EASTER 3

Luke 24:36b-48... (Sermon 1: “When We Die?”)

(Sermon 2: “Playing Catch-up”)

1 John 3:1-7...

Acts 3:12-19...

Psalm 4

GATHERING

We are those who ‘get high’ on life: abundant life, eternal life!

Jesus said to his disciples: “Why are you full of so many doubts? Look at my hands and my feet, it is really me; handle me; a ghost does not have a real body like you can see I have.”

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

A church building is not a funeral chapel where we mourn a dead Teacher,

but a hospitable family home where we can celebrate with the living Christ

whose love is in the air and whose joy overflows every moment.

Christ is Risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

Love is in the air!

The joy of the Lord Jesus be with you all.

And also with you.

Jesus came and stood among them. They were shaken and frightened.

They thought they were seeing a ghost.

But Jesus said; “Why are your upset, why do doubts take over your minds.

It is I myself. Touch me and see for yourselves.”

They were dumbfounded and were filled with joy when they saw the Lord.

It seemed too good to be true.

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!

There is more joy in my heart than those who feast on abundant food and wine.

You alone, my Lord, enable us to live in complete security.

In peace I can lie down, and in perfect peace I can go to sleep,

APPROACHING

Most wonderful God, as we assemble here in this house of joy,

deliver us from negative thoughts and wearisome worries.

Liberate within us that true spirit that wants to soar with Christ

into the boundless possibilities of Easter faith,

and which worships with the enthusiasm of a true lover.

Through him, with him, and for him,

be all honour, glory and praise to you, most holy God,

throughout the world and in highest heaven.

Amen!

REPENTING

We now have the opportunity to acknowledge our sins, things done or left undone.

Let us pray.

God our most holy Friend, although we have tried to serve Christ well, and on occasions have accomplished some loving and beautiful things, much remains undone.

Around us in the world we see gross evils which appal us,

and within our mind and heart we recognise the insipient seeds of it all.

We cannot atone for our all our own sins nor for those of our fellow human beings,

the debt it is far too large and the cause too deep for us.

We are unable to eradicate all our personal follies or redress all our mistakes,

the consequences permeate those around us and, even touch those far away.

We are incapable of properly recognising, cleansing and forgiving ourselves,

for our own hands are too soiled and our store of grace is too mean.

You alone God, by your universal Presence, can discern the cause and effect within the tangled web of our existence, and deal with it for our salvation.

With your priceless grace, forgive us our sins and deliver us from evil.

Through Christ Jesus, whom you have appointed our Saviour and Lord.

Amen!

TRUSTING THE GOOD NEWS

My friends, the good news is meant for the likes of you and me.

For us Christ came, for us he taught, for us he suffered and died, and for us he arose to be the permanent remedy for the infection of our sins.

Trust in him and you shall be free, freer than the wind and rain, the moon and stars, more free than anything else in all creation, for you are now the very children of God.

Thanks be to God!

PRAYER FOR CHILDREN

Dear God,

my mum sometimes says,

in a shocked way:

“Good heavens, child! What have you done now?”

Then I know I am in trouble.

You know, God,

I sometimes feel like saying,

in an amazed way:

“Good heavens, God! What have you done?

For you let Jesus die on the cross!”

But then you raised him up from the grave

to be our everlasting Saviour.

What you have done is wonderful

Now I know I am out of trouble!

Thank you, God of big surprises,

for all you have done for us.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen!

PSALM 4

God, the upholder of my rights,

please answer me when I cry out.

When I’ve been in trouble before,

you have given me room to move.

Have mercy on me now

and respond to my prayer.

Humanity, how long will you be a disgrace,

how long will you be heavy hearted?

How long will you love vain speeches

and run after those who flatter with lies?

God does wonders for true believers,

our God hears whenever we call.

Don’t let your anger lead you into sin,

be honest with yourself and sleep well.

Keep your vows, and worship often,

put all your trust in your God.

Though many want exotic pleasures,

we are content with God’s smile.

My God, to my heart you are true treasure,

far better than all their wining and dining.

We can lie down and go to sleep in peace,

for you alone make us utterly secure.

Ó B D Prewer 2002

THE EASTER THING

Listen, I share

a mystery:

as is was then

so will it be

for even me.

It will happen

in the twinkling

of a new day

when the last stone

will roll away.

Above the sludge

(somewhat dazed)

of ancient fears

and modern doubts

I will be raised.

In that new light

I’ll see starkly,

and never more

through smoked glass

squint so darkly.

Then I will know

as I am known,

my gloomy thoughts

and many deaths

all overthrown.

Eagling I’ll rise

without constraint,

run on my way

and not weary,

walk and not faint.

Sighing will end

on that new day

and sorrow cease,

for Love will wipe

all tears away.

More Australian Psalms, p 73

Ó B D Prewer & Open Book Publishers

PRAYER FOR THE DAY

Loving God, the eyes of your disciples were opened

when your Son blessed the bread, and broke it, and gave it to them.

Strip the shutters from our spiritual sight,

that we may discern his true Presence in the common gifts of life,

celebrate with all who love him,

and have compassion for those who as yet love him not.

To the praise of his name,

who in the perfect fellowship of the Holy Spirit

lives and loves with you, our one loving God now for ever.

Amen!

SERMON 1: WHEN WE DIE? WHAT THEN?

Luke 24: 36-40

Jesus himself came and stood among them. But they were shaking and afraid, and reckoned they must be seeing a ghost. Jesus then said to them “Why are you so shaken, and why are you full of so many doubts? Look at my hands and my feet, it is really me; handle me for a ghost does not have a real body like you can see I have.” Luke 24:36-40

What really happened to Jesus after he died? What happens to us when we die?

We ca, if we choose, spell out our death solely in terms of death certificates, undertakers, funerals and either the crematorium or grave, and a circle of grieving loved ones and friends. That is one answer to the question. The shattered disciples started there. They reckoned they already knew what happened when a person died. Therefore their first response to the appearance of Jesus was to assume it could only be some kind of spook. As far as they were concerned, the real Jesus was dead. Dead and gone. Finished.

But is that all there is? Is death the utter end, or is there some kind of change; some new gift, an elevation to an enlarged existence? Is there some mighty and loving ‘act of God’ which makes our dear ones much more substantial than a mere memory or a wispy wraith?

All I can do in response to my own question is to draw on the gospel stories, and on the faith of the New Testament communities. Then in the light of their apostolic witness, draw some conclusions. By drawing on the gospels I will be closer to the truth than the theoretical rambling of self-appointed gurus, or philosophers or mediums.

INADEQUACY OF MORTAL WORDS

Notice that I say “closer to the truth.” Any words we use to describe another life must, of necessity, be acutely inadequate. When using images drawn from this world, any attempt to speak of another world, another reality, will even at its best be a merely a hint of the truth, an approximation. When we stand beside a grave, and dare to look beyond it by standing in the light of the Gospel, our thoughts and words will of necessity fail us.

In this regard I have over the years been fascinated by the language used by those people who have confided in me the experiences they had while being clinically dead and then were resuscitated. The words they use in an attempt to express their experience are drawn from what is most lovely in this life. For example, one man who kept a superb flower garden explained his experience like being in the most wonderful garden. Another person who delighted in classical music talked of the after death experience in terms of a music far more beautiful than anything before known.

If we are to describe another life, or if you prefer it another plane of existence, we can only draw on images from this world, however inadequate they such images remain. This is bound to leave us looking silly in the eyes of sceptics.

WHAT HAPPENED WITH JESUS?

What happened when Jesus rose from the dead? What can the gospel stories tell us about life beyond death?

This: Resurrection was no mere ghostly affair. Jesus himself came and stood among them. But they were shaking and afraid, and reckoned they must be seeing a ghost. Jesus then said to them “Why are you so shaken, and why are you full of so many doubts? Look at my hands and my feet, I am really here; handle me for a ghost does not have a real body like you can see I have.” Luke 24:36-40

He was real. They became convinced that Jesus had been raised into a new form of bodily life. He was not a disembodied, flimsy spirit. Nor was he some spark of life ready to be absorbed back into the Divine radiance. The risen Christ was a real person, speaking, smiling, able to be touched. He knew them, and they knew him as the same Jesus they had followed and loved. They used the word “body” to explain this. Later this word body was used in early creeds: “We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

But, that was not the whole story. Something radical had happened. This new body was a new creation. His resurrection body reflects the old body but was not the old body reassembled. All the stories of resurrection portray the risen body of Christ as functioning in an uncanny way. It became extremely difficult for those first witnesses to describe what they saw.

There is a mystery in it all. Mary wept by an empty tomb, and though Jesus came and stood behind her, she did not recognise him until he spoke to her. Two disciples on the road to Emmaus joined with a stranger who opened up the meaning of the Scriptures, but they did not recognise him until he broke bread with them at the evening meal; then he just vanished from their sight. Most of the disciples stayed on in Jerusalem, hiding behind locked doors because they were afraid that they might get arrested. Suddenly Jesus is suddenly among them.

Thomas missed out that first Easter events, but a week later Jesus came, calling Thomas to faith. Some considerable time later, according to Paul, over five hundred believers all saw Jesus there with them. And then Paul himself, the avowed enemy of Christians, while on the road to Damascus, was overwhelmed by a brilliant light, and out of the light the risen Lord Jesus spoke to him.

One cannot read these stories without noting that the body of the risen Lord was radically different. Something timeless and spaceless yet magnificently real was happening in their presence. This new body, the one that Paul later referred to as the “incorruptible body” or the “spiritual body,” was the reality those early disciples saw and heard. Not limited like the old body, yet very real, very present, very loving, very glorious: “Don’t be afraid,” says Jesus, “it is I myself.”

SUGGESTIONS FROM HANS KUNG

Hans Kung, that brilliant and courageous theologian who has made his witness so powerfully from the University of Tubingen, Germany, in his book “Eternal Life” attempts to summarise the meaning of resurrection for Christ and us. He does it under three headings.

1/ It does not mean a return to this body, or to continue on with everlasting life in this world.

It is definitely not a resuscitation of the old body. God did not give Jesus a kiss of life and make him forever a wanderer on the face of this planet. Nor do we stay in the grave and wait for the kiss of life to happen to us at the end of time.

Kung points out what unbearable boredom it would be to have everlasting life, in these limited bodies, on this planet. Who would want to go on living forever here in these conditions?

Nor, says Kung, is eternal life the same as repeated re-incarnations; not a succession of physical bodies on this planet. We need to be clear that the Eastern religions that teach reincarnation do not see this as something to celebrate but to lament. In fact the aim of their teaching is to release the soul from the intolerable burden of constant rebirth.

So, in Kung’s first point: our resurrection does not mean resuscitation. It is in no way a living forever in this world.

2/ Resurrection and eternal life do not mean a continuation of life in a body suited to some other sphere than our time and space.

Leaving Kung for a moment; one of my grandfathers was fascinated, in an amateur way, with the findings of astronomy in the early part of the last century. From my childhood I remember him conjecturing whether either the planets Venus or Saturn were heaven; the place of our eternal life? Whether at death God transfers us to there? Saturn was his preferred option.

[The Mormons have a similar idea about the universe and the eternal life we are promised. They see the righteous as inhabiting other worlds in God’s universe, and even becoming ‘gods’ to other planets]

Hans Kung says that this is definitely not what eternal life means. It is neither this planet nor any other sphere in space or time. It is something fundamentally new, a life that is radically “other” than this universe. Like Jesus, it does not conform to the laws of the cosmos.

So, in Kung’s second point: eternal life does not mean a bodily existence in some other sphere bound by the physics of this creation. Einstein’s famous theory of Relativity has no bearing in this supra reality.

3/ Resurrection is an act of God whereby we are changed, translated into the closer presence and love of God.

Here Kung moves from saying what eternal life is not, to the much harder task of saying what it is. He struggles to find words. [I admit that I grin when I read a man who is an intellectual giant compared with me, nevertheless floundering around searching for even half-adequate phrases. If it’s difficult for him, what about common parsons like me?]

In the sentences I will now read, you will note that he uses the word “assumption” in the Roman Catholic sense (e.g. the assumption of the Virgin Mary) of “being gathered up”. He also uses the word “retreat”, not in the sense of retreating from a foe but in the sense of a spiritual retreat; that is, and spending quality, devotional time with God. He says:

¾“Death is a passing into God, a homecoming into God’s seclusion, it is an assumption into God’s glory...... it is an assumption into the absolutely final reality and first reality.”

:¾ “In death a new, eternal future is offered to people......a new future, wholly different.”

¾ “A retreat, as it were, into the inmost primal ground and primal meaning of the world and humanity.”

¾ “An entry into that which was before anything was created.”

As you can see, Kung is stretching language to the full, attempting to express the certainty yet the mystery and wonder of eternal life. I love it when the giants struggle as much as the pygmies in trying to express the meaning of eternal life! He avoids all the old religious clichés, but ends up wrestling (like Jacob in the night) with something far too big for him.

To summarise:

We do not die into nothingness. Nor is this old carcase refurbished. Nor do we take a long sleep and then get up to live for ever on this planet. Nor do we suffer interminable reincarnations into this world.

We are totally raised up, completely transformed, a new creation. We are translated by God into another form of existence, another form of body, as real as the risen Christ who appeared to his disciples and said: “Look for yourself; it is really me!” Eternal life is “boundary-less” life, not inhibited by any of the constrictions of time and space.

SELF-AWARE, PERSONAL LIFE

There is one question folk commonly ask their pastors about eternal life: “Will I know myself, and will my friends and loved one know me, and I them?” If the risen Jesus is our model (the revealing in time and space of what eternal life is like) then the answer is “Yes!”

Look at my hands and my feet, I am really here; handle me, for a ghost does not have a real body like you can see I have.”

It seems we shall know ourselves and know one another. Even though the fundamental metamorphic event will have taken place, we will still be the same persons. In the first Letter of John, the apostle writes: “My loved ones, we are God’s children right now. It is not yet plain what we shall become, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he truly is.”

In the light of the powerful New Testament witness, I take very seriously the stories told by people near the point of death, which indicate that beyond death we are still truly ourselves.

Like the teenage boy Austin, who was injured in a car accident in which his best friend Wayne was killed. On the day before Austin died, he said to his mother: “Wayne came to me last night, Mum, like in a dream? He said everything was okay but that I was going to join him tomorrow morning.” Austin peacefully died at 10.26 am. the next day.

What happens when we die? We are transformed by Divine love into a new body shaped for a new dimension of life. We are raised to a new level. Maybe we will be confused at first; maybe the light will seem very bright, or the flowers exquisitely beautiful, or the music ravishingly lovely, but we shall know and be known, and with Christ we shall love and be loved.

I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

SERMON 2: PLAYING CATCH-UP

Luke 24: 36-43

They met with Jesus.

On that first Easter evening, the minds of the disciples were reeling. Their eyes and ears were ahead of their brains. Their hearts were saying something which confounded their minds. Or as we today, with our current understanding of the different functions of the right and left hemispheres of our brains, might say: The rational left brains of the disciples had to play catch-up with their insightful right brain.

Thank God for that! Anything else would not be credible.

I repeat, anything less than mental confusion would not be credible.

JESUS APPEARS

My thoughts centre today on an appearance of Jesus as recorded towards the end of Luke’s final chapter of the Gospel.

While the two disciples were discussing this [about Jesus having appeared to Simon, and then to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus] Jesus himself stood among them and greeted them: “Peace be with you.”

But they were shaken and frightened. They thought they were seeing a ghost.

Jesus spoke to them: “Why are your upset, why do doubts take over your minds.

See my hands and feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see for yourselves. For a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.”

They were still dumbfounded, even in their joy, for it all seemed too good to be true.

Seeing t his, Jesus said: “Have you any food here to eat?” They gave him some baked fish. He took it and ate it in front of them.”

In Luke’s story, the writer has already, before these verses, spoken of Mary of Magdala, Johanna and Mary the mother of James. They went to the tomb at early dawn, and they received the message of Jesus’ resurrection from two radiant men.

Luke then continued on to tell the story of how on the evening of that first Easter, two disconsolate disciples, while on the way to the village of Emmaus, were met by Jesus. Strangely, at first they did not recognisee him; not until at supper he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.

Luke was still not finished. He went on with the story of how the two disciples rushed back to Jerusalem, and burst into the room where the other disciples were in hiding, to tell them the extraordinary news. But they had been scooped. The story was that the risen Jesus had already been seen by others, and that the Lord had also appeared to Simon Peter.

So the good news was well and truly out. But was it true? The rest of the disciples could not swallow this stuff about resurrection. It was not just unlikely, it was surely impossible. Wishful thinking. Wanting something to be real did not make it so. Dead men did not rise again. All their human experience, all the dead they had seen, each of those tombs on the hillside on the Mt of Olives, shouted at them not to believe this hysterical talk from few, overwrought, grieving disciples.

DISBELIEVED FOR JOY

At that moment, Jesus came again and stood among them, with his greeting: “Shalomalechem! Peace be with you!”

The first reaction from most of those disciples was alarm, fear, confusion. Some thought Jesus was a spook. They were freaked. Jesus, knowing this, showed them his wounded hands and feet. He invited them to touch him. “Find out for yourselves” he said, “it is really I myself.”

The Luke writes a strange comment: “They disbelieved for joy, and still wondered.”

Some translations go for the option “It was too good to be true.” I have done that myself. Yet that is hardly strong enough to represent the actual text. There was a riotous mixture of belief and doubt, ecstatic happiness and undercurrent of protesting disbelief. It was just too much for them to handle. They were shaken, trembling, confused yet yelping for joy!

Happiness mixed with a measure of disbelief, can go together. I suspect it would have happened to you at some stage in your life.

I recall a young man (we’ll call him Jack) in pre-marriage counselling describing how amazed he was when he discovered the woman of his dreams (we’ll call her Samantha) also liked him. He said: “I was high as a kite. Off the planet! Yet at the same time I could not believe it. I could not believe that this gorgeous women could love a bloke like me.” As Jack said this. Samantha looked on with a sparkling love in her eyes. There was no doubt that she did love him deeply. Jack went on: “Y’ know, there are some times still, after 19 months and 23 days of proof, when I still wonder if I am dreaming? It seems too good to be true. I have to pinch myself. “

“They disbelieved for joy” writes Luke. We can understand that. Our hearts, indeed an intuitive knowledge in our very being, can get well ahead of the brain’s acceptance.

With the disciples, the brain had to catch up with the heart, the mind with the feelings.

BELIEF AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

We like to see ourselves as rational people. We like to presume that we arrive at knowledge step By logical step. But that is often not so.

More often we get a moment of insight, or a sharp hunch, or a bright intuition. Then later we set out to test and prove it. In spite of our remarkable technological progress through the application of scientific method, many remarkable break-throughs do not start with method but with intuition. That is true for even the greatest, scientific minds. It is true of the genius.

The same with ordinary folk like us. Our mind struggles to keep up. In my own case, I am still, after 56 years of trusting Jesus Christ, still, trying to get my mind around that which I joyfully have received, and have lived for (and with!) day by day though those same 56 wonderful years.

Belief does not arrive 100% complete, in a flash. All the questions are not immediately answered. Far from it. There remains the precious Light, sometimes bright, sometimes a faint glow, which leads us on and on and on. “Not that I have already attained, But I press on with my high calling in Christ Jesus.” Thank you. St Paul. If a spiritual giant like Paul had to play catch up, that encourages plodders like me.

It is presumptuous to think we know it all. I once read a speech delivered by an English bishop. In it he asserted: “Let us not flinch when critics raise their voices against the church of God. Let us not adjust a single thing in order to accommodate with those around us. We are the custodians of infallible truth. We have all the answers to all of life’s big questions.”

O yeah? That kind of pride, the arrogance of creed, not only leaves non-believers more firmly set in their scepticism, but it also makes some sincere believers become anxious and fretful, as they wonder: “In that case, what is wrong with me? Perhaps I am not a true believer?”

One upstart young woman did that to my mother when she was in her eighties. My dear

mum had served Christ from childhood with integrity and love which was seamless. The older I get the more I realise how unpretentiously complete her discipleship was. Yet this 22 year old, a recent convert, presumed to confront my mother and demand why, if she had faith, did she still have so many questions?

I freely admit to you, I was not very charitable in my thoughts towards that young woman when my mother confided in me her disquiet. I was able to affirm her faith, her commitment, and her love. But it was left to her local pastor to help her through that period of anxiety, which had been inflicted on her by the credal arrogance of an immature believer.

IT IS OKAY TO BE CONFOUNDED

It is okay to have unanswered questions. It is okay to be confounded.

There are times when it remains valid for any Christian, at any age, to realise that they still “disbelieve for joy.” For our hearts may be still ahead of our brain. To know and admit that we do not possess all the answers is a sign of the Holy Spirit at work in us. Although we have been embraced by the warm truth of God’s love in the crucified and risen Lord, who is with us to the very end of this world, the questioning wonder remains.

I would go further and claim this: As long as I live in this mortal tent (as Paul calls our perishable bodies) I will experience times when I disbelieve for joy. My mind will always trail behind my actual experience of the love of the living Lord Jesus for me. The Christian life is a continual game of catch-up.

Nor am I alone in this. I have some worthy examples to support me. Like St John. I take encouragement from the First letter of John, in that section we read in the Epistle for today:

Beloved friends, we are God’s children right now. What we shall finally become is not yet clear, but we know that when the Son of God appears we shall be like him, as we look on him as he really is.

There are many things still not clear. Many things our minds cannot compute. But that does not cancel either our joy, or our love, or our hope in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Our hearts are ahead of our brains. Playing catch up is not evidence of a fickle faith but a clear witness to a vigorous faith.

HE GOES ON AHEAD OF YOU

In Mark’s brief account of the resurrection there are a few lines [echoed in Matthew’s Gospel] which have resonated with my own experience. The youth who was sitting in the empty tomb, “on the right side,” addresses the three women (Mary Magdalene, Salome, and Mary the mother of James) saying: “Jesus is not here. He has risen. See the empty space where his body lay. Now you go and tell Peter and his disciples that He is going on ahead of you to Galilee, there you shall see him.”

It seems to me that Christ is always going on ahead of us. Always stretching our minds. Intellectually and spiritually we gladly spend our days and years in a holy game of catch-up.

And blessed are those who recognise that they still have a long way to go.

THANKING GOD

God our Creator,

we give thanks for the ongoing miracle that brought forth life on this planet, and for the providence which continues to sustain it.

We thank you for the rich diversity of life: For all the creatures that enjoy the sunshine and those that frequent the night; for all that swims in the waters, grazes on the land, feeds among the branches of trees, and soars through the air.

We thank you especially for the unique life forms of this Australian continent: For grey kangaroos and emus, colourful parrots and vast flocks of cockatoos, platypus in the streams and koalas among the tree tops, waddling wombats and delicate bilbies on the move under starlight.

God our Saviour, we give thanks especially for your loving covenant with humanity, and for the ongoing miracle of your saving deeds as you keep faith with us.

We thank you for not leaving yourself without witness among the tribes and nations of earth, and for the spirituality that you cultivated among the indigenous people of this land.

We thank you for your special choosing of the Jewish people to be your servants and for the mighty acts of liberation you did among them.

Above everything else we give thanks for the words and deeds, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, in whom salvation is made complete: His is the beauty that opens our eyes, the truth that sets us free, the love that enlarges our compassion, the Cross that saves the lost, and the joy that fills and overflows our being.

God our imminent Friend, we give thanks for the intimate way you choose to stay close to us, your Spirit never tiring or sleeping by day or by night: We thank you for the rebirth you give to decadent lives, for your gift of the church community, for the way you nurture and counsel us, goad, guide and govern us, empower and enlarge our gifts, and bless our humble service with fruits we did not think possible.

Three-person’d God, we thank you that your final purposes are more lovely than anything as yet seen: That in this life and beyond it you have things in store for us far more beautiful than human mind has ever dreamed, and that when Jesus finally appears in all his glory, we shall become as he is.

Therefore with angels and archangels............

Now unto him who is able to keep.......

REACHING OUT

Loving God, Friend of the earth, you are forever immortal wisdom and compassion; we pray for a larger cultivation of these qualities among people of all races and beliefs.

In your mercy, loving God,