The Fifth Easter
The Fifth Easter by Rev. L. John Gable
June 16, 2019
This past Easter we looked together at what Franklin Ralls calls “the four Easters” which we experience. The first is clearly the most significant. It was the first Easter, nearly 2000 years ago, when by His mighty power God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. This is the ground and pivot, the exclamation point of our faith, and without this one there would be no others. The second Easter is the one we celebrate once a year on Easter Sunday as we did so gloriously here several weeks ago. The third Easter is the one we celebrate each and every Sunday, since for us as Christians every Sunday is a “little Easter.” And the fourth, according to Franklin Ralls, is the Easter we celebrate each and every day as we daily die and are raised with Christ. As Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead…(so)I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own.”
Now even at the time I was writing that Easter message I knew that Mr. Ralls was missing one. There is, in fact, a fifth Easter, the one we will celebrate when we are raised from the dead. It is that Easter event that we will discuss today as we consider the next phrase in our study of the Apostles’ Creed – “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”
I know Sigmund Freud once said that it is impossible for one to imagine their own death, but have you ever considered what it will be like to be dead? I’m sure you have, all of us have at one time or another. But generally we don’t ponder it very long because what do we know of it? That is an experience beyond our experience, or is it?
I know there have been other books written since but in 1975 Dr. Raymond Moody wrote a book titled “Life After Life”, perhaps some of you remember reading it. Dr. Moody was a well-educated, well-respected psychiatrist who began having encounters with individuals who had had out of body, “life after death” experiences. At first he kept those conversations to himself, not knowing how others would react, and I agree with him. Through the years of my ministry I too have had numerous individuals tell me about experiences they have had that they had never told anyone about for fear that people would think they were crazy, like out of body, “life after death” experiences during surgery. I will assure you, as I do them, I believe every word they tell me. Not because I understand it, but because I know they believe it and I know there is so much that is beyond my experience or understanding. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “It is all a mystery! Now we see in a mirror dimly, then we shall see face to face.”
So what is it like to die? Dr. Moody opens his book with this question and he gives this composite description of that experience gleaned from those he has interviewed.
“A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from his unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.
After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a “body”, but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before – a being of light appears before him. This being asks him a question, nonverbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point he finds himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back to the earth, that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love and peace; despite his attitude though he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.
Later he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so. In the first place he can find no human words adequate to describe these unearthly episodes. He also finds that others scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still, the experience affects his life profoundly, especially his views about death and its relationship to life.”
How interesting. What is it like to die? What is it like to be dead? This may be our question today, but it certainly is not new to us. In Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians he addresses this subject head on. Using a rhetorical style of teaching in which he asks and answers the listener’s questions before they have the chance to do so themselves, he writes, “So, how are the dead raised up, and with what kind of body do they come?” He begins to answer the question with an abrupt and rather rude – “You fools!” Now, he’s not saying we are fools for asking the questions- that really would be rude, he is, however, saying the Corinthians are acting like fools for adopting some of the beliefs and practices of the day regarding the dead.
So, how are the dead raised up and with what body do they come? In the ancient world it was believed that the human mind and soul were made up of the same eternal “stuff” as the celestial bodies, the sun, the moon, the stars. So when one died their soul would simply return to the heavens. This kind of thinking went very well with the worldview called dualism. In dualism it was believed that anything physical was evil and anything spiritual was good. In this way of thinking our entire earthly existence is little more than an ongoing battle between the flesh and the spirit, the flesh holding our true self captive and imprisoned in this body until the spirit can be released and set free at the time of death.
Some of you will recall when we started this sermon series on the Apostles’ Creed way back in November that the Creed was largely written in response to the heresy of this kind of dualistic teaching, one such teaching being that Jesus never really came as a human being at all; rather that He was simply a spiritual being who temporarily inhabited a physical body. This was the first great heresy the early Church had to address and it did so by clearing stating in the Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”
So what do we mean by resurrection and in what kind of body? This is the question Paul raises rhetorically, “So how are the dead raised up and with what kind of body do they come?” Let us be clear that resurrection is not the same thing as resuscitation. I would classify the individuals who were interviewed for Dr. Moody’s book as having been resuscitated, not resurrected. They were “dead” temporarily- heart stopped beating, they stopped breathing, during which time they had remarkable, out of body, experiences, but then, for whatever reasons, they were resuscitated and came back to life, the same life they had known before. As fascinating as that is, that is not what we mean by resurrection. Resurrection is not the resuscitation of a corpse; it is the transformation of the body from one state of being into a new and glorious state of being. It is the radical transformation of this physical body into the glorified state of a spiritual body, the emphasis being that it is still a body, albeit a new and very different one. Admittedly, Paul is trying to explain a mystery here, but in the ancient world a mystery was not so much an enigma or an unsolvable puzzle, as it was a secret to be shared. The secret of the mystery called resurrection is- there are going to be changes made!
So this is how Paul tries to describe these changes. Using an analogy from nature he says, “The seed that you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And that which you sow, you sow not in the body that shall be, but God gives it a new body as it has pleased Him, and to each seed its own body.” So we plant a seed, a kernel of corn, an acorn, in the ground and we expect it to grow, but we don’t expect it to grow into a great big seed, a gigantic kernel of corn or a huge acorn! No, we expect it to grow into a plant, a stalk, an oak tree. But if you look at an acorn and then at an oak tree it is hard to imagine how the two are related. They hold no resemblance to one another. They are very different bodies, yet we know that they come from the same substance. They are exactly the same, yet they are radically different. “So it is in the resurrection of the dead.”
“What is sown is perishable (this physical body); what is raised is imperishable (our spiritual bodies).” They are completely different from one another, yet inextricably connected together; very different yet very much the same. “It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body.” This physical body I know as “me” will one day die and in the resurrection I will be changed. I will be the same person, but I will not have the same body. I will be given a new and glorified body, and as Paul closes this teaching we can say with him, “Thanks be to God!”
In the resurrection our bodies will be changed, but we will remain who we are. As Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians (3:21), “Jesus Christ will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.” This is what happens to us when we are resurrected, but this is not a natural process at all; it is a supernatural process. It is the act of God by which He completes His plan of salvation in us. Just as God has created and redeemed us, so He also restores us and the whole creation. In the resurrection we are restored into His image and likeness by the work of the Holy Spirit, a work that begins now when we receive Him as Savior and Lord, but doesn’t find its completion until the resurrection of the last days. In the resurrection God completes His work of grace in us and in that day we will be where Jesus is, with God.
Admittedly this is all still a mystery. Perhaps we have more questions about it going out than we did coming in, so let us speak plainly of what we do know.
First, we know that just as God has given each of us this magnificent gift of life, so someday we will all die, despite our best efforts to delay it or disguise its approach. The human mortality rate is still running right at 100%, so we must live in the full awareness of this reality, and prepare for it.
However, death does not have the last word. In His death and resurrection Christ has already claimed victory here, so it need not be feared by any who belong to Him. For all who put their trust in Christ are now living in the hope of the transformation to new life we know as resurrection. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead will one day raise us as well. What God did for Jesus, He promises to do for all those who belong to Him. Thanks be to God!
So what does death look like? How are the dead raised up and with what kind of body do they come? We really don’t know, do we? So rather than speculating, let’s speak only of what we do know.
One of my favorite songs was written and performed by a Christian artist, Sara Groves, in which she speaks of a conversation she had with her very own grandmother, a woman of deep faith, who was asking questions about death as she faced that reality. Sara writes, “I have a friend who just turned eighty-eight and she just shared with me that she’s afraid of dying. I sit here years from her experience and try to bring her comfort. But what do I know? Really, what do I know?” The chorus begins, “I don’t know that there are harps in heaven, or the process for earning your wings. I don’t know of bright lights at the end of tunnels or any of those things….but I do know to be absent from the body is to present with the Lord, and from what I know of Him, that must be pretty good. Oh, I do know to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and from what I know of Him, that must be very good.”
On that day, on the fifth Easter, we will be where Jesus is now, with God, and despite all of our questions, from what we know of Him, that will be very good. So, to that end, and in that hope, we can say with confidence “I believe in the resurrection of the body”.