Pastor Rob Recommends ... (January 10, 2022)

Pastor Rob recommends …

 

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heave, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

N.T. Wright (2008)

 

The subtitle says it all.  This is one of the most helpful books on the resurrection and on what happens when we die on the market today. It’s readable, biblically sound, and, as the title indicates, a word about hope.

"The Resurrection HAD to Happen" (Luke 24:36-48)

 

Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvoY6A1tZIk

Sunday, April 18, 2021

 

            The universe and everything in it belong to God.  It is created by God; all of it.  Physicists, astronomers, chemists, biologists, and geologists weigh in on how the world came to be.  Their scientific methods of observation describe what God has done.  Everything is God’s.  God’s values are ultimate values and apply to everyone. 

            This is why the death of Daunte Wright last Sunday in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota at the hands of a police officer who mistook her firearm for her taser, is so awful.  One of God’s ultimate values is life.  Jesus says, God is God of the living.  Speaking in Luke 20, “to him all [who have died] are alive” (v.38).  God has no place for death.  The death of a 20-year-old young man is an offense to God.

            The list of unarmed black people killed by white people in America is impossibly long.  It is our national shame that it keeps happening, and that people – mostly white – emotionally defend the integrity of the police instead of mourning the evil of institutional bias that results in so many defenseless people dying.  We hear that most police are people of good character.  That’s true, but it’s not the point.  We hear that Daunte committed some misdemeanors.  Again, not the point. 

            I have an 18-year-old son.  He has had public encounters with the police; not as many as I did when I was his age.  And he hasn’t done anything dangerous or too destructive and he does not have a record.  But, if a simple encounter with an officer ended in his death, it would tear my world apart.  Think of someone you love, deeply, about my son’s age, or Daunte Wright’s age.  Think of how devastated you would be if that young person died.  How hard would it hit you?  The death of Daunte Wright should hit you and me that hard.  It hits God that hard because God made us to live.  You and I and my son and Daunte Wright, God made us to be alive. 

            Parents of black young people have to have a talk with their kids about how to act when pulled over by the police for the most minor of offenses or even for doing nothing.  They have to have this talk because black people are so much more likely to be pulled.  And those encounters are so much more likely to end in death at the hands of officer we trust to protect us. 

We can talk all about systemic injustice, slavery, Jim Crowe, and mass incarceration. We can talk about the root issue being white people’s desire to hold onto to power and to keep black people in a socially subjugated role.  Individual white people do fight alongside black and brown brother and sisters for a more just and equal society, and we may be gaining ground, the trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd and the death of Daunte Wright at the hands of 26-year police veteran Kim Potter make it clear we aren’t there yet and we have along way to go.  

We could have that racial justice conversation, but on this third Sunday of Easter I bring up Daunte’s death for a theological reason.  God is offended and dishonored by what happened.  The fear our black neighbors have to endure every time they do the most mundane thing, drive a car, is unacceptable to God.  Remember.  America is God’s possession.  You and I might tell ourselves we are masters of our own fate, but it’s a fallacy.  The truth is we are God’s.  God’s values are ultimate for us.  God values life.  To God, Daunte Wright and George Floyd are alive.  Don’t believe me?  Wrestle with what Jesus says in Luke 20:38. Take all the time you need.  Jesus insists that God’s ultimate value applies universally; to everyone.

Racism is only one space in which we mock God’s creation with our prolific killing.  What are others?  When I preached Luke 24 in 2007, I had only been pastor here a year.  As I read the resurrection story, I looked around my life and saw death in every direction.  First, I was called to my previous church to preach the funeral of a beloved member.  We wouldn’t call the death of one in his 80’s, by natural causes, a tragedy.  God actually would.  God did not create us for death; not death by Gunshot, not death by cancer, not death by old age.  God created us for eternal life. In April 2007, I preached my friend Ralph’s funeral and God was honored by the love we showed.  But even that, what we call ‘sensible,’ death was an affront to God.

A few months later that year, senseless killing followed.  August 14, 2007, over 200 Yazidis in Iraq were killed in a terrorist bomb.  Americans don’t know who the Yazidis are, so we pass off such news as ‘something terrible that happened over there.’  I hate that vacuous phrase ‘over there.’  When Americans use that phrase, we are insulting ourselves.  ‘Over there’ means ‘not here,’ so, not my problem. 

What happened on August 16, 2007, certainly was our problem.  Seung-Hui Cho shot and murdered 32 of his classmates and professors at Virginia Tech, and then killed himself.  It happened at Tech, not ‘over there.’  It could happen at UNC. 

All of it disregards God’s intent for humanity.  As Jesus said, he is God of the living.  Death in situations of racial prejudice or racial profiling or unconscious bias, death in school shootings, death in war, and death of natural causes; all of it is the opposite of what God had in mind when God created Adam and Eve. 

In God’s vision, nature, humanity, and God all live in beautiful harmony with each other.  The Jewish idea describing this beautiful state of Eden is ‘shalom,’ a combination of peace, bliss, safety, provision, and most importantly, right relationships.  This was lost in the fall and this is what God restores in the coming of Jesus, the death of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus.  The story is not complete until the disciples meet and touch the risen Lord. 

The empty tomb did not convince Jesus’ followers he was alive.  On Easter morning, when the women told the disciples, they had seen an angel who told them he had been raised, Luke 24:11 they did not believe it.  Do we think the empty tomb was evidence that would show skeptics, scribes, and Romans Jesus was alive?  The empty tomb didn’t even convince his own followers.

Then, two others, Cleopas and his wife who is not named, meet Jesus making the 7-mile walk from Jerusalem back to their home in Emmaus.  Though they were his followers, they do not recognize Jesus until he breaks bread with them.  He breaks the bread, a physical act in their presence, and then vanishes.  They immediately turn around and hike 7 miles back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples what they’ve seen!  Jesus, alive! 

As they tell their story, Jesus, who they saw vanish, now materializes before them and the eleven disciples.  This is where our reading for this morning picks up.  We know the disciples did not believe Cleopas.  They didn’t even believe their own eyes.  Resurrected Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you,” but the next verse describes them as ‘startled and terrified’ thinking they are seeing a ghost. 

The empty tomb, testimony of friends they absolutely trust, and even their own eyes are not enough to shake the hold death has on these disciples.  They saw Jesus’ miracles and heard his teachings, yet they remained locked in their sense that natural forces, not God, determine how things are in the universe.  The dead stay dead.  It’s what they expect.  It’s what we expect. 

What’s the first recorded meal in the Bible?  It’s Adam and Eve, eating forbidden fruit.  The first meal rips apart the serenity of God’s creation and brings death in when God never intended death to be in this story.  Adam and Eve made a choice.  They were in a garden full of fruit trees.  Clearly God intended eating to be part of his creation when it was at its best.  God wants us to enjoy life, just on God’s terms. 

At that first meal, the first humans rejected God’s ultimate value of life and instead opted for toil and death.  We chose the wartime massacres of people like the Yazidis and we chose school shootings and we chose institutionalized racial bias and the death that comes with it.  Every time an Officer Kim Potter shoots a 20 year-old Daunte, Adam and Eve and you and I take another bite of that apple, when we could be eating all the other fruits God put there for us to eat. 

Jesus announces new creation with a meal.  In this act, he undoes the harm of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, and begins the new day.  He asked the disciples in Luke 24:38, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.  Touch me and see for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” Then he asked if they had anything to eat. 

The resurrection had to happen.  What was lost as Adam and Eve and you and I munched on forbidden fruit had to be restored.  Eating fish with his scared disciples, Jesus reset creation, with our sins atoned and eternal life assured. 

At the first meal of new creation, there was no white supremacy or systemic injustice or violence or death.  Those things had no place there.  There were and there are places set for you and me to sit down together in love and right relationship.  The resurrection assures our place at Jesus’ table alongside Trayvon Martin, who sits with George Zimmerman, next to George Floyd sharing fellowship with Derek Chauvin, and Daunte Wright and Kim Potter.  None is killer or victim because sins have been covered and death is no more.  Because of the resurrection, we sit in right relationship with one another, with God, and with all that He has created.

AMEN

Plausibility of the Resurrection

 

            With the advances of scientific research too intricate and numerous to recount or even summarize here, it is apparent that the present age is one in which ‘what happens’ can be weighed, measured, timed, and, thus, explained.  That is, phenomena can be explained in concrete terms.  People sometimes accept things that happen outside the boundaries of scientific explanation, but even in those cases the claim has to make sense.

            If one claimed the moon was made of cheese, such a claim would be quickly and easily rejected.  Simply examine rocks brought back from the moon and the physical properties of cheese, and look at the process by which cheese is made, and the fact that there are no milk-producing animals on the moon, and the claim is shown to be absurd.

            On the other hand, what about this claim?  “Love makes my head swim.”   This is not a statement any law of physics can account for.  Yet, if someone spent time with me and saw that I had trouble concentrating, could not wipe the silly grin off my face, and walked around in a dreamlike state, they might readily accept the conclusion: “he’s in love alright!”  So, in our science-ruled age, non-scientific ideas are accepted by people all the time, but non-provable ideas do have to make sense to gain a hearing.

            I write these words as a Christian pastor two days after the Christian’s highest holy day: Easter.  Can we Christians make a plausible case for the resurrection of Jesus?  Resurrection cannot be tested the way theories and laws of physics are tested.  Who would want to be a test-subject in trying to determine that the dead will rise?  And, what would be used as a catalyst?  Christians accept the resurrection by faith, but why should anyone outside of Christianity even give the idea any consideration? 

            Several New Testament scholars have tackled this question and their work is helpful and thus worth the time of church-goers who don’t do scholarly research in theology or Biblical studies.  I say this because the 21^st century is a science-ruled, rational age.  If the Christian faith wants a voice in this age, it must be conveyed in the language of this age, even in moments when Christianity defies the core principles of this age (like the resurrection of those who are completely dead).

            Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and N.T. Wright are scholars who deal extensively with the evidence, or at least indicators, that the resurrection of Jesus is an event that happened in history.  Licona, in The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP Academic, 2010) weighs what he calls the ‘Resurrection Hypothesis’ against that of hypotheses of various Bible scholars who reject the notion that Jesus rose because resurrection violates natural law. These skeptics propose a number of explanations for why first century Christians claimed that Jesus rose when they knew he actually did not.  Licona compares his Resurrection Hypothesis with that of the skeptics.

            His basic argument is as follows.  Jesus died by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans.  The earliest sources (Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians) claim that Jesus rose from the grave and appeared to his followers.  There is early source documentation that is as reliable as any source from this period of history.  That Jesus rose and appeared to his followers adequately explains the birth of Christianity.  And the actual resurrection is more plausible, as it is described by the Bible, than the thought that what Paul and the gospel writers present might be an intentional fiction. 

If these early, first century Jews wanted to concoct a fiction they hoped others would take as true, they would not have had women as the earliest witnesses.  The testimony of women was considered unreliable in court cases in first century Israel.  They would not have re-conceived the idea of resurrection.  None of the Messiah-claims included a story about a crucified-resurrected Messiah.  This would have been so unrecognizable, it would be unlikely to convince any 1^st century skeptics, of which there we as many as there are today.  And finally, they would not have claimed a resurrection the authorities opposed to the movement could disprove by producing the corpse of the one they claimed to be alive. 

Of course, there’s much more to Licona’s argument and the other authors mentioned above significantly add to the discussion.  What believers today wanting to show the viability of Christianity need to understand is when it comes to resurrection, there is cogent argument to be made.  Licona bases his argument on the following points: (1) the resurrection provides explanatory scope of the events in question; (2) it possesses explanatory power; (3) it is plausible; (4) it is less ad hoc than other arguments; there’s no filling in the gaps with a retreat to ‘this doesn’t accord with the laws of nature”; and, (5) it illuminates the evidence (Licona, p.600-606).

Christians are free to believe Jesus rose simply as an expression of faith.  Christians can leave it at that.  Christians can defiantly declare, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”  But it doesn’t settle it for those outside the church. We are called to be witnesses declaring what God has done to those outside the church.

We can do this.  We can express this faith in a way that speaks convincingly to skeptics in a secular age ruled by naturalism and rationalism.  Will such a presentation convince someone to turn to Jesus and put their faith in him?  Probably not.  Conviction of the heart is achieved by the Holy Spirit, not powerful arguments.  But, arguing for the plausibility of the resurrection in a way that’s intelligible to a scientists’ rational mind will help that skeptic see that Christian faith is more than an easily dismissed fantasy.  When Christians present their faith in a well-reasoned argument, skeptics will see that there’s something there; something worth exploring further.

“The Story We’re In” (Acts 1:1-11)

Sunday, May 24, 2020

(Worshiping by streaming due to “stay-at-home” order/COVD-19)

Watch it here -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAtV5YMoMfc

            Jesus died on the cross, was buried in the tomb, and rose from the grave.  No one witnessed the resurrection.  Very early on the Sunday morning after Passover, some of his female followers made there way to the tomb to discover it empty.  An earthquake occurred as an angel rolled aside the great stone sealing the tomb.  Ignoring the trembling Roman soldiers, he reassured these women that Jesus had been resurrected (Matthew 28:2-5). 

            Spectacular as this encounter was, the women did not actually see the resurrection.  No one did.  They arrived, and the tomb was already empty.  Before the women came, the guards had no idea anything might have changed.  But it had. 

            The gospels each offer their own vantagepoint on the resurrection.  Only one of the gospel writers offers a sequel.  Luke, who wrote the third Gospel is the author of Acts.  Both the gospel and Acts are written as a remembrance sent to a friend named Theophilus. 

            Acts begins, “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the Apostles” (Acts 1:1-2).  With these opening remarks, Luke signals that a new chapter is beginning in the story of God’s salvation of the earth and all people from sin, death, and destruction.  The most celebrated holidays of contemporary Christianity are Christmas, the birth of Jesus, and Easter, the resurrection.  Neither is mentioned in these two verses opening Acts. 

            Luke will not overlook these seminal events, and, in fact, Luke’s gospel is the primary scripture source for most of our Christmas hymns.  But, when he summarizes the story in just a few line and signals where the story is headed, he refers back to Jesus’ teachings, describes the ascension, and anticipates Pentecost. 

            To prevent any confusion, Jesus appeared to the disciples, numbering about 120 (Acts 1:5), including the women, the 12, and his own brothers who became his followers after he was raised.  In 1 Corinthians, Paul reports that the resurrected Jesus appeared before a gathering of 500 believers (15:6).  In these numerous appearances, called ‘proofs’ by Luke, Jesus taught about life in His kingdom.  Jesus’ resurrection was fully embodied; when he was with his disciples, he ate and, at times, invited them to touch him (Acts 1:3). 

When we are raised, we don’t know if we will need to eat or not; but we know Jesus most definitely did take in food, and do other things that indicate his raised body was indeed flesh, but flesh of a different nature than before the resurrection.  We believe, our resurrected bodies will be like his. 

He told the disciples they were to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father.  He wasn’t specific about this promise and they really didn’t understand what he meant, as their follow-up question shows.  He was talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit, but they asked, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel” (1:6)?

Why is that the wrong question?  First, in asking it, they forget that he has already said they would not know the times, so they needed to be ready all the time.  Second, the question reveals a serious distance between what God cares about and what was on the minds of these followers of Jesus.  God is God of the entire world.  Everyone everywhere is mercilessly enslaved to sin, powerless to break free.  The disciples asked about Israel when God had laid out before them the world.  Jesus had not come to make Israel the leading military power in the ancient near east.  He came to save the world.

This dissonance leads to a third indication of misunderstanding.  For Israel to be restored in the sense the disciples asked about, it would mean Rome had to be thrown out of the nation, probably by force, and the Herod dynasty would need to be deposed and replaced by a descendant of David.  The disciples assumed Jesus’ next move was to assume the throne.  Not only did they lack his global vision, they also failed to understand the thoroughly different nature of his kingdom. 

What happened next would set the course for the age of the church – the age in which we now live.  Noting that their question revealed how distant the disciples’ mindset was from Jesus’ agenda, it is worth a moment’s pause for us to examine our own perspective.  Are we, like they, asking the wrong questions?

As followers of Jesus, are we concerned about the salvation of the world and the expansion of God’s kingdom?  Or do we give our attention to more parochial concerns?  If we are driven by our desire for greatness of Hillside church, our priorities are in the wrong place.  If nationalism or patriotism are what motivates us, we are way off track.  Nationalism and patriotism are stumbling blocks that make it hard for us to see the Kingdom of God because we get locked in our heads the untruth that America is in some way God’s chosen nation.  It’s not!  The movement in Acts, as we will shortly see is outward, with a heavenly pull.  No nation – not Israel, not Rome, not America – serves God’s purposes.  So, if nationalistic fervor is what propels us in life, we’re headed in the wrong direction. 

To be the people of God, we must guard against seeking the grandeur of our church; rather as a church, we seek to expand the kingdom.  We guard against tying our hopes to any nation; instead, we hear God calling us to spread the Gospel in America because like every individual and every people, America needs the salvation only Jesus offers.   Is now the time?  Is now our time?  These were the wrong questions for the disciples.  We don’t want to get stuck on the wrong questions.

Jesus repeated what he had told them in his sermon on the Mount of Olives before he was crucified.  “It is not for you to know the times the Father has set” (1:7).  Then Jesus anticipates Pentecost and gives the Great Commission.  “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” and empowered in that way, fueled by enduring love, endless mercy, compassion, and deep wellsprings of grace, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8).  There’s no room to worry about God’s long-term plans for Israel.  They will be Spirit-filled.  Spirit-filled they will then head out, East, West, South, and North.  They will keep moving, talking to whomever they meet about the love of God revealed in Jesus.  They will baptize whoever is willing.  And they won’t stop.

I’ve mentioned several ideas that might seem hard to grasp if thought of as theological doctrines: resurrection, Great Commission, Pentecost. However, we can make sense of this by seeing these as moments in a story – a story we’re in.  The resurrected Jesus assures that when we die, we will, like him, will be resurrected.  Our raised bodies are heavenly bodies destined to live in love and joy with God forever. 

Before that time comes, we, like the disciples in Acts 1, are sent out in the Great Commission.  No matter who you are or who I am, once we give our lives to Jesus, we have a life mission.  We are to love others in his name, with grace, and we are to tell others about the salvation he gives.  Pentecost, which we’ll look at next week, is the story of the Holy Spirit filling believers, encouraging us, and enabling us to know God, and empowering us to share our testimony. 

We know the story is in a new phase in verse 9.  “As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”  This is the Ascension.  Jesus’ physical, touchable body rose.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking he rose up into the atmosphere and is out there in space somewhere beyond the reaches of our solar system.  It says he was taken on a cloud out of sight because that’s the language Luke had to describe the indescribable.  Jesus didn’t rise into the sky the way a plan does.  He traveled to another realm, outside the confines of our physical universe.  Heaven is a physical place.  It is a place, but one that operates by different physical laws – a world we really don’t have words to depict.  Luke did the best he could.

Also, this departure did not produce what we might think it would in the disciples.  They weren’t sad and did not grieve Jesus’ departure.  In Luke 24:52, it says they had “great joy.”  Somehow, they understood that for the mission to go forward, Jesus had to depart.  His ascension sets up one more point of doctrine that again, we treat as a key story point: The Second Coming. 

To review, the ascension shows, that resurrection is embodied and heaven is a physical place, even if very different than here.  The ascension signals that the age of the church has begun and we have an outward, inviting mission.  The ascension marks our lives with anticipation.  We long for the departed Jesus to return even as we celebrate our relationship with God in the present Holy Spirit. 

The rest of Acts amplifies the commission to Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and then to the end of the earth.  Peter will enter the home of a Gentile in order to baptize him into Christ.  The disciples will broker peace between Hebrew and Hellenist Jewish widows.  Philip will baptize an Ethiopian Jewish proselyte who will in turn carry the Gospel to Africa.  Paul will take numerous journeys to Greek and Latin speaking cities in order to preach Jesus and lead people to him.  Through prayerful discernment, the original disciples, themselves all Jews, will conclude that gentiles do not have to become Jews in order to follow Jesus. 

What questions are we asking God?  Are we asking about our church, our town, or our individual lives?  Or, are we asking him to help us grow in faith and expand our witness to the Gospel of Jesus?

In what ways are we removing obstacles to faith so that people who don’t currently know Jesus can become his followers?  How are we embodying his love?  To whom are we reaching out.  The story of Jesus is the story of the salvation of the world.  This is the story we are in, each and every one of us.

AMEN

“Resurrection Life” (Luke 24:36-43)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYpo4Zx3gCo  

Second Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2020

*This message will be broadcast by Facebook and Instagram Live and posted to Youtube, but will not be preached to a live audience.  We – America, the world – are in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis which is causing people all over the world to avoid gathering in groups of larger than 10, and diligently maintain “social distance.”  It’s an effort to curb the rapid, worldwide spread of the Corona virus which can be deadly.

            “Why are you frightened,” Jesus asked his disciples.  They were behind closed doors, gathered on the Sunday evening after the crucifixion. Two disciples had just come from Emmaus to say Jesus, raised, had walked with them the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  They didn’t recognize him until he broke the bread.  Then he vanished.  So, they immediately made the hike all the way back the Jerusalem to tell the other disciples what had happened.

The rest of the disciples were trying to piece together what the two from Emmaus told them when Jesus simply appeared among them.  Of course they were afraid!  He was dead.  Now he’s standing here.  He continued, “A Ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:38, 39).  The resurrected Jesus makes a specific point of telling them he is not a ghost.

The final line of ‘The Doxology,’ a song often sung in worship, is “Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”  Yet in most of the theology conversations where the topic is the Trinity, I hear God referred to as, ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’  “Holy Ghost” seems to be an old way of saying it.  We think of ghost stories, whether horror films or fun, silly stories, like Casper, and we are pretty sure God is not that.  God is something else.  So, we distinguish between ‘Holy Spirit’ and the folklore around ghosts, and most often today, we refer to the third person of the trinity as God the Holy Spirit.

There’s no such distinction in the Greek, the original language of the New Testament.  The same word – pnuema – is used for ghost and for spirit.  Jesus is emphasizing that he is here in person, in the flesh.  In verse 39, he uses the word ‘flesh’ – sarka in the Greek – to describe himself.  He invites them to touch him (v.39).  He eats fish while they watch. Resurrection is embodied.

I offer two reasons why this is so important.  First, anyone who tries to make the case that Jesus’ resurrection was a ‘spiritual’ but not a bodily event is committed to an unbiblical position.  Luke was written about 30-45 years after the death and resurrection.  But Paul wrote 1^st Corinthians with a couple of decades of those events.  And he used sources that dated back to within just a few years after the resurrection.  Thus, the earliest testimony from the very first churches was that the resurrection is bodily.  One may have difficulty in accepting a bodily resurrection.  However, it is disingenuous to suggest the New Testament is talking about something else. 

The consistent New Testament witness is that Jesus’s body rose.  It was changed and in resurrection operates by physical properties we don’t have the ability to measure or account for.  New creation is beyond what our scientific logic can explain.  Nonetheless, as Christians, we believe in bodily resurrection, first for Jesus, then for us.

The second reason the establishment of the resurrection as an event that really happened in actual history is, we have to deal with it.  If it is true that Jesus rose from the grave, what does this mean for how we live?  We are in a time of overlap.  With the resurrection, the new creation has begun.  However, the world is still dying.  Death is still a thing that happens.  People still sin.  So while the age of degradation and destruction is ending, it has not ended yet.  We live within both realities, the age of death and the new age of the Kingdom of God, inaugurated by Jesus’s birth, life, death and resurrection.  What does it look like when we choose to live by the terms Jesus sets in the resurrection?

For a case study, I offer the story of Bud Welch and Bill McVeigh as told by criminal justice advocate Jeanne Bishop.[i]  I didn’t know either of these names until I read about them this week.  McVeigh is the father of the notorious Timothy McVeigh, the man who set off a homemade bomb in the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.  One hundred sixty-eight people were killed and another 680 were injured.  Prior to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack on 9/11/2001, it was the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. 

Welch’s daughter Julie was a language interpreter working at the Murray Federal Building.  She died when Timothy’s bomb exploded.  Bill McVeigh is the father of a mass murderer and Bud Welch is the father of one of his victims.  Bud Welch lives as if the resurrection happened and things are different because of it. 

As media scrambled to interview grief-stricken relatives of the victims, Welch saw it as an opportunity to campaign against the death penalty.  He lost a child.  He didn’t see the point in any more death, not even the killer’s death.  From there, he took his desire for grace further.  He went to great lengths to meet with Timothy McVeigh in prison.  That meeting never happened, and McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001.  However, a nun helped connect Welch with McVeigh’s father Bill.

Bill had kept a low-profile after the tragedy.  He couldn’t understand why his son did this horrible thing, and he did not want the McVeigh name to bring any more pain to the families of the victims.  So, he avoided interviews and did his best to stay out of the media.   He does not attend memorial services on the anniversary of the event.   He said he would always love his son, but could not fathom that he did this thing.

Two fathers beset by grief, and grace brought them together.  Jeanne Bishop tells the full story in her book that is now out, entitled, Grace from the Rubble.  Bud Welch knows the resurrection of Jesus is real and by extending grace to Bill McVeigh, he creates space for both men to grieve and find hope.  Could you or I do it as he has?  Could we forgive the father of someone who killed our loved ones? 

I hope I never have to find out. The tragedy is immense.  But I am thankful for the story and even more thankful for the story in Luke 24.  There we see that death does not have the final word.  The risen Lord Jesus stands with his disciples, explains the bodily nature of resurrection, and then demonstrates it by eating with them and inviting them to touch him.

In our current environment where we are forced to stay home by a disease that passes aggressively from person to person and is deadly for some, how do we go about living in the new age.  Jesus is alive and we have life in his name.  What difference does that make in COVID-19 America as we are two months into the spread of the disease and the quarantine it has forced upon us?

Jesus said, “Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones.”  We cannot get within 6 feet of one another.  We go around with masks on so that we cannot even see one another’s smiles.  In this strange time, how do we embody the grace Bill Welch demonstrated after his daughter died?  How in our lives do we live as if the resurrection happened, we believe it happened, and it makes a difference?

Answers don’t always come easily.  One of the great commands of Jesus is that we love our neighbors as ourselves, and in the time of COVID-19, respecting social distancing is an expression of love.  Find ways to be with people while maintaining that 6-foot distance.  Don’t take offense if someone else’s fear leads them to act in ways that make interaction awkward.  Bring peace to your encounters with people whether it is in the limited public interactions we have or the interaction is in social media.

Social media is a setting where hilarious humor and uplifting joy is shared, but it is also a playground for outrage and conspiracy theories.  On Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, be a voice peace.  The disciples were overwrought and Jesus bid them calm, as he took away their fear.  The resurrection is peace, light, hope, and welcome.  We can extend all these things.  You can reach out to someone with whom you have had an argument or falling-out.  Invite that person back into your life with a posture of humility and forgiveness. 

When the uncertainty and the cramped quartering of stay-at-home orders starts to get to you, turn to the resurrected Lord.  Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you that COVID-19 is a symptom of a world in the throes of death, but another world overlaps this one: the resurrection life in which there is no death. 

We are locked in a strange time.  But the grace from one man to another in the midst of a tragedy helps us see a brighter light.  The story of the risen Savior taking away his disciples’ fear takes away our fear.  And the reality that the resurrection means our lives have purpose drives us to see life and spread hope even in the face of frustration and suffering.  Live the resurrection life, renewed daily, and feel doubts and disbelief give way as joy settles on us.

AMEN

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[i] All my information for this story comes from baptistnews.com - https://baptistnews.com/article/25-years-later-grace-and-forgiveness-still-rise-from-rubble-of-the-oklahoma-city-bombing/#.Xph5wchKhPZ

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