Disciples Affirm Resurrection Hope (10-30-2022) Ephesians 1.11-23

Tomorrow is a special day for many children. They get to dress up and go door to door and get as much candy as they can carry. A special day for some adults too as they can make the mommy and daddy tax on said candy. You should know by now that I am speaking of Halloween. Now Halloween is a fun time for kids and many adults, but there is a deeper meaning to this time of revelry and candy getting. Halloween is also known as All Hallows Eve (hence Halloween). It is the day before All Saints Day, a day in which we celebrate the saints here on earth as well as those who have gone before us. A day of celebration and remembrance.

Now there are many who would wonder why we celebrate saints. Are they not the ones who have been relegated by the Roman and Eastern church as those above who are puny sinners on this earth? What does it mean to be a saint?

A saint is one who is holy or set apart. Those who are in Christ are the saints. Many of those whom we consider saints would be shocked that they are considered so holy. They would say, “I’m no better than you.” And the same can be said for many sitting here today. But we are all saints. Paul in his letters often spoke to those whom he called saints, the ones who were set apart.

But what does All Saints Day have to do with the resurrection? Quite a lot. See, when we celebrate the saints, we celebrate not mourn them because we believe that we will see them again. That they are waiting for us in the resurrection and the life to come.

But what is this hope of the resurrection? What does it all mean and why do we have hope in it?

When I took my ordination exams, this was a question asked shortly after Easter:

You are the pastor of Mockingbird Lane Presbyterian Church. Early on Easter Sunday, you encounter members of the worship committee arranging the Easter lilies. You overhear the following conversation:

Judy:

Easter Sunday is my favorite day of the year. I am glad Jesus died and was raised so I could get a new body when I die.

Harriet:

I must admit I have trouble with the resurrection. Jesus was God’s son, I know, but rising from the grave? I just don’t believe it.

Margarita:

Wow, what an admission! I believe Jesus died and his Spirit rose, so that when we die, our bodies stay in the grave forever but our souls go immediately to heaven.

You realize that the next worship committee meeting will need to include a lesson on the meaning of the resurrection of the body.

What we believe is that the body will be resurrected, not that the soul just goes to heaven and that is it. No, we believe that the body created by God and called good will be raised in the resurrection and that it will be recreated into something that Paul calls incorruptible.

What is resurrection and why is it important? Is it so that we can “get and new body when we die”? And what about the “souls go immediately to heaven” but the body stays forever? There is a lot to unpack here and some of it is complicated, but I will try to keep it down to a minimum of an hour or so. I will try to explain as best I know what the resurrection is, why it is important to our faith, and why we need a better understanding of it as well.

The resurrection is not a new concept. In Jesus’ day there were groups who did and did not believe in the resurrection. The group that did believe in the resurrection was the Pharisees. They believed that the resurrection would occur when the Messiah came in all his glory and would set things to rights. They believed this because they included all the prophets and writings in their canon along with the TORAH. The Sadducees, the ruling class, on the other hand did not believe in the resurrection. They followed only the TORAH which did not teach the resurrection. These two clashed with one another and had vehement “discussions” regarding the resurrection. And then there was Jesus who taught that the resurrection, specifically his, had to come. After him came Paul, a former Pharisee, who taught that the resurrection would occur and not just a soul resurrection but a bodily resurrection. And why not? He knew that Jesus was resurrected and that his was a bodily resurrection albeit with a body that was different than the one he had before, a body that would never die and was, again, incorruptible.

And so, Paul is writing to those in Ephesus letting them know that the power that was given to Christ is the same power that raised him from the dead and will raise them from the dead as well. The problem is that there were those who believed, and believe today, that there was something wrong with the body. They had no problem with the immortality of the soul; that was taught by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, et al. What they did have problems with was the resurrection of the body. To the Greeks, the body was something…. dirty. Something to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. They even had a phrase: soma sema, the body is a sepulcher (or tomb). The soul was a spark of the divine and need to be set free from the material world.

Paul comes along and says “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What is all this about the body being bad and the soul good?” One thing that the Greeks, and us by now, had forgotten was that the soul was created by the one who created the body, and therefore both are good. And if Christ was raised to have a body that could be touched, could eat, could be conversed with, then what would stop us from having the same thing? Paul is telling his readers that the body is going to come out of the grave. Notice he never mentions the soul. This was all about the body. In the Bible, we see a very material side. There are never really disembodied spirits that have a true life. All life is part of the body. And these bodies are not the zombies that we think of when we think of people coming out of the grave, no they are the same bodies that we have now, though what we will look like is a mystery.

We affirm this hope every time we say the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. We affirm the hope that there is to be a resurrection and that it will be a bodily one. It is not only the Apostles’ Creed that states this doctrine. The confessions that compose the constitution of the PC(USA) all state this. And it is not just us that awaits the resurrection. All creation groans, as Paul tells us, for the coming time when God will put all things to right. Allow me to read some of my answer to the question that I had for my theology exam:

In the Westminster Confession it states that our "bodies return to dust" but souls "immediately return to God who gave them" and that on the last day all the dead will be raised with the same bodies but with different qualities and shall be united with their souls forever (Book of Confessions, Westminster Confession of Faith, 6.177-6.178, pg. 186). A third place in the Confessions where we find the resurrection of the body is the Heidelberg Catechism which states that not only will the soul be taken to Christ, but that the "very flesh" will be raised by the power of Christ and "made like Christ's glorious body"(Book of Confessions, The Heidelberg Catechism, 4.057, pg. 47). For Reformed believers, the resurrection of the body is crucial. As Paul says, If Christ is not raised, then our faith is in vain and we are of all people to be the most pitied (see 1 Cor. 15-17-19). The resurrection is on what all the New Testament recollections hang. If there is no bodily resurrection of Christ, then the stories of him meeting with the disciples, them touching him, him eating with them are all false. Too often we have claimed the soul for God and forgotten the body. But scripture and our confessions tell us otherwise. While we believe that the soul will be with God immediately when we die, we also believe that our bodies (recognizable as we were before but with different qualities that are the same as Christ's) will be joined again with our souls at the last day. We must be careful that we do not fall into the trap of Gnosticism where the claim is that the soul is good, but the body bad. We as Reformed have not believed that nor is this what the bible teaches. It is difficult to believe the resurrection. But our belief in this doctrine is not so that we have a "pie in the sky" hope of one day living forever, but that we will know the risen Christ and share with him the life that he gives (Guthrie 274).

The hope of the resurrection is our victory cry. It is not so that we will “live forever,” but that we have the hope of seeing the resurrected Lord Jesus and those who have gone before us. It is the hope that death is defeated and that no longer will we mourn those we have lost, but that we will see them face to face.

James C. Howell in “The Life We Claim” states it this way:

Karl Barth wrote that, because of the resurrection, you just can't walk around with a sour look on your face. You also can't live for yourself. You can't slavishly indulge in our culture, consuming, doing as you wish. The world, your life, and the life of everyone around you, is in God's hands—so we follow God now, totally, joyfully. Whatever eternal life is like, we may as well practice for it right now. In heaven, money means zilch, there are no racial divisions, love is tender and vocal, holiness and service are habitual, we are at peace. We practice, and we trust, not knowing precisely what our future holds. We trust a God who has devised a future for us that will exceed our grandest fantasies; and whatever that future holds, it will be enough, because we know who will be there before we get there: our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This All-Saints Day let us remember and affirm the hope that we have in the resurrection. It is okay to remember those who have died with some sadness but it is better to look forward with joy to know that we will see those saints in the resurrection day. So, let us go forward and embrace what we believe knowing that if God raised Jesus from the dead, then God can and will do the same for us and for all the saints who are now in glory. Amen.