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CHILDREN'S EDUCATION |
SERMONS The
Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost By David Christian Most of you probably know of the "Left Behind" series of books, or the movie, or the comic books; or at least you have heard the name. If you haven't, they are a series of popular books that claim to describe life for those left behind in this world after the Rapture. The stories are fiction. But their basic, underlying assumptions of what the future will be like are firmly believed by the authors and by many, many Christians. Some of you may not be familiar with the Rapture. It is a term used for the belief that, at the return of Christ true believers will be taken bodily up into heaven to be with him. This understanding is based on interpretation of the book of Revelation and of certain writings of Paul. This is not the first time books have been written on this topic. Indeed it is one that has surfaced over and over again in the last century. Some believers have even predicted the date of the Rapture and sold all their belongings, only to be disappointed when the date past and they were still earthbound. Such interest in prophesy and the future reveals a common human trait. We all want to know what will happen. We want the assurance of knowing in the future where we will be and what we will be doing. We are curious to know what things will be like through the rest of our lives on this earth and then in the life to come. I think that this curiosity-this desire-is rooted in our need for security. The uncertainty of our lives is a source of anxiety. One way to remove that anxiety is to remove the uncertainty. If we know what will happen-particularly if it will be good-then we do not have to be anxious. It is this curiosity that lies behind the question that the Sadducees pose to Jesus in today's gospel: "If a woman has more than one husband, to whom will she be married in the resurrection?" Now the truth is that, as the Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection, this is a trick question, a question intended to trip Jesus up. But Jesus takes the question seriously, and he responds to it seriously. Yet he does not give the kind of answer one might expect. Rather than trying to determine whose wife this woman would be, he tells the Sadducees that their premise is wrong. They are assuming that the life to come will be just as this life. They are trying to predict what the resurrection will be like, and how we will relate to each other in such a life. Jesus tells them that eternal life, life spent in the presence of God, will be quite different from the life that we experience on this earth. The ways in which we relate to each other in this life will be altered. We cannot say exactly what they will be like. But they will rest primarily in our relationship with God. That is our certainty and that is our security. That our future rests with God. The Christian faith is not about predicting the future. Holy Scripture is not a guidebook to what will come, a secret code book to be deciphered. Christ himself says, "About the day or hour [of the coming of the Son of Man] no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Rather, Holy Scripture is the record of God's revelation of himself to his people, and a source for God's continuing self-revelation. Through the words of Holy Scripture and through God's incarnation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God reveals himself as a God of love. Our security as Christians lies not in our ability to foresee the future. Our security as Christians lies in the fact that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." That is all the security that we have. And all the security that we need.
Proper
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