This
morning we’re finishing up our brief and abbreviated look at the Apostles’
Creed by reflecting on Jesus’ resurrection and what that means for us. Today’s
sermon may be a little more teaching focused as this is an important and yet
often confusing topic for some believers. The Apostles’ Creed teaches, “I
believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
One of the first places I turn to is the Heidelberg Catechism to find some
understanding of what this is all about. Here we read “What comfort does
the resurrection of the body offer you?” I always appreciate how the
Catechism approaches our faith from the perspective of comfort. It goes on to say,
“Not only shall my soul after this life immediately be taken up to
Christ, my Head, but also this my flesh, raised by the power of Christ, shall
be reunited with my soul and made like Christ's glorious body.”
When
the Catechism talks about the comfort of resurrection, it talks about
both our soul and our body. Often, the church has focused on the resurrection
of the soul, leading to a number of heresies that led people to consider the
body as something negative and the souls as somehow being more sacred. This
meant that you could do whatever you wanted with your body, including adultery,
and it wasn’t considered all that bad because it’s our soul that’s saved, not
our bodies. I wonder if that kind of thinking is what shapes many people thinking
about what happens to us after we die. I can’t count how often people have told
me that when someone dies, they become angels.
Psalm
57 can even seem to lead us into that kind of thinking, that it’s our
souls that are saved at death. Verse 1, “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for
in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the
disaster has passed.” When David writes this, he’s running away from
Saul, who wants to kill him. David’s hiding in a cave and Saul’s close by.
David has an opportunity to kill Saul and protect his own life, but David
refuses because God put Saul on the throne, so how could he ever think of
overthrowing God’s decision, David honours Saul instead. Something to think
about when we don’t like our own leaders.
When David writes this psalm, he uses a word, nepes, or nephesh, which translates as soul, life or personality
when he talks about taking refuge in God. Because the psalms are poetry, it can
be difficult sometimes to translate, so it could be translated “in you my soul, or my life, or my personality takes refuge.”
But the point of the psalm is not what part of David takes refuge in God, but
that God is a faithful and loving God, worthy to be praised, even in times of
distress and danger and we can turn to him knowing that God will protect us. No
matter what is happening, David is focused on God’s glory. This is why it’s
important to read the psalm in the way it was intended to be read, with the
theme of God’s faithfulness and love the focus.
This is why Jesus’ resurrection and meeting with his
disciples, especially Thomas is important, it emphasizes Jesus’
physical resurrection. Thomas isn’t around when Jesus appears to the rest of
the disciples. Thomas has a hard time believing that Jesus is actually,
physically alive. If we’re honest with ourselves, physical resurrection isn’t
always easy to wrap our minds around. One of the parts of the result of the
fall into sin, as we read in Genesis 3, is that, “By
the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
I’m sure that Thomas is thinking something like how does resurrection happen?
In the New Testament we see a number of resurrections
by Jesus. When
Jesus was on earth, he raised three people from the dead: the widow’s
son in the village of Nain, the 12-year-old daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the
synagogue, and Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha in Bethany after he had
been dead four days. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, even his sister
Martha has a hard time believing it could happen, saying, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
That’s when Jesus tells her, “I am the resurrection and
the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever
lives and believes in me will never die.” When I listen to Jesus’ words
as if I’m there at the time, it all sounds as clear as mud to me. Resurrection is
always the exception rather than the rule, and each of the people Jesus raised
from the dead end up dying again.
Michael
Horton writes about the work of the Holy Spirit and the physical
creation, “Abraham Kuyper argues that there is always a subtle Marcionite
temptation to imagine that the God of creation is somehow other than the God of
redemption—and that perhaps the latter saves us from the former.” Michael
Horton, using biblical poetic imagery, writes that the biblical story is that
of a God who redeems his own creation, that Jesus becomes physically human just
like us, and the Spirit turns a barren desert, because of sin, into a
blossoming orchard, because of grace. The physical creation is important to
God, it’s his creation and he created us in his image as physical creatures,
which is why redemption is seen and understood as including all creation,
including our physical body and the entire physical universe.
Marcion
of Asia Minor believed that the God of the Old Testament was
different from the God of the New Testament; one representing justice, the
other goodness; one an angry god who demanded justice and had created the physical
world which man, both body and soul, was a part. The other god, according to
Marcion, was completely indescribable and had little connection to the created
universe. Out of sheer goodness, he sent his son Jesus Christ to save
man from the material world and bring him to a new home. To Marcion, the
material world was bad, the spiritual was good.
This
way of thinking has gained traction in the church at various times
in history, but is wrong. God does not give up on this material world, because
this means Satan’s plan to claim this world for his own wins, to mess up God’s
work of creation fails, but Scripture is clear that Jesus wins. Satan’s just
part of creation, a creature, and Jesus is the creator and does not give up on
what he created. For developing and teaching these ideas, Marcion was kicked
out of the church in 144 AD as a heretic, but the movement he headed became
both widespread and powerful.
Michael
Horton writes, “The world will be different, but there will not be a
different world.”
When Jesus returns, the Bible tells us that all those who’ve died will be with
Jesus as he comes to redeem and restore the earth. We get a picture in
Revelation of a creation healed and restored as Satan is defeated once and for
all and there will be no more death, or mourning or
crying or pain. Paul writes in Philippians 3, “But
our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from
there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring
everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they
will be like his glorious body.” Just as Thomas was able to touch Jesus’
wounds, in the same way we’ll also be raised up with transformed bodies,
physical bodies to live on a physical earth, bodies we can touch.
Jesus’
resurrection is important because it reminds us that our bodies
are important and we need to treat ours, and everyone else’s bodies with
respect. It reminds us that when we receive our renewed bodies, that the
diseases, the brokenness in our bodies that come from life, that come from
addictions and brokenness in our souls, bodies that we may not love, are all precious
to God and that Jesus brings healing and wholeness. It reminds us that the
physical creation is important and it calls us back to our original call to be
stewards of this creation gift God has given to us to look after. The
resurrection takes the soul that David refers to and reassures us that it will
be reunited to our physical bodies again after death. I’m not sure exactly how
that will work, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit that first shaped us and
formed us in the womb, and who has the power to reunite our body and soul
again.
Jesus
appeared to his disciples to fill them with his Spirit to send them out
to bring the good news of salvation and redemption and show the world our whole
person, body and soul, is precious to God and is saved and redeemed through
Jesus’ sacrifice for us.
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