April 17, 2022 Easter Luke 24:1-12

There are many four-letter-words in the English language that we’re not supposed to day. One that seems to trip us up in particular is the word “dead”; or its five-letter companion, “death”.

Scroll through the obituaries and see how often dead and death appear! You’ll read that someone “passed”, as if they’ve managed to get a high enough grade on a particularly difficult math test; or as if they’ve passed through an airport. Also frequently is that someone has “passed away”. Think about that for a second. Does that even mean anything at all? Passed away…?

Theologian Peter Marty asks, “Can’t we be more straightforward about the two bookends of life? We’re born. We die.”

Jesus overcame death and the grave. On Easter morning we do not proclaim, “Passed away has been swallowed up in victory.” Where, O passed away, is your victory? Where O passed away is your sting?”

Do you realize how absolutely absurd the phrase, “passed away,” is?

And yet we will use it to dance around the four letter words of “died” and “dead”, and their companion “death”. But those are the words that actually have power.

St. Paul had no fear of words when he wrote to the Corinthians, “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)

Call the thing by its name. Let it be true. And then let God have the final word.

What does “passed away” mean? It makes it sound like we journey from one life to the next.

Ah, that may very well be how you think; to think that eternal life is just an extension of this one. But I wish to disabuse you of such foolishness.

Think about it. Do you really want eternal life just to be an extension of this one? Do you hope that in eternal life it will be the same, just without the hardships, going from one fun thing to the next forever and ever?

Let me tell you something. You will get bored with it. I guarantee you. If you think that heaven will be like being on a sunny beach forever and ever and ever, you will get bored with it. Doesn’t everything become boring after a while? How many times have you wanted something in life, and wanted it really really badly, and worked hard for it, and eventually you got it. And indeed it was fun for a while, but sooner or later it gets boring. You want something else.

Many people love going to the Disney theme parks. They can make for a fabulous vacation. But there’s no way even Disney could create something so magical that it would satisfy us forever. It just can’t.

Entertainment, like theme parks and movies and concerts, are really only fun because they are a break from work. If you didn’t have to work even the things that are entertaining would cease being fun. And do you really think heaven involves jobs and burdens.

We will get bored. We will get restless.

You cannot pass away out of this life and into a better continuation of it that will keep you joyful forever.

You have to die.

Dead, died, death. These are truths.

I like the way St. Paul puts it to the Corinthians. (I usually insist on only using literal translations of the scripture in worship, but I like the paraphrase Eugene Peterson created which we read earlier.) Paul writes:

Some skeptic is sure to ask, "Show me how resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this 'resurrection body' look like?" If you look at this question closely, you realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing. We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a "dead" seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don't look anything alike. The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.

This image of planting a dead seed and raising a live plant is a mere sketch at best, but perhaps it will help in approaching the mystery of the resurrection body - but only if you keep in mind that when we're raised, we're raised for good, alive forever! The corpse that's planted is no beauty, but when it's raised, it's glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural - same seed, same body, but what a difference from when it goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised up in spiritual immortality!



You have to die, truly die, before God can bring about the resurrected body. You do not pass away.

Jesus also used seed imagery. In John 12:24 he says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Perhaps think of all of this life as a seed. In the same way a seed has all the genetics necessary to grow a full plant, so you now do have all of who you are. And yet it is potential that is not at all fully activated. You have to die first. Then God can bring about resurrection.

Death is ultimate loss. It is ultimate failure. No matter how successful you are in life, or how smart you are, or how much you produce, you will ultimately end up a complete and total failure. This is true. Yet something in that total loss is what God needs to grow us into our full potential.

I get frustrated when people talk about someone “going to heaven.” I understand the idea. But it assumes it is just a passing away off this earth into something else; like it’s automatic. It is all tame, controlled, and within human thinking.

But death and resurrection are a bigger and more powerful thing entirely.

We see hints of that in the scriptures. It’s ironic to me that Jesus is the main character in the gospel of Luke, which we’ve been reading from all year. And his resurrection is the big triumph. Yet Jesus doesn’t show up at all in our gospel reading! It’s reading a story where the main character is triumphant but isn’t present!

Next week though in our gospel reading we will indeed encounter the risen Christ. The other gospels have resurrection appearances too. And if you know them well you know that Jesus is indeed real. He can be seen. He talks. He eats. He lets people touch him. But he also comes and goes through locked rooms. He appears and disappears. His resurrected body is not a resuscitated corpse. It is the same yet entirely different.

What and how is a mystery. We will never understand it this side of death. What we do know is that in eternal life we do not lose our sense of selfhood, yet somehow we are spectacularly more of what we already are.

Death is an unknown. It makes sense that we fear the unknown. But you will die.

You were born. You will die. Guaranteed. These are the bookends of life.

Resurrection life will be unbelievable. I wish I could preach about it. But I can’t. All I can say is that it will be beyond what our current imagination can ever come up with. That is an incredible hope, and incredible promise. And it is true.

And so I speak to the promise, which gives us hope. And it gives us a perspective on our lives today. This world and this life is important. Embrace it and engage it fully. The fact that God came in the form of Jesus, and that God lived a lifetime in our shoes, and that Jesus died so that all may be reconciled to God is theological testament to how important this world and this life is. But also do everything from the perspective of eternity. That will guide you well every moment of every day.

When the day arrives for us to shutter our eyes for a final time and breathe our last, what will be said? Those who have confidence in God’s power to give life to the dead only need these words: Our loved one died in faith, like Jesus. And like Jesus, they will be raised to eternal life.