Pastor Tommy Thompson
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Advent 1B / Nov 28 2010
Happy New Year! ... Advent is here; it has intruded into our ordinary time like an unexpected and extravagant gift left at our door step. Whether we are ready or not...whether we were expecting it or not, Advent it is here with its message of joyful newness and transformation.
This really is what Advent is all about: newness and transformation--joy! God’s coming is not something to run from but something to prepare for --something to run to...like that time I observed a husband and wife running toward each other at an airport. The husband had obviously been away for a while...when their eyes met, there was nothing stopping their eventual embrace. This is what God’s coming to us is like...running towards one another for that ultimate, eternal embrace.
The new year begins with this kinda of joyful end-time perspective.
And when we speak of end we don’t mean “end” like the “end” of a movie, as if it is over with no sequel, or the end of a race, or even worse, the end of a good relationship. The end Advent longs for and celebrates is the “end” in the sense of the “goal” or the “fulfillment.” Truly, this end is a beginning...a new beginning. This new beginning is the focal point of the prophet’s Advent proclamation.
In the midst of destruction and despair, Isaiah sees the Word of the Lord. In ancient Israel words were more than those sounds that come forth from the mouths of human beings for the sake of communication. In ancient times, it was understood that words create worlds. They believed that the Word of God created this world. Now the prophet Isaiah gets to see the Word creating a new world which is the redemption of the current one.
The Word Isaiah sees is a promise. “In the days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.”
What a word for God’s people who are currently reaping the consequences of their sin. Where all that is deserved is wrath, a river of mercy flows! God will, with our without His covenant partner, draw the nations to Himself. He will not give up on His beloved creation. He is going to act.
Note that what is seen by Isaiah in this vision is not the result of time progressing into some sort of utopia brought about by all the right social programs. No, what Isaiah sees here is God’s time intruding in our time like Advent into ordinary time, like the joy of a baby intruding into our lives even if we’re not quite ready for her. What Isaiah sees is the fulfillment of God’s invitation to Abraham except God is fulfilling the role Himself.
When God’s time intrudes into our time, the nations will stream to the house of the Lord...they will come seeking instruction in the ways of God...wanting to walk in the paths God has cleared for us to walk in -- the paths that lead to life and life more abundantly.
When God’s time intrudes into human history, God will teach and God will instruct.
When God’s time intrudes into human history, God will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. I love this picture. Many have taught us that God’s judgment is like a once and done decision. “you’re in; you’re out.” “you’re right; and you’re wrong.” “you’re innocent; and you’re guilty.” But that’s not the picture Isaiah sees. Rather, God himself becomes arbitrator. God brings the nations together, like an effective United Nations, and through divine diplomacy, settles matters between the nations equitably, without recourse to violence, force, or war.
God’s arbitration is so wise, so patient, so trust-worthy, it becomes more than ideal...His words create worlds. By God’s counsel, the nations chose to beat their weapons intended for destruction into instruments meant to cultivate life. The instruments of war are transformed into farm equipment. Swords are beaten into plowshares...spears into pruning hooks.
In this vision, the nations no longer learn war...instead all investments have been made into the account of world peace.
Note here that the vision anticipates difference and not uniformity. Nations are coming together in God and making compromises for the sake of unity. The future hope announced by the prophet Isaiah is a world of difference unified; Nations taking the necessary steps to come together without the intimidation of swords, guns, or bombs. True peace brought about by God’s time intruding in human history.
Once Isaiah reveals the new world God’s Word has called forth into existence, he gives the people of God the opportunity to take the first steps. “Come...let us walk in the light of the Lord!” In other words, “Okay, people of God, the promise of God, the hope of the world, has been revealed to us. Let us now take the first steps on the path that all the nations will tread one day....let us actualize hope through obedience!”
Isaiah’s vision of the world renewed through God’s Word reveals God as the primary actor. God fulfills Israel’s role as the One who draws the nations to the light of God’s presence. God becomes teacher/instructor and God is revealed as the ultimate arbitrator and judge. The outcome is life-giving...not widespread wrath poured out upon the nations.
For Israel, this is a future hope. All they know is that this will become reality “in the days to come.” It is from God; it is as good as certain. But Israel does not get to know when or even how God will do this.
Many years passed by...nations still waging war and learning war...all attempts of diplomacy seem to fail...there seems to be as many swords as plowshares in the world. Will it ever come to fruition?
Then it happens...God truly intrudes in the middle of human history when and where we least expect. God becomes Israel, literally. He takes upon Himself the flesh and blood of the people of Israel by being born into the world through Mary’s life-giving womb. And as soon as the Word takes on flesh, the nations stream, as the light of the star leads those sages from the East.
He grows and even at a young age the Word of the Lord goes forth from Jerusalem as he teaches the teachers in the house of the Lord. As he grows, the eloquence of His words create new worlds for humanity and all of creation.
And Jesus reveals to us God’s judgment and arbitration. He judges evil -- he takes it head on. It throws it’s worst at him. He takes it, and in His resurrection, His love conquers it.
He arbitrates beautifully. He doesn’t deny evil; he names it. He embraces the offender while excluding the offenders sin. He embraces the offended while healing the offended's hurt. In Him true reconciliation occurs. The reconciliation of God and humankind which leads to the reconciliation of man and man, man and woman, woman and creature, and even creature and creature.
It came unexpectedly. We didn’t realize the depth of God’s time. We might have expected God to come and bring the totality of Isaiah’s vision to fruition in seconds, minutes, days, or at most a couple of years. But God’s time intruded and continues to intrude. It has intermingled with human history and is hear to stay, bringing the world closer and closer to that day when there will be no more war, suffering, pain, or death. Truly salvation is nearer to us today than when we first became believers!
God’s time has been inaugurated in the midst of human history. The down payment of the future world has been paid. Christ is risen from the dead. All signs indicate that the night time is coming to a close and the dawn from on High is breaking upon us.
So Paul invites us to live already as children of the day and no longer as children of the night. With Isaiah, we are invited through obedience to actualize ultimate hope. Live the future day even now, giving the signals of the new day to the world who is being led to God’s holy mountain. Put away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, which is nothing less than the Jesus we put on in our baptism!
Why? Because like the inauguration of this new world, the fulfillment, the goal, will intrude into human history when we least expect it and where we least expect it, just like it did in Bethlehem's cave and the garden’s tomb. When it does intrude, may our lives already be in line with it...so that what is revealed is consistent with the way the church had been living all along, giving the world one ginormous “aha” moment.
That day will come, as Jesus says, like a thief in the night...or like the flood in Noah’s time.
How will the ultimate intrusion find us? Living life as usual? Going from party to party even in the season of Advent, paying no attention to the prophets call for repentance and readiness?
It is advent. We have the opportunity of a life time. We do not know when ultimate intrusion will happen. Not even Jesus Himself knows...and he is content with not knowing...content because He fully loves and trusts the Father without question. We have the opportunity to join in faithful trust...to practice spiritual disciplines that make us ready for the coming day. There hasn’t been a better day for us a community to renew our interest and faithfulness in and to the means of grace.
Let us discern together as a community how God is calling us to take more and more steps in the the path that God has cleared for us, that the nations one day might walk in our footsteps.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come! Amen.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
From Purple to White: From Fasting to Feasting
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose reign is coming to fulfillment in this world!
What a joy it is to start a new year together in our Lord. Happy New Year!
No, I haven’t gone mad! If you remember last month’s article, the church tells time differently than the rest of the world. For us, the season of Advent begins the new church year. We begin by looking back to our present through the lens of future fulfillment. This is the constant theme of advent and its purpose. Advent means “coming.” Advent is the time when the church anticipates and expects the “Coming of Jesus Christ” to bring redemption to consummation. Some call this the “second coming” and others the “re-appearing” of Christ.
I believe Advent is the most difficult season of the year for Christians in the United States, where capital-consumerism has claimed the Christian feast of Christmas, stretched it out over two or more months, and changed its name to the “holiday season.” Somewhere along the way, much of the protestant church has ceased keeping holy time and, instead, has been shaped by the consumerist transformation of our feast into a civil holiday. Thus, rather than slowing down with the start of the new year at Advent, the church joins the world in the hustle and bustle of celebrating what it now calls the “holiday season.”
I wonder what would happen in our parishes if we decided to live more fully in the holy time Christ has opened for us? What if we slowed down, quieted ourselves, fasted from the world’s ‘holiday’ cheer, and actively waited for the coming of Christ as the season of Advent calls the people of God?
The most important and festive celebrations and events in life are followed by seasons of preparation. Sure, we could forego the courting and the period of engagement and skip right ahead to the wedding, but there’s a good chance that the relationship will be revealed as superficial, and the marriage will not last.
More important even than the wedding together of a man and a woman is the wedding together of heaven and earth through Jesus Christ. The bride, the church, must take her time getting to know her groom, Jesus Christ. We must listen to him, align our lives with His life, and live according to the rhythm of His heart-beat.
When we truly fast, we truly feast. When we truly prepare, goals come to fruition beautifully. For those who have truly courted and have been through that season of engagement, the wedding is such a joyous and festive occasion! When Christmas arrives with our Christmas eve service, we will celebrate and feast more than even those who have rightly prepared for marriage. And our celebration will continue from December 25 through the twelve days of Christmas and on into the festive season of Epiphany where we celebrate the revelation of God in Christ to all the world. Even after the world gets back to business as usual, burnt out from it’s two plus months of holiday cheer, the sound of the true God’s praises will resound from the church, inviting the world into something different and actually fulfilling.
God invites us to the disciplined life where we wait for the coming of the Lord. Maybe we could call this time house-cleaning, allowing the Holy Spirit to put the house of our lives in order for the coming of our Christ in final victory. Could we, by the Spirit’s power, live in advent with the church this year? Will we wait to put up the Christmas decorations? Will we fast from the throwing of yet another holiday cheer party?
It is December and there is more advent in December than Christmas. I will fast from seasons greetings; I will wait to give you festive greetings in the January issue when we are in the midst of the twelve days of feasting, celebrating the glory of the incarnation of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world.
May the Holy Spirit strengthen us to stand firm in Christ even when our stand makes us peculiar and unpopular.
Christ’s is Coming,
Pastor Tommy
What a joy it is to start a new year together in our Lord. Happy New Year!
No, I haven’t gone mad! If you remember last month’s article, the church tells time differently than the rest of the world. For us, the season of Advent begins the new church year. We begin by looking back to our present through the lens of future fulfillment. This is the constant theme of advent and its purpose. Advent means “coming.” Advent is the time when the church anticipates and expects the “Coming of Jesus Christ” to bring redemption to consummation. Some call this the “second coming” and others the “re-appearing” of Christ.
I believe Advent is the most difficult season of the year for Christians in the United States, where capital-consumerism has claimed the Christian feast of Christmas, stretched it out over two or more months, and changed its name to the “holiday season.” Somewhere along the way, much of the protestant church has ceased keeping holy time and, instead, has been shaped by the consumerist transformation of our feast into a civil holiday. Thus, rather than slowing down with the start of the new year at Advent, the church joins the world in the hustle and bustle of celebrating what it now calls the “holiday season.”
I wonder what would happen in our parishes if we decided to live more fully in the holy time Christ has opened for us? What if we slowed down, quieted ourselves, fasted from the world’s ‘holiday’ cheer, and actively waited for the coming of Christ as the season of Advent calls the people of God?
The most important and festive celebrations and events in life are followed by seasons of preparation. Sure, we could forego the courting and the period of engagement and skip right ahead to the wedding, but there’s a good chance that the relationship will be revealed as superficial, and the marriage will not last.
More important even than the wedding together of a man and a woman is the wedding together of heaven and earth through Jesus Christ. The bride, the church, must take her time getting to know her groom, Jesus Christ. We must listen to him, align our lives with His life, and live according to the rhythm of His heart-beat.
When we truly fast, we truly feast. When we truly prepare, goals come to fruition beautifully. For those who have truly courted and have been through that season of engagement, the wedding is such a joyous and festive occasion! When Christmas arrives with our Christmas eve service, we will celebrate and feast more than even those who have rightly prepared for marriage. And our celebration will continue from December 25 through the twelve days of Christmas and on into the festive season of Epiphany where we celebrate the revelation of God in Christ to all the world. Even after the world gets back to business as usual, burnt out from it’s two plus months of holiday cheer, the sound of the true God’s praises will resound from the church, inviting the world into something different and actually fulfilling.
God invites us to the disciplined life where we wait for the coming of the Lord. Maybe we could call this time house-cleaning, allowing the Holy Spirit to put the house of our lives in order for the coming of our Christ in final victory. Could we, by the Spirit’s power, live in advent with the church this year? Will we wait to put up the Christmas decorations? Will we fast from the throwing of yet another holiday cheer party?
It is December and there is more advent in December than Christmas. I will fast from seasons greetings; I will wait to give you festive greetings in the January issue when we are in the midst of the twelve days of feasting, celebrating the glory of the incarnation of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world.
May the Holy Spirit strengthen us to stand firm in Christ even when our stand makes us peculiar and unpopular.
Christ’s is Coming,
Pastor Tommy
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Resurrection -- The REAL Christian Hope
Tommy Thompson
24th Sunday after Pentecost
7 November 2010
“Resurrection--the REAL Christian Hope”
Joel Stein of the New York Times said, “Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They're basically getting by because they only have to be better than Hell.” silence...let em sit with that for a bit...
Have you ever stopped to think about our future destiny? Do you avoid the issue altogether so that, along with it, you might avoid the embarrassment of having to discuss things that seem so foreign?
Just what is the Christian’s ultimate hope?
For many years, many of us have sang songs that make a claim as to the what of Christian hope, like: “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be...” or “When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart...” or “I’ll fly away oh glory, I’ll fly away...” and yet another, “then he’ll call me some day to my home far away, where his glory forever I’ll share.”
Do you hear the consistent theme of these songs? They all make the claim that the future hope is heaven and that heaven is not here but somewhere far away. They all seem to suggest that the future hope of Christians is to escape or fly away from the world wherein we live.
If we were to continue exploring literature and music about heaven, we’d be able to add other themes to the list as well. Such as heaven is a place of disembodied spiritual bliss. In other words, the body (or physicality for that matter) is bad but the soul, or spirit, is good. Many believe the body is actually the prison of the soul or spirit and that death is good because death frees the soul from the body and allows the eternal soul to go to heaven from whence it came.
Somewhere along the way, heaven also got located. “Where is heaven?”, a child asks. Pointing to the sky, the adult says, “Up there.” Hence the association with clouds...and of course we cannot leave out the harps that come with the clouds.
You know, I wonder if this is why there is so much confusion in the church concerning Easter. I mean it just doesn’t make sense that Easter would be the most important and festive day and season of the year if the body/physicality/matter is the problem. I mean if we are meant to escape the body and enter into spiritual bliss...if the body is simply the jail cell of the soul, then why celebrate its resurrection, right?
So we sing songs about a disembodied spiritual bliss that we call heaven, yet we confess in the Nicene Creed that “we look for the resurrection of the dead” and in the Apostles Creed, that we believe in “the resurrection of the body.”
To confuse matters even more, when we read the New Testament, we hear that the Apostles main purpose was to proclaim that Jesus had risen from the dead. The resurrection is all over the New Testament, as a matter of fact. Not only is it all over the New Testament, but it was the topic of conversation in much religious debate in the first century Jewish world.
If resurrection is what we confess in the creeds, which we had long before we had a bible, and that the hope of resurrection that we confess in the creeds is all over the place in the Bible, then where did this whole idea of disembodiment and escape come from?
It certainly did not come from our story. Our story claims that God created the heavens and the earth and that God saw it is very good. If God has blessed physicality, who are we to suggest that it is evil or that we would need to escape from it?
The Bible doesn’t tell the story of how God gave up on creation in response to human sin. Instead it tells the story of how God has been working toward the creation’s healing and restoration. God has not and will not abandon his project of creation; instead he sent His Son Jesus Christ to redeem it from the evils of sin...to restore it...to beautify it...to fulfill it.
Thus, for Jesus to become human...to take upon himself our physicality...to live as one of us without sin...to give himself over to death and then overcome death through resurrection is to redeem physicality and inaugurate the renewed creation.
You see, resurrection is everything. The Triune God has not given up on us or the physical creation he spoke into existence. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is the proof of this reality! We are not called to escape the world but to receive the world as God intended when he created us in his image and likeness and made us stewards of it.
The bible names Jesus as “the first-born from the dead.” It names his resurrection as the “first-fruits” of the new creation. Both of these phrases suggest that Jesus is not the last to rise from the dead the but the first. “First-born” suggests that more siblings exist. “First-fruits” suggests that more fruits are to come.
Brothers and sisters, we are those siblings! We are that fruit! Christ has risen; therefore we too shall rise. This is the Christian hope. This is the hope of God’s world...not soul flight...not disembodied spiritual bliss up there somewhere....no, that is platonic philosophy...Resurrection is Christian faith.
This hope for resurrection goes way back...as far back as the book of Job where it is exclaimed, “My Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, who I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
Job’s professed hope is firmly grounded in faith in a good Creator who blessed that which he made. Job realizes that there is something wrong with physicality, but he doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath-water. He realizes that his skin will rot...yet he proclaims that, somehow, in his flesh, he shall see God who will stand upon the earth.
Wow! What insight the Holy Spirit gave to Job as he pulled back the curtain just enough to give him a foretaste into the future when God the Son would stand upon this earth that he created in order to redeem it! This foretaste engendered hope in a man who should want to escape as much anyone else--his life was a wreck...yet resurrection and NOT escape is what Job proclaims as he claims that even after his skin rots, he will, in his flesh, see God.
This hope in resurrection from the dead was not new to the New Testament. What was revolutionary in the New Testament wasn’t the idea of resurrection but the reality of resurrection happening in the middle of history to one man who represented all people.
This is the huge difference between the pharisees of the first century and those who believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Pharisees along with many jewish people believed that the resurrection was the hope of the world but that it would happen at the end of time. Jesus came in the middle of history and fulfilled that hope within Himself on behalf of the world. This belief is what made Christians stand out.
But why the middle of history? Why not just go ahead and complete it? I believe the bible suggests that God has invited human beings to join him in his project of creation from the very beginning by creating us in his image and likeness. It makes sense that he would also invite us to join him in his project of new creation or redemption, doesn’t it? The resurrection occurred in the middle of history that you and I might be called “children of the resurrection” as Jesus calls us in Luke 20.
Note the context of Jesus’ defense of the resurrection in Luke 20. He is speaking to the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection. The Sadducees were among the powerful elite in Jesus’ world enjoying wealth, status, and prestige within Judaean society. They didn’t believe in the resurrection... they claimed it to be a newfangled thing, invented by late prophets like Daniel. They claimed you couldn’t find it in the first five books of the bible...but “behind the smokescreens of theological argument and silly stories about women with seven husbands, they knew that the resurrection doctrine was a threat to their own position! They knew it meant that God was turning the world upside down. The Sadducees didn’t know the Bible or God’s power; that’s why they denied the resurrection and supported Rome” (Wright).
Brothers and sisters, we have tasted the future and we will taste it again in a few moments at Christ’s holy table! The Holy Spirit has opened our minds and hearts to the Bible...the baptized know God’s power. Being children of the resurrection, our call is not to live with the world as the world until we die and escape this world but “to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.” (Wright)
You see, “People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.” (Wright)
So let us sing songs of the new creation. Let us proclaim to the Joel Stein’s of the world that there is something much brighter and much more exciting than even a luxury hotel in store for those who, in faith, become children of the resurrection! We’ve got more than clouds and harps to offer! Alleluia!
So let us come to this holy table where we receive future perspective so that we might take that future out into the world that God has NOT given up on! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
24th Sunday after Pentecost
7 November 2010
“Resurrection--the REAL Christian Hope”
Joel Stein of the New York Times said, “Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They're basically getting by because they only have to be better than Hell.” silence...let em sit with that for a bit...
Have you ever stopped to think about our future destiny? Do you avoid the issue altogether so that, along with it, you might avoid the embarrassment of having to discuss things that seem so foreign?
Just what is the Christian’s ultimate hope?
For many years, many of us have sang songs that make a claim as to the what of Christian hope, like: “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be...” or “When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart...” or “I’ll fly away oh glory, I’ll fly away...” and yet another, “then he’ll call me some day to my home far away, where his glory forever I’ll share.”
Do you hear the consistent theme of these songs? They all make the claim that the future hope is heaven and that heaven is not here but somewhere far away. They all seem to suggest that the future hope of Christians is to escape or fly away from the world wherein we live.
If we were to continue exploring literature and music about heaven, we’d be able to add other themes to the list as well. Such as heaven is a place of disembodied spiritual bliss. In other words, the body (or physicality for that matter) is bad but the soul, or spirit, is good. Many believe the body is actually the prison of the soul or spirit and that death is good because death frees the soul from the body and allows the eternal soul to go to heaven from whence it came.
Somewhere along the way, heaven also got located. “Where is heaven?”, a child asks. Pointing to the sky, the adult says, “Up there.” Hence the association with clouds...and of course we cannot leave out the harps that come with the clouds.
You know, I wonder if this is why there is so much confusion in the church concerning Easter. I mean it just doesn’t make sense that Easter would be the most important and festive day and season of the year if the body/physicality/matter is the problem. I mean if we are meant to escape the body and enter into spiritual bliss...if the body is simply the jail cell of the soul, then why celebrate its resurrection, right?
So we sing songs about a disembodied spiritual bliss that we call heaven, yet we confess in the Nicene Creed that “we look for the resurrection of the dead” and in the Apostles Creed, that we believe in “the resurrection of the body.”
To confuse matters even more, when we read the New Testament, we hear that the Apostles main purpose was to proclaim that Jesus had risen from the dead. The resurrection is all over the New Testament, as a matter of fact. Not only is it all over the New Testament, but it was the topic of conversation in much religious debate in the first century Jewish world.
If resurrection is what we confess in the creeds, which we had long before we had a bible, and that the hope of resurrection that we confess in the creeds is all over the place in the Bible, then where did this whole idea of disembodiment and escape come from?
It certainly did not come from our story. Our story claims that God created the heavens and the earth and that God saw it is very good. If God has blessed physicality, who are we to suggest that it is evil or that we would need to escape from it?
The Bible doesn’t tell the story of how God gave up on creation in response to human sin. Instead it tells the story of how God has been working toward the creation’s healing and restoration. God has not and will not abandon his project of creation; instead he sent His Son Jesus Christ to redeem it from the evils of sin...to restore it...to beautify it...to fulfill it.
Thus, for Jesus to become human...to take upon himself our physicality...to live as one of us without sin...to give himself over to death and then overcome death through resurrection is to redeem physicality and inaugurate the renewed creation.
You see, resurrection is everything. The Triune God has not given up on us or the physical creation he spoke into existence. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is the proof of this reality! We are not called to escape the world but to receive the world as God intended when he created us in his image and likeness and made us stewards of it.
The bible names Jesus as “the first-born from the dead.” It names his resurrection as the “first-fruits” of the new creation. Both of these phrases suggest that Jesus is not the last to rise from the dead the but the first. “First-born” suggests that more siblings exist. “First-fruits” suggests that more fruits are to come.
Brothers and sisters, we are those siblings! We are that fruit! Christ has risen; therefore we too shall rise. This is the Christian hope. This is the hope of God’s world...not soul flight...not disembodied spiritual bliss up there somewhere....no, that is platonic philosophy...Resurrection is Christian faith.
This hope for resurrection goes way back...as far back as the book of Job where it is exclaimed, “My Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, who I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
Job’s professed hope is firmly grounded in faith in a good Creator who blessed that which he made. Job realizes that there is something wrong with physicality, but he doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath-water. He realizes that his skin will rot...yet he proclaims that, somehow, in his flesh, he shall see God who will stand upon the earth.
Wow! What insight the Holy Spirit gave to Job as he pulled back the curtain just enough to give him a foretaste into the future when God the Son would stand upon this earth that he created in order to redeem it! This foretaste engendered hope in a man who should want to escape as much anyone else--his life was a wreck...yet resurrection and NOT escape is what Job proclaims as he claims that even after his skin rots, he will, in his flesh, see God.
This hope in resurrection from the dead was not new to the New Testament. What was revolutionary in the New Testament wasn’t the idea of resurrection but the reality of resurrection happening in the middle of history to one man who represented all people.
This is the huge difference between the pharisees of the first century and those who believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Pharisees along with many jewish people believed that the resurrection was the hope of the world but that it would happen at the end of time. Jesus came in the middle of history and fulfilled that hope within Himself on behalf of the world. This belief is what made Christians stand out.
But why the middle of history? Why not just go ahead and complete it? I believe the bible suggests that God has invited human beings to join him in his project of creation from the very beginning by creating us in his image and likeness. It makes sense that he would also invite us to join him in his project of new creation or redemption, doesn’t it? The resurrection occurred in the middle of history that you and I might be called “children of the resurrection” as Jesus calls us in Luke 20.
Note the context of Jesus’ defense of the resurrection in Luke 20. He is speaking to the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection. The Sadducees were among the powerful elite in Jesus’ world enjoying wealth, status, and prestige within Judaean society. They didn’t believe in the resurrection... they claimed it to be a newfangled thing, invented by late prophets like Daniel. They claimed you couldn’t find it in the first five books of the bible...but “behind the smokescreens of theological argument and silly stories about women with seven husbands, they knew that the resurrection doctrine was a threat to their own position! They knew it meant that God was turning the world upside down. The Sadducees didn’t know the Bible or God’s power; that’s why they denied the resurrection and supported Rome” (Wright).
Brothers and sisters, we have tasted the future and we will taste it again in a few moments at Christ’s holy table! The Holy Spirit has opened our minds and hearts to the Bible...the baptized know God’s power. Being children of the resurrection, our call is not to live with the world as the world until we die and escape this world but “to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.” (Wright)
You see, “People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.” (Wright)
So let us sing songs of the new creation. Let us proclaim to the Joel Stein’s of the world that there is something much brighter and much more exciting than even a luxury hotel in store for those who, in faith, become children of the resurrection! We’ve got more than clouds and harps to offer! Alleluia!
So let us come to this holy table where we receive future perspective so that we might take that future out into the world that God has NOT given up on! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!