A.D.

1 Corinthians 15:35-44a, Luke 36b-48

"What happens to people when they die?"

There it was: The Question. We knew that Will would ask it eventually. The A.D. question--After Death. When faced with such a circumstance, my mind goes to that phrase in Luke's gospel, "Physician, heal thyself." It's like the money manager explaining the poor returns on the family portfolio. A cardiologist having too much cholesterol in her diet. The professional theologian (if indeed we can call ourselves that) fumbling over his kid's simple theological question. I have to admit that neither of us was quite prepared.

Fortunately, it was Catherine who got the question. Will asked it during story time, about 8 months ago or so; I was not there at the time--I must have been at a committee meeting. And that was good, because I think she handled it better than I ever could.

I know many of you are here, because you want to be prepared to answer such a question as that, or other similar questions, when your kid asks. You want real answers. Well, stay tuned, it's coming. (See, I like to cheat as a preacher, to get you to listen. You'll have to listen carefully, if you want some help with those questions.)

I'm also mindful that we've had several deaths in the congregation lately, deaths that have been hard for us, that rock our sense of the solidity of life, which upon close examination is really something of an illusion anyway. But when death happens, people's minds go to that question: what happens to people after they die? It's not just a question for kids; don't we ask that too when someone dies, and our minds are confronted with a fundamental mystery of life? Do we not wonder, when someone loses a loved one, what we can say that is genuine and comforting, something that is indeed true? Something beyond platitude and cliche: "Don't worry, he's in a better place now."

What does Christianity teach about what happens A.D., after death?

Of course, the occasion for all this is this story, about what happened to Jesus A. D.¹ , after death. Did he really rise again from death? Is it just a metaphor? What does the preacher believe? What do I believe?

One way of talking about all these questions is to ask another question: what is resurrection all about, if that's somehow what waits for us beyond the gateway of death, as Christians have taught? What does the resurrected life look like? Let's follow that line of inquiry for a moment. What does the resurrected life look like? I think that's a very important question for Christian faith--not just in facing death, but in facing life as well.

Well, maybe we ought to begin, in good Socratic fashion, by first talking about what it's not--what the resurrected life is not. (You may recall that Socrates' approach to truth was to dialogue with people to show them first what truth is not, to dispel their illusions about truth). So what is the resurrected life not?

Here's where we might begin. I would suggest that the resurrected life is not just a metaphor; not just somehow "spiritual": our souls emerging into the ether and all that business. I have struggled a great deal with this story over the years, the story of Jesus' death and resurrection, attempting to make it fit into my own intellectual framework and so on--and I've seen that it's really a scandal to believe in this story. And I've come to the conclusion that it's not just a story that speaks to the process by which flowers spring forth in March, the rebirth of life from death, signifying the eternal goodness of God.

I printed that poem by John Updike in your bulletin because I somehow hear that warning each Easter, when we preachers are tempted to think of the resurrection as a kind of intellectual embarrassment--"Don't mock God with metaphor." The scriptures seem to be insistent on the fact that if the resurrection is to have meaning for Christian faith, it is something that happened in some real sense, something that involved the real flesh and blood of a human being; something that defies our categories of knowing. And, it was something that really did "blow the minds" of the disciples.

(And I'll be honest: I often think too--what if it was all just a hoax? What if they did steal his body, as their first detractors accused? If we look at the whole thing as a phenomenon, I find it hard to believe that simple fishermen and women could lie so well, as to change the entire world, and change 2000 years of history.)

Something happened, something real; something about real flesh and blood. To believe it is a scandal that tweaks our sense of reason--and maybe that's the point.

Sometimes I think that in that scientific, rational lens through which we look at the world these days, I wonder if the more we know, the less is possible for humankind. You know? The smarter we (think we) are, the dumber we get. It's like that line from T.S. Eliot's poem, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the life we have lost in living?" But--we were discussing this in the theology 101 course this week--the "new science," post Newtonian physics, is about how science has discovered, in some real sense, mystery. Quantum physics has revealed a world far more mysterious than the theologian could ever describe. Science itself has come to the conclusion that it can't explain everything. There is mystery at the fundamental level of the universe. So, we might imagine that even the use of our best scientific reason does--or certainly ought to--lead us to a cliff; or at least, a juicy question mark. Or, if you want to be poetic about it, to an empty tomb. It leads us to a decision: what will we believe? Is it possible a man rose from the dead? Really?

Luke's point--and it's a huge point for the whole New Testament--is that the resurrected life, which we glimpse through this story of Jesus' resurrection, is fleshly existence; it is real life, not just some ghostly, ethereal existence. You see, in this story Luke was contradicting an early heresy called Gnosticism, whose adherents held that Jesus really didn't rise from the dead; it was just an appearance, a kind of divine hologram. The Christian faith has taught that somehow, what we encounter after death, in the resurrected life we share with Christ, is bodily. Fleshy. Somehow resembling, somehow continuous with our life now. In Paul's teaching about resurrection, he says we get a body when we die--a spiritual body, but a body nonetheless.

All that makes me think about all the popular culture notions about heaven as a place where there's no fun, no fulfillment, just sterile white robes and bland heavenly contemplation of theology. (Sounds more like hell, actually, doesn't it?). What is it in that Billy Joel song, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints"? You know: "In heaven there is no beer. That's why we drink it here." I think that would be heresy for Luke. The Risen Christ asks, "Do you have something to eat?" We can imagine he might have wanted a beer to go with that too. In heaven there is beer, and sunsets, and symphonies, and that's why we can truly enjoy them here. Heaven, the resurrected reality, has continuity with what we experience now.

But here's another "not" about resurrection. The scriptures also speak of how resurrection is not a simple matter of the resuscitation of a corpse. This literal understanding was rejected by Paul and the early church. There's a mystery going on here; the resurrected life looks different from the ordinary, conventional way we live our lives. We see in Luke's gospel, in these two stories about Jesus' post resurrection appearances, first to those disciples walking to Emmaus, and in this episode, when he comes to them on the seashore--they had a hard time recognizing him; they didn't know it was him at first. The existence we know in that reality is of a different category altogether.

Paul describes it this way: resurrection is like a seed that dies, and what is reborn is not another seed, but something radically different, something of a whole different category and yet continuous with where it came from. That is what resurrected life is like.

All to say--yes, there's something we might call life after this life. It's OK to believe that! And that life participates in the kind of resurrected life we see in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.

So--what do we say to the friend whose loved one died? I'm of the mind that the most important thing in such circumstances is actually not to talk theology, but to be there to cry with, to talk with, to just be present, to communicate our love in whatever awkward or smooth way might happen. That in itself is theological. But, I suppose it can be helpful if we believe in that kind of hope, and communicate it, find authentic words that express your hope. Our lives then become witnesses to hope, when those around us may be hopeless.

And how then did Catherine handle "the question"? I have to say, she has a kind of brilliant strategy when such big questions arise, a kind of multiple-choice strategy--she answered the question much better than I could have. She said, "well, some people believe you simply stop living, and your body goes back into the earth, where we all came from. Some people believe you go to live with God." I like that strategy, because it invites them to explore what they believe, and for you to talk about what you believe.

Then, I gave him a half-hour theology lecture the next morning.

Actually, Will's next question in this whole discussion was: "Where are the bathrooms in heaven?" I'm not sure how Catherine handled that one.

But, to conclude here....What matters, what really matters--I guess I've been speaking about this the last few sermons--is this: do you know the resurrected life now? That's the real point of all this. We know about the nature of that reality through our present experience, in our flesh, of the risen Christ. Here's the most important aspect of this teaching: we don't need to wait until we die to experience it!

In these stories from Luke's gospel, I said they couldn't recognize the risen Christ; he looked different. That kind of life is different. But they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. We know this reality in community. More specifically, we know it in communion, so to speak. We know Christ is risen in the Body of Christ, which is the church--this motley crew of believers seeking that resurrection experience together. And I think this kind of body is in itself is a miracle--that so many people, who think so differently--republicans, democrats, men, women, gay and straight, people who hate change and people who can't wait to try something new--all are one in the Risen Christ, who is here, among us.

Jesus is risen, because he's risen in the life of the person who may be out there, might be sitting here right now in these pews, who had been an alcoholic, and found the power to change through Jesus Christ; we know that Jesus rose again, because he was right there, next to me, as I was going through divorce; Jesus rose again, because I know him, in my heart. I know Christ is risen because I am a new person, redeemed and set free by the spirit of Christ.

And so, beyond all these words, all this thinking and postulating about mysteries well beyond our human ken, the question is: is he risen in you; in your very fleshly existence now? That's the question.

Amen.

¹ Of course, the letters A.D. when applied to our calendar denote Anno Domini, or "Year of our Lord," the year of Christ's birth; I'm using them in another popular (but technically incorrect) sense here.

 

April 30, 2006

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