Hilton Head Island, SC – November 24, 2024
The Chapel Without Walls
I Corinthians 15:1-8; 12-19
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text - If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. - I Cor. 15:19 (RSV)
There is one thing, and one thing only, which explains the origin and existence of the Christian religion from its very beginning. It came into being not because of the life or teachings or miracles of Jesus, as impressive as they are. The one factor that originally propelled Christianity into being after the crucifixion was the unshakeable conviction of the earliest Christians that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the sine qua non, the "without which there is nothing," of Christianity.
The German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, not to be confused with the composer and musician of the same name, said, very sardonically but also sagaciously, "It wasn't the morality of the Sermon on the Mount which enabled Christianity to conquer Roman paganism, but the belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead. In an age when Roman senators vied to see who could get the most blood of a steer on their togas - thinking that would prevent death - Christianity was in competition for eternal life, not morality."
Ernst Bloch meant to take a potshot at Christianity by saying that, but he unintentionally hit the nail on the head. The most distinctive doctrine of Christianity, and perhaps its only truly unique belief, is that not only was Jesus raised from the dead, but so shall we be as well. In other words, the promise of eternity is at the very heart of the Christian Gospel. The Good News, as the Gospel of John states it, is simply this: though we die, yet shall we live --- forever! If we are Christians, we are supposed to believe that we shall be with God in heaven in eternity, whatever the words "God, heaven, and eternity" actually mean. In this sermon I am not going to try to define or describe any of those three words, but I most definitely am going to express my own faith that it is true that all of us are going to be with God in heaven in eternity.
There is a potential -- and for many people, an actual -- downside to a belief in the resurrection from the dead. Simply stated, it is that we shall have to die in the first place to see whether there is any validity to this primary and singularly Christian conviction in the second place. In the Rule for his religious order, St. Benedict told his monks, "Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die." I agree with the sixth-century founder of the oldest monastic order in Roman Catholicism. It is imperative for each of us continually to remind ourselves that we shall die. Death is the only certainty all of us shall share in this life. Half of us are female, half male, some are rich, some poor, some are black or white or tall or short or intelligent or cerebrally challenged. Some are Peruvians, some Australians, some Chinese, some Germans, some Nigerians, some Americans. Regardless of all those individual realities, all of us are going to die. And, to remind you of an even more sober truth, nearly all of the people who have ever lived have already died. Our turn is coming; we just don’t know when.
Christians have historically believed that, at a minimum, at least the Christians shall be raised from the dead. By now, anybody in this congregation who has listened to me preach over a fairly long period of time knows that, rightly or wrongly, I believe everybody will be raised to eternal life, whether or not they are Christians or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or believers in God or atheists or agnostics or good or bad or indifferent or mere bumps on the earthly log of life. Everybody shall be with God forever in heaven, whatever, whenever, and wherever heaven is. Frankly, I hardly ever cogitate about it, because I figure heaven is solely spiritual, and I don’t really know what that means, either. It is a fruitless and ultimately frustrating mental and spiritual exercise to waste time thinking about it. For us to try to imagine heaven is like a snail or an orangutan trying to imagine the entire universe: you might commend them forftrying, but in the end you know they will never complete what they tried to do.
Nonetheless, though I am completely incapable of explaining what, when, or where heaven shall be, I can tell you with great conviction why it shall be. God wants us to be with Him in eternity. He did not create us for life in temporality only to lose us for life in eternity. Because God is eternal, He wants His children to be eternal. And because God is our Father and because all of us are His children, regardless of who we are or what we have or have not done, His love shall lead us from this life to the next. Perhaps if you or I were God, we wouldn't be so gracious. For that very reason, it is a good thing none of us is God, or we'd all be sunk, because we are all sinkworthy.
Life is Eternity 101. It starts here, but it doesn’t end here. It is Beginning Eternity, Introductory Immortality, Preliminary Infinity, Pre-Resurrection Resurrection. We are not there yet, but we are on the way. Furthermore, as Professor Harold Hill said in Music Man, as sure as God made little green apples, we who are now living shall live forever! We don't know with any precision what that means, because in this life we can't know it, but it is coming; Easter and faith and the risen Christ convince us that it is coming!
Jean Amery was a pessimistic philosopher who eventually took his own life. In his book called On Aging, Amery wrote, "For the aging, the autumn of life is the last autumn and therefore no autumn at all." Commenting on Amery in a New Republic article, Alan Wolfe said, "Time loses its cyclical sense as the person becomes older. Every moment, even those of great joy, counts against us, for it is one more tick off a clock that cannot be reversed. Aging mocks our intellectuality, our sense that we can make rational meaning out of life."
That's a regular load of laughs, isn't it! Especially if you are noticeably aging. Alan Wolfe goes on with his joyous jottings, "All that is left for the aging is to think about death. But this takes no special abilities. The genius and the imbecile, unequal in everything else, are equal in this: neither knows what extinction will be like. It is better to contemplate dying than death, for one takes place in the present and can be understood, and the other has no time, present or future, and it is literally unknowable."
Alan Wolfe and Jean Amery are correct, except, I believe, in one supposition: it is the notion of death as extinction. As it is possible that we shall be resurrected, it is also possible that personal extinction will be our final destination. Because we trust that Jesus was resurrected (even if we can’t agree exactly on what that means),we are led to believe that we shall not be extinguished, at least not ultimately. Death is the doorway to eternity It is the only doorway! There is no other route for getting there!
Emily Dickenson expressed it so simply, and so beautifully.
Because I could not stop for Death, We paused before a house that seemed
He kindly stopped for me; A swelling of the ground;
The carriage held but just ourselves The roof was scarcely visible,
And immortality. The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
Or there is that other wonderful poet, William Wordsworth, and that other exquisite poem, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood."
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore -
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more....
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
God is our home, Christian people; God is! From Him we came in our beginning, and to Him shall we go at our end But the end is not the end! It is not even, as Winston Churchill said in a very different context, the beginning of the end; although, as Churchill also said, it is the end of the beginning. The doorway awaits us, death longs to grant us its incomparable passage, and through it alone may we enter into eternity!
Wordsworth again:
Then sing, ye birds! sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
We must look through death. We must see beyond it. It seems so final to us, so ultimate. But it is neither final nor ultimate; only God is ultimate; in the end, only He is final.
The fifteenth chapter of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians is the peerless apostle's summary of what the resurrection is all about. It is the only chapter in the entire Bible whose sole subject is death and resurrection. It is an example of soaring prose, of words which take glorious flight, simply by the majesty of the subject of which Paul so eloquently spoke.
In the early part of this Summa Theologica of eternity, Paul said, "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?" It was a good question, an excellent question. For you see, most of the early Christians were Jews, and among Jews there was then no widespread belief in resurrection or eternal life. Some of the Greeks believed in it, but it was too ephemeral, too Elysian-Field-ian, too human an interpretation of eternal life with God and the essence of divinity. "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."
Once again, Emily:
The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth, ---
The sweeping up the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Eternity has already begun, because a man who died on a cross was raised by God from the tomb in which his lifeless body was sealed! I don't know how Jesus was raised any more than I know how we will be raised, but I firmly believe we will be raised! The longer time goes on, the more we move away from temporality and toward eternity! We have a heavenly Father who will not let any of us go - - - ever! In God we trust! In Him we hope! With Him shall we live ----------- FOREVER!
So, as Robert Browning said, "Grow old along with me!/ The best is yet to be." Or as Al Jolson said, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Eternity is just around the corner, however close or far any of us is from that turn in the road. But praise be to God, we are all going to get there!