Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 25, 2010–Easter V
Acts 9:36-43; Revelation 7:9-17

Acts 9:36-43 · Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

Revelation 7:9-17 · After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

I. BEGINNING

A few years ago, a major airline–I won’t say which one, let’s just say they flew out of the southwest–started one of the more brilliant ad campaigns on television. The commercial always featured some really embarrassing situation: a frustrated couple, unable to open their car attempt to throw a brick through the driver’s window, only to stopped by the car’s owner and discover their identical car parked a few spots away; two men playing a video game hurl the remote through their friend’s new flat screen TV, which falls through the glass table beneath it; a woman sneezes and ruins a museum curator’s sand painting; a woman with something in her eye runs into the restroom only to discover she has gone into the men’s room. Each ad ends with the words “Want to Get Away?” and then lists an inexpensive fare that the airline offers.

It’s brilliant not just because it is funny, but because it taps into a very common human desire to escape something unpleasant. We all know the feeling of being in the midst of a difficult situation and wanting to be whisked away somewhere else.

Of course that emotion is only amplified in times of danger. That’s why it works so well in films. Whether it’s the hero riding in on a horse to rescue the damsel in distress by snatching her up, Indiana Jones swimming to the seaplane as the angry horde of Amazon tribesmen chase after him, or the ever familiar Scotty using the transporter to beam up Captain Kirk from the exploding ship/planet at the last minute. It’s satisfying and we feel the great need and relax at the satisfying conclusion.

II. THE GREAT ESCAPE

But I have to say, no one has come up with a better “Beam me up, Scotty” idea than the 19 th century evangelist John Nelson Darby, who articulated the modern idea of the Rapture. According to this fairly novel idea in Christian thought, Jesus will return twice at the end of history. The first time will be to rapture–which is Latin for “snatch up”–the faithful Christians and take them to heaven. Everyone else who is “left behind” will undergo the great Tribulation and suffering as the world goes to hell in a handbasket. The anti-Christ will begin his domination of the world and there will be a period of great suffering that the Christians will be magically rescued from.

Now, there is much to criticize about the idea of the Rapture. One could point out that there is very little Biblical evidence for such a belief, and the one verse that is often quoted to support it is usually misinterpreted and misunderstood. (Paul’s verse about “meeting Jesus in the air” is properly understood to mean that those who meet Jesus will then turn around and come with Jesus to earth.) One could point out that it’s a pretty strange idea of compassion that God has to whisk away all the Christians and leave buses and cars without drivers, airplanes without pilots, trains without conductors. Basically, the rescue of the Christians will leave a trail of calamity and destruction in its wake. One could also point to the relatively recent theological history of this idea–it comes from the 19 th Century and does not have a long history in Christian thought.

But this idea seems to be on the rise. Perhaps it is due to the influence of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ very popular Left Behindseries that imagines the adventures in the post-Rapture world. But perhaps this idea is gaining traction because our optimism about the world is not very high.

There are currently dozens of wars taking place on earth right now. There is systematic oppression in countries around the globe. There are perhaps as many as 42 million displaced persons and refugees around the world. [1] There is rising poverty, environmental degradation, increasing economic and political strife. A breakdown in community and civility. ATM fees keep going up. The world is just getting worse and worse. In fact, John Darby, the author of the Rapture, wrote “I believe from Scripture that the ruin is without remedy”. Believers should expect only “a progress of evil”. [2]

Against that background and that understanding, perhaps it is understandable that people’s hope should be in rescue from the perils of the world. There is no hope for its salvation, all that can be expected is a further deepening crisis, more brokenness, more destruction. All we can put our hope in is that God will fire up the heavenly transporter and beam us up, rescuing us from this world that’s about to explode.

III. THE MEANING OF RESURRECTION

The only problem with that is that it has little to do with the heart of the Christian proclamation for nearly 2,000 years. The heart of the Christian proclamation is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We announce our Easter proclamation with the words: “Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!” But sometimes we overlook what that proclamation really means, what its implications are for us.

Sure, we talk a lot about how Christ’s victory over death means that we do not need to fear death. That brokenness and suffering, death and decay do not have the final word. That wholeness and joy, life and eternity do. And all of that is true. But there is more to it–for we proclaim Christ resurrected, not simply appearing as a ghost to his disciples saying, “Don’t worry–there is life after death!” And Resurrection has theological consequence.

The ancient Israelites did not believe in life after death, per se. When you read the oldest portions of the Bible, you’ll see that death is described matter-of-factly: people are born, they live, they die. That was basically it. Sometimes, they would describe a place called Sheol, the Pit, the realm of the dead deep in the Earth: a shadowy afterlife in which some shade of the person continued on, but not the whole person, certainly not in any way to be in communion with God. As the Psalmist writes: “For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?” (Psalms 6:5)

But the ancient Israelites came to understand that in order for God to be God, in order for God’s justice, love, and mercy to be truly fulfilled, there must be something beyond this life. There must be a time when God’s victory is assured, when the brokenness of the world is conquered, when death itself is conquered. But the Jews did not believe that body and soul were separate. They were one and the same. We were not–as the Greeks believed–immortal souls inhabiting bodies of flesh, we were embodied creatures, beloved by God. Therefore, whatever life we would have beyond this life would not be on some distant astral plane as a disembodied spirit; the life we would have beyond this life would be embodied. There would be a Resurrection of the Dead, when God would give new embodied life to those who have died and death would be conquered.

This is what Jesus’ resurrection means: it is not some parlor trick that Jesus is able to accomplish. The resurrection of Jesus is not for Jesus alone. The resurrection of Jesus is the vindication of our hope for our own resurrection.

IV. WIPING AWAY EVERY TEAR

This is what is going on in the book of Revelation, when John the Divine has his vision of God’s reign in triumph. He writes:

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

“There was a great multitude that no one could count…” The resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event. It is, as Paul refers to it, the “first fruits” of the harvest that will include us all. We all will be raised to new embodied life. And the hopes for God’s victory over the brokenness of the world are vindicated in this vision. As the elder in John’s vision says:

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Christ’s resurrection from the dead gives us the hope that this day will come, when the brokenness of the world itself will be vanquished, when death and sorrow itself will be conquered.

But the important part that we often overlook is that this happens here. God does not abandon the creation. We are not rescued from it and taken to some other plane of existence. We are raised to new life in the creation. God redeems and restores the world. As we read later in the book of Revelation, the holy city, the new Jerusalem comes to earth, and we are told, “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and God God’s self will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes…” (Rev. 21:3-4).

The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, that he witnessed to with his life and ministry, and in which we have hope because of Jesus’ resurrection does not happen on some other plane of existence. It happens here.

And that changes everything.

For it means that our lives here have meaning. These ordinary material existences that we share have meaning because they matter to God. God’s aim is not to free us from this life, but to redeem this life, to renew it and restore it. Our lives matter.

It means our bodies matter. It means that our physical health and well-being matters. It means that bodily integrity matters. It means that we should not allow abuse, or degradation, or any other ill-treatment of our physical being. In Star Wars, Yoda says, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” Yoda was a great Jedi master, but he makes a lousy Christian theologian. Because Resurrection means our physical being matters.

It means that this world matters. The birds, trees, plants, fish, and animals, all matter. St. Francis preached to the birds saying that the Gospel was for them, too. He was right. God does not intend to abandon them to decay. But God will restore the entirety of the Creation. In the meantime, we affirm God’s loving intention by caring for the very creation God himself will redeem.

As many of you know, I like to take road trips for my vacations. I love staying in hotels. Every night you get a brand new clean room. It’s like having a disposable house. You just leave it in the morning and the next night you get a new one. But the creation is not our disposable house. We are not just passing through. This is our home. This is the place that God made, this is the place Christ came to. This is the place where Christ rose again. This is the place Christ will return to. This is the place where the Kingdom will come. We are not strangers in a strange land–we are of this place. It is God’s place.

V. END

We are called not to abandon the world. Not to tolerate its brokenness. Not to look at the devastation of the world as a sign of the end, an assurance that we will be getting out of here soon. The idea that we’ll be getting out of here soon, can lead us to stop caring about the world and its problems. As New Testament scholar and Wesley Seminary professor Craig Hill writes: “The expectation of deteriorating conditions prior to the soon-approaching rapture is morally corrosive, encouraging pessimism, fatalism, and the forsaking of political responsibility.” [3]

And it is not the Gospel. The Good News is not that we are escaping. The Good News is that the world we love is in the process of being redeemed.

The world is a broken place. It is a hurting place. We look around and see evidence of that all the time. It’s tempting to look around and feel the problems of the world are too great, perhaps all we can hope for is rescue. All we can hope for is to get away at long last.

But our hope comes not in knowing that some day we will escape–it comes in knowing that no matter what occurs in life, God is with us in it. For we proclaim faith in a God who comes to us–in burning bush, in fiery pillar and cloud, in Jesus, and in the Spirit. The centerpiece of the Christian proclamation is of a God of solidarity, not of abandonment.

Because Jesus’ resurrection is not an isolated event designed solely to convince us that Jesus is special. It is the vindication of our hope, a great hope that all the brokenness of the world itself will be undone.

And so we can be active in that world, living lives of justice, lives of compassion, lives of grace. Lives that reflect that hope for the world: a world that God has not abandoned, a world that God continues to love, a world that God will redeem, and a world in which God will “wipe away every tear.”

Notes
[1] http://www.unhcr.org/4a2fd52412d.html
[2] http://www.ingodstime.com/images/Excerpt%20Appendix.htm
[3] Ibid.