watched Ty Cobb play?  Paul addressed this concern directly in 1 Thessalonians 4:17.  He assures believers we will reunite with those who have preceded us in death.  Jesus does not deal with this question in his confrontation with the Sadducees in Luke 20.  However, when we read a story like this, the question of afterlife comes to mind..

          Several things happen at the end of Luke 19 and into chapter 20 that set the course of the story leading up to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.  He weeps as he enters Jerusalem because God’s people fail to see what God is doing to save them from sin and death.  Next, Jesus enters the temple and violently evicts the moneychangers.  That week he daily taught in the temple court.  As he did, chief priests, scribes, and leaders of the people looked for the opportunity to kills Jesus, but were thwarted because he was so popular with crowds that were spellbound by his teaching.  

          Included in this leadership group opposed to Jesus were two political parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.  They generally hated each other.  The Sadducees were a wealthy, elite class and held most of the power.  There were more Pharisees.  They held greater influence in the countryside and outlying villages.  For all the confrontations Jesus had with Pharisees, he was much closer in thought to them than to the Sadducees. 

          The Sadducees only accepted Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – the Torah.  They did not consider the Psalms or the prophets to be scripture.  Resurrection is not mentioned in the Torah, so the Sadducees had no place for it in their theology.

          By Luke 20:27, temple leaders have challenged Jesus’ authority and he has rejected theirs, calling them hypocrites and seeing them as opposing what God was trying to do.  The Sadducees wade into the arena.

          In Deuteronomy 25:5-10, a passage the Sadducees would have revered, it is decreed that if a man dies his wife shall marry his brother.  She is required to do this.  Any children the wife has with the brother will be credited to the man.  That man’s name would be remembered in Israel by his offspring.

          Marriage was not the result of romantic love.  Marriage was for procreation.  The woman probably had not chosen her first husband.  She was probably given to him by her father.  However she ended up marrying him, if he died, she had no choice.  Her duty was to marry his brother and have children with that brother so the original husband’s name lived on.  Marriage was for procreation.  The woman had no choice.  And the way one’s name lived on was in his offspring.

          Based on that law, the Sadducees came up with a hypothetical situation.  The oldest of seven brothers gets married, but dies childless.  The next brother does his duty and marries the woman, but also dies childless.  This continues until all seven and the woman are dead. 

          The Sadducees are so smart.  They’ve come up with a real doozy that will knock Jesus off his perch and will quiet their rivals, the Pharisees, who very much believed in resurrection just as Jesus did. 

          So, who does the woman belong to in the resurrection?  Jesus upends the Sadducees and their challenge by explaining that the age of resurrection is different than the present age, the age of death. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, sin has been in the world, causing corruption and degradation of all living things, and bringing death.  This is a theological understanding of the world, not to be understood in place of the scientific explanations for the origin of the earth, the theory of evolution, or the way biology understands life cycles.  Read theologically, we see in Genesis the origin of sin and the way sin brings death.

          The present age lasts from the day Adam and Eve sinned to the end of history, the final resurrection, and the full inauguration of the eternal Kingdom of God.  The point Jesus makes in responding to the Sadducees is that the age of resurrection is fundamentally different than this age.  How?

          In this age we get married.  In Jesus’ day, marriage was for procreation and in ancient Israel it was to carry on a man’s name through his children.  Why?  In this age, the man would die.  In the age of resurrection Jesus says that man will not die.  No one does.  So marriage is irrelevant.  Procreation is not needed to carry on someone’s name. 

          One other fundamental difference: the woman will not be given in marriage by her father.  She will not be a possession of a husband required to do his bidding.  She will live freely as a child of God.  Jesus says she will be like the angels in this sense: she will not die. 

          Jesus was not saying she would become an angel. In Christ, we are sons and daughters of God, made in the image of God.  Angels are God’s servants, but are not God’s image bearers.  When we die, we do not go to heaven and become angels.  Hebrews chapter 1 is quite clear on this, and it is evident in the book of Revelation and other places.  We human beings fundamentally are different than angels.  In resurrection, we become more human – more of what God intended when creating humans in the first place. 

          That’s the hope on which we stand.  In Christ, we know that resurrection comes after death.  In resurrection, our physical bodies rise, take on flesh, are recognizable but also different.  We can be touched, but also can pass through locked doors as Jesus did after he rose in resurrection. 

The Bible does not promise that we go to Heaven when we die.  The Bible doesn’t tell us much about what happens to the soul at a person’s death.  From a few passages we can glean the after death our experience is in Jesus’ care and is peaceful and without suffering.  At funerals a grieving person will say of his lost loved one, “Well, she’s in a better place.”  I don’t know if it can be described as a “place.” All I can say with confidence is that our beloved dead are in the care of Jesus.  And that’s enough.

The Bible promises at the end, after this age is over, we rise as Jesus rose.  Our resurrected bodies cannot die, a point Jesus makes to the Sadducees.  We are free to live in joyful relationship with God and with each other.  Will Rip and Elizabeth again be husband and wife in the resurrection?  Jesus says no.  But, as Paul indicates in 1 Thessalonians, they will be together along with all of us who follow Jesus.  The reunion will be more joyful than relationships we have in these age, even our closest ones.  

Following Jesus and loving others, resurrection is the centerpiece of the hope we share.  It means freedom –oppressed people in this life will be liberated.  It means complete health as our bodies cannot be injured or killed; we are eternal. 

As we live here and now, awaiting that glorious day, the materialistic values of this age hold no sway over us.  As we live here in Christ we are already getting glimpses of resurrection joy that will be ours eternally and those glimpses of God shape who we are in the present.  We have a mission to glorify God and draw others to him that they might know the salvation he gives.  When we get hurt, and we will, or we meet others in pain and they’re all around us, we comfort each other, share with one another the love of Christ, and help each other see the promised eternity before us. 

We feel sadness.  We grieve, but not as those who have no hope. We have eternal hope for ourselves and those whom we love.  At Hillside Church, we share that hope with a dying world that badly needs it.

AMEN

Treasure in Heaven

            In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Store up your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy them, and thieves cannot break in and steal them.”

            What does he mean?  How do we do this, store up treasures in Heaven?  We attribute divine authority to Jesus; he is God in human flesh.  When he speaks, we are hearing God’s word.  Nothing could matter more than knowing what he means and understanding how to do what he says.  How in the world do we store up treasures in Heaven?   

            This is the finale of a series of talks about the Afterlife.  How do we prepare for Heaven?  I do not mean, how do we get to Heaven?  Jesus gets us there.  His death on the cross covers our sins.  His forgiveness makes us new.  When we give our lives to Him and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we are adopted as sons and daughters of God.  God will take us to be with Himself.  Are we ready for eternity spent with God?

            This is a potentially odd thought.  Conventional wisdom is Heaven will be awesome, wonderful, fun, beautiful, joyous, unending bliss.  However, conventional wisdom, or popular theology, declares that all good people go to Heaven.  If someone is not guilty of genocide or child molestation, he qualifies as “good.”

            The Bible shatters this thinking.  In fact, in the words of the Apostle Paul, all sin and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  Jesus makes the statement that there is “only one who is good” and we know he means God.  Only God is good!  The whole good people go to Heaven when they die idea is crushed.  In fact the New Testament says very little about going to Heaven when we die.

            The theme of the New Testament is that in the coming of Christ, the Kingdom of God has been established.  During his earthly ministry, Jesus announced the Kingdom.  After his resurrection, he charged his church to continue announcing the Kingdom and inviting the lost and hurting world to come to him for life, truly abundant life. 

            As we live and announce the Kingdom, in the course of devoting our lives to that Kingdom, we are told to store up treasure in Heaven where it cannot be destroyed.  It cannot be robbed.  Nothing will happen to the treasure we hold there.  It is always there for us, an eternal inheritance.  To live into it and really get what Heaven is and be ready for life in Heaven, life with God, we need to know what Jesus meant.  We need to know how to store up our treasures so we’ll be ready when it is time to go. 

            Quickly a couple of tangents: first, storing up treasure in Heaven should not be thought of as doing good works to accrue merits.  Our heavenly joy will not correspond to our effort as Christians.  This is different.  This is not a merit based type of idea.

Second, failure to store up treasure in Heaven is not the same as losing salvation or experience disappointment in the afterlife.  The criminal on the cross who acknowledged the authority of Jesus probably did not spend his life storing up treasure in Heaven.  He came to faith right before he died.  He will be with God eternally.  It will be as good as being with God is. 

It is not accruing merits; it does not negate conversions to Christ that come late in life.

            So what is it then?  What is it to become a Christ-follower and then spend 20, 50, 80 years of life storing up treasures in Heaven?

            I turn to the work of Christian philosopher and writer Dallas Willard and quote him at length.  He writes

Invest your life in what God is doing, which cannot be lost.  Of course this means we will invest in our relationship with Jesus himself and through him to God.   But beyond that, and in close union with it, we will devote ourselves to the good of other people – those around us within the range of our power to affect. … And we also care for this astonishingly rich and beautiful realm, the earth itself, of which both we and our neighbors are parts.

Thus to “lay up treasures in heaven” is to treasure all of [the] intimate and touching aspects of heaven’s life, all of which God is doing on earth.

The person who treasures what lies with the kingdom [of Heaven] sees everything in its true worth and relationship.  The person who treasures what is “on earth,” by contrast, sees everything from a perspective that distorts and systematically misleads in practice.  The relative importance of things is, in particular, misperceived.  The person who is addicted to drugs or to some activity is but an extreme case.  All else is seen only in its relation to the object of the addiction.[i]

            The first answer is relationship.  What is it to lay up treasures in Heaven?  It is to put a top priority in life on knowing Jesus.  That matters more for the Christ-follower than happiness marriage, than the success of our kids, than the responsibilities of our work.  If any of those things competes for our loyalty and our time and energy with knowing Jesus, we sacrifice those things to know Him, and to follow and worship Him.  I would contend the more we follow Jesus the better we are in our marriages, our parenting, and our work.  But if it helps to rank things, knowing Jesus is our top treasure.

            Immediately we see in Willard’s comment and in our reading of the New Testament, to know Jesus is to know God.  And to know Jesus is to love people; this is not just any kind of love.  Because we are committed to Jesus, our love for others is for their benefit, overflowing with grace and forgiveness, and given without restraint.  The way Jesus says it in Luke 10 and other places is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

            How do we store up treasures in Heaven?  We love God and love people.  This is a matter of the heart. 

Maybe in a talk about Heaven, we want to hear about walking on clouds.  Maybe we are interested in vivid accounts of the heavenly beings described in Ezekiel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New.  Maybe we would anticipate in a talk about Heaven the promise, the hope, that we will spend eternity with departed loved ones.  I know I hope to spend some time with my Grandmother.  I’d like to get to know the grandfather who died when I five.  There is nothing wrong with these questions.  I believe we will see people we loved if they walked with Jesus. 

If we walk with God today, now, that way of living, the God-oriented life, the Jesus-life, sets our hearts toward Heaven. 

How do we know our hearts are Heaven-bent?  What is the sign that we have treasure stored up there?  Consider the words of Jesus that surround the statement about storing up our treasures.  He mentions forgiveness.  If we refuse to extend grace and forgiveness to those who have wounded us, those wounds rule our hearts and the love of God does not.  I don’t say this because forgiveness is easy.  Deep wounds are just that – deep.  They cut to the core.  We need in the core of ourselves, where the deepest cuts leave scars to discover the forgiving love of Jesus.  Once discovered we extend that forgiving love.

Jesus speaks of the spiritual discipline of fasting – self-denial.  Some in his day made a show of fasting.  They wanted everyone to see how holy they were in going without eating.  Their extraordinary sacrifice was done to gain the admiration of the crowd.  The only time we should fast is if it draws us closer to God.  We practice this discipline for the sake of seeing God more clearly.

Fasting and forgiving are quite different, but in both cases we deal with something uncomfortable.  In one case it is our dependence upon nourishment but also our temptation toward gluttony.  In the other case it is our wounding and our self-identity as a victim, one wounded.  In fasting we declare that as dependent as we are upon food, we depend more upon God.  In forgiving we claim a new identity – not as a wounded victim but as a born-again child of God.  Both are about orienting our lives toward our Heavenly Father.  Both lead us to establish our sense of self in Him.

Jesus tells worry is a sign we are not seeing ourselves as God’s children.  God feeds the birds and drapes the flowers of the fields with beauty human invention will never match.  God loves us more than flowers or birds.  God is aware of our needs and responsive to us.  Trust in God’s care is another way we store up treasure in Heaven, but this trust means letting go of wealth as a source of security and a provider of happiness.  Believing that wealth will make us happy and safe, we end up setting money as the prime master of life.  No, says, Jesus, we cannot truly live that way.  It is either God or money – only one can be master.  It is either worry or trust in God. 

The laying up of treasure defines our lives.  We live as people of faith and people who are faithful.  We live as people who love.  We live with a sense that we are loved.  Clearly such living marks us off, separated from those around us caught in the rat race, the scramble for wealth and power.  It is not that we go anywhere.  We are here, announcing the kingdom.  It is simply that we are living a different story – God’s story.  We are announcing that all around us are invited to step out of a life that leads nowhere and into a life that leads to God.  We are in but not of the world. 

We are also preparing for the life beyond death.  Dallas Willard, alluding to Jesus’s parable of the talents, writes

The universe will continue to exist … and we will actively participate in the future governance of [it.]  … God’s plan is for us to develop, as apprentices to Jesus, to the point where we can take our place in the ongoing creativity of the universe. 

We will not sit around [in eternal heaven] looking at one another but we will join the eternal Logos, “reign with him,” in the endlessly ongoing creative work of God.

… The intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in his universe, empowered to do what we want to do.

… We should expect that in due time we will be moved into our eternal destiny of creative activity with Jesus.[ii]

            Of course Dallas Willard cannot be more specific than this although he does hazard a few guesses.  We must acknowledge that this is speculative as is any of vision of Heaven. 

            I share Willard’s view because in my estimation, he communicates well the vision of Jesus when Jesus talks about and demonstrates the Kingdom of God. More than going to some Heaven in the sky, far, far away, the eternal Kingdom is God’s Heaven and God’s Earth joining together in perfect harmony, all pain removed, and all barriers to relationship with God destroyed. 

            The more we live in love here and now, the more familiar our entrance into Heaven will fell.  Jesus discussed spiritual discipline, forgiveness, and trust as specific ways orient our hearts.  We could comb through the Gospels for more Jesus’ words, and we could add worship, but only when worship is connected to mission.  We could add evangelism, but only when evangelism is done for the sake of love of people, as an act of compassion.  All these specific works or categories are extremely important and are indicators of our hearts.   When our hearts are set on Heaven, we enter Heaven prepared, with open eyes.  We see clearly.  All that we do here, things done and lives lived in Jesus’ name continue there.

            I close this morning and this series with the word of N.T. Wright.

Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of His creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and … ; and of course  every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrection power of God, into the new creation God will one day make.  This is the logic of the mission of God.  God’s re-creation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God’s people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted.  It will last all the way into God’s new world.  In fact, it will be enhanced there. [iii]

           

            Treasure Christ.  Live in love.  Set your heart in Heaven. 

AMEN

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[i] Willard (1997).  The Divine Conspiracy, p.207-8.

[ii] Ibid, p.378-379, 398-399.

[iii] Wright (2008).  Surprised by Hope, p.208-209.

Paradise

October 20, 2013

            It is the day of the funeral.  Your heart is filled with emotions, your eyes with tears.  You see old friends who loved him as you love him, and now he is dead.  The community gathers.  Hymns are sung.  Memories are shared.  Some are funny, and we laugh.  Others poignant and we feel a chill.  All who gather loved him, but he is not here.  His lifeless body is in a wooden box.  We drive in caravan to a cemetery and lower that wooden box into the ground.  He is gone.

            Where?  He could be husband or grandpa or brother or friend.  Whoever he or she is, whomever it is that we mourn, where do they go in that moment that the doctor pronounces them dead?  The body is right there and it is dead, but what about the spirit?  Where do our spirits go in that moment when breath leaves our bodies?

            In this series, we have examined some ideas about Hell.  We have given thought to the eternal destiny of people in the world who never hear the Gospel.  We believe people who put their trust in Jesus are with Him for eternity after the Judgment Day.  But what about between now and the end of time and Jesus’ second coming?  What happens in the moment when Christians die?

            Luke 23:32-43

Contemporary English Version (CEV)

³² Two criminals were led out to be put to death with Jesus. ³³ When the soldiers came to the place called “The Skull,”^[a] they nailed Jesus to a cross. They also nailed the two criminals to crosses, one on each side of Jesus.

^34-35 Jesus said, “Father, forgive these people! They don’t know what they’re doing.”^[b]

While the crowd stood there watching Jesus, the soldiers gambled for his clothes. The leaders insulted him by saying, “He saved others. Now he should save himself, if he really is God’s chosen Messiah!”

³⁶ The soldiers made fun of Jesus and brought him some wine. ³⁷ They said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!”

³⁸ Above him was a sign that said, “This is the King of the Jews.”

³⁹ One of the criminals hanging there also insulted Jesus by saying, “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and save us!”

⁴⁰ But the other criminal told the first one off, “Don’t you fear God? Aren’t you getting the same punishment as this man? ⁴¹ We got what was coming to us, but he didn’t do anything wrong.” ⁴² Then he said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into power!”

⁴³ Jesus replied, “I promise that today you will be with me in paradise.”^[c]

            The temple leaders in Jerusalem have mocked Jesus.  The Roman soldiers charged with carrying out the crucifixion taunted him (23:10-11).  Now Jesus is on the cross with criminals on crosses alongside his.  On one side, the convict, himself suffering the agony of crucifixion, used his last breath to pile insults on Jesus.  “Save yourself and us while you are at it.” 

            His life was at an end.  This is no escape and no rescue.  With nails pounded through his hands and feet, the criminal’s suffering was unrelenting.  The accused were crucified in a public place.  If it was cold, then that discomfort was added to the other miseries.  If it was hot, sunburn was a part of the suffering.    They hanged naked for women, children, and all by passers to see.  The only relief from this horror was death.

            I wonder if such a sorrowful and painful ending brings clarity of thought.  It certainly is a defining moment.  How did the criminals handle it?

            Jesus, falsely accused, prayed that God would forgive those who injured and those who added insult to injury.  In this enormously hurtful hour, his heart still beat with love for people, even those who maliciously wounded him.

            One of the others, in this defining moment, stooped low.  About to discover exactly what happens to his spirit at death, he used his last breaths to get in a dig. He had no belief in Jesus at all.  The best he could come up with was an uncreative repeat of the insults others had thrown Jesus’ way.  He lived a life of shame, stupidity, and loss.  He died as ignominiously as he lived. 

            The other criminal, though, found something else in that last hour.  He saw the heart of Jesus in the face of the storm and raging of the people.  He saw the malice in the priests who condemned Jesus.  He saw the wickedness of the Romans.  He saw his own sin.  He knew that he deserved the cross on which he hung.  We all do.  He said to his partner in crime, “Do you not fear God?  We are getting what we deserve, but this man, Jesus, has done nothing wrong” (v.40-41). 

            In that moment, the criminal on the cross found faith.  He wondered as much as you or I would, what’s coming?  What will be next for me, after my body dies?  He decided he did fear God.  On the day of death, this is a good thing to understand.  It is far better not to wait for the day of death.  We don’t know when death comes.  We don’t all have hours of hanging on a cross to decide if we want to go out muttering cheap curses or if we want to go out with words of faith.  Go through the decision process now.  Decide now what you’d like your stance with God to be when the day of death comes. 

            The criminal on the cross had the opportunity, considered what he had seen, and put his trust in Jesus.  “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  He believed Jesus would be resurrected in victory.  And he believed Jesus had the power to bring him along.  He did not have a detailed understanding of what it meant to say Jesus was God in human flesh.  The disciples did not have that yet.  Certainly this criminal on the cross was theologically limited.  But with what knowledge he had, he put his trust in Jesus.  He believed in a far-off future, Jesus would bring him to life in the end time resurrection.

            But it would not be a distant future.  Jesus said, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”  The New Testament is quite clear that at the last judgment there will be a resurrection, a bodily resurrection.  These bodies will rise to new life.  It does not matter if one is eaten by a shark or cremated or blown away by a bomb or decayed in the ground.  We will be raised in incorruptible bodies that are tangible and can eat and drink and embrace, but cannot be hurt or injured.  That will happen in the future.  What about people who die between now and then as most of us will?  Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

            The ancient scholars who translated the Old Testament from its original Hebrew into Greek used the Greek word ‘paradise’ as a way of referring to the Garden of Eden.  The term is actually borrowed from ancient Persian and refers to an idyllic place, a beautiful, walled-in garden.   Do we suppose that immediately upon his death, Jesus went to a dreamy garden?  Or do we think he literally went to the Garden of Eden? 

            My own view is that the bits and pieces about life and existence we get in the New Testament are not enough for us to make very many definitive statements.  First Peter 3:19 says when Jesus died he went to speak with “the spirits in prison.”  First Peter 4:6 says the Gospel was proclaimed even to the dead.  These references show his mastery over death and his intent to share salvation with as many as who will receive it.  Is there a chance for people to turn to Christ after death if they died not believing?  My reading of the New Testament as a whole leads me to think choices made in this life matter and if we die saying no to God, God will honor that “no.” 

However, these verses from 1^st Peter as well as many other references suggest there is much activity going on in unseen places.  And Jesus’ statement to the criminal, “today, you will be with me in Paradise,” suggests something other than a deep sleep that waits the final resurrection.  I do not think any of the New Testament authors intended to draw an Afterlife road map.  We should leave unsaid what the Bible leaves unsaid.  The story is that a criminal trusted in Jesus and Jesus promised him paradise.

            The story of the two criminals on crosses alongside Jesus is our story.  Each one of us will die.  Jesus did nothing to relieve the suffering of the one who spoke in faith.  When the criminal said, ‘remember me in your kingdom,’ Jesus did not miraculously pull him off the cross.  He did not heal the nail-holes in the man’s hands.  All Jesus gave him was a promise.  That promise is all we get. 

            Is it enough?  Do we believe?   Today, you will be with me in paradise. 

            Is it a ghostly spiritual existence, our bodies in the ground, our spirits floating with Jesus somewhere?  British scholar N.T. Wright thinks, “It is a state in which the dead are held firmly within the conscious love of God and the conscious presence of Jesus Christ” while awaiting the final resurrection and judgment.[i]  I don’t know that much more can be said.

            When the doctor’s ability to help the patient is exhausted, the doctor tells the family, ‘there’s nothing more we can do.’  If the family is Christian, they may ask the pastor to come and represent the presence of God as the person passes from life. 

            I have been present these moments several times.  All are memorable, but one stands out.  Vicki Seng gave me permission to share this.  We were all present, her, David, her daughters and sons-in-law, and grandchildren.  Vicki’s mother was in the bed in the living room, unconscious.  Her family expressed their appreciation for her life and their deep love.  I said prayers and read Bible verses.  I don’t know what she understood, but the final words of this woman’s life were words of deep affection and the living word of God.

            At one point in our bedside vigil, Vicki asked, “Rob, what happens right at the moment we die.  Do we go to be with Jesus in Heaven or is there a waiting period.” 

            I said, “Vicki, I am not sure.  But I am sure that if we trust in Jesus, whatever comes is a blessing and there is no more suffering.”  It was OK for me to say, “I’m not completely sure.”  And Vicki was OK with that too.  All around her mother that night was a palpable sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Not all questions need answers.  One question then and now demands a response – where do we stand in relation to Jesus?  Vicki’s mom stood as His disciple and as a daughter of God.  That night is among the memorable and beautiful experiences of my life.

            In this series on the afterlife, I have thought about that experience.  I thought about my Dad reading Psalms to his Mother-in-Law as she passed.  “Where do we go in the moment we pass from life?”  I believe that our spirits go to be with Jesus in Paradise.  I can’t say much about what Paradise is like.  It is not the final resurrection.  That will be better still.  But Paradise is walking in Eden alongside Jesus.  That is what’s immediately next for all who follow Him.

AMEN

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[i] N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (2008), p.172.