Resurrection Rather Than Rapture

The Reverend Tommy Thompson
“Resurrection Rather Than Rapture”
Romans 8:12-25 & Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
5th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11A)
17 July 2011

How many here this morning enjoy gardening? Playing in the dirt...sowing seeds, nurturing the seeds to become healthy plants, watching them grow, and then eventually, harvesting and enjoying their fruit. That we enjoy... How many here this morning enjoy watching those seeds that we did not plant grow? I mean who gets overjoyed over watching weeds grow in the garden right beside the onions or all throughout the rows of beans?

I think God shares our frustration. In the Gospel Lesson for this morning Jesus tells another parable to the crowds that included the disciples. Another one of those stories that engenders awe and wonder more than clarity and understanding...one of those stories that invite those who hear to listen closely...to press in closer to Jesus to dive deeper into the mystery...or dismiss it altogether because it makes us think too much...

In this parable, Jesus likens the kingdom of God to a sower who went out and sowed good seed in his field. Then, while everyone was asleep an intruder--an enemy came...and he sowed weeds among the wheat and then ran away...

Then, because of the nature of this weed known in the Mediterranean world, it stayed almost unrecognizable, blending in with the wheat until the wheat began to bear grain. Then, the weeds were recognizable...the servants of the householder came and said, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where then, did these weeds come from?” Of course we already know, but those in the parable itself cannot yet know...so the master tells them “an enemy has done this.”

Naturally the servants ask if they should go and gather the weeds, separating them from the wheat...but the master tells them not to do this...because the nature of these weeds, too, is that their root grows deeper than the wheat ...causing them to be tangled with the good wheat...if the servants were to go out and pull them up, they’d pull precious wheat up with the weeds...so the master tells them that the de-weeding must wait until harvest time. Then the reapers will collect the weeds first and bind them to be burned while the wheat is gathered into his barn.

Like last week, this is all the crowd gets to hear...they walk away trying to make sense out of this parable...of how the Kingdom of God is like this story of wheat and weeds...of a good sower and an enemy sower sowing in the same field...but the disciples and us gathered here this morning are not satisfied with just hearing the parable...it engenders wonder, awe...mystery...so we press in a little closer to Jesus where he invites us to journey deeper with him into the mysteries of God.

And Jesus teaches us that the one who sows is the Son of Man--Jesus. The field is the world, good seed are the children of the kingdom and the weeds are the children of the evil one...the enemy who sowed the weeds is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are angels...Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age...The Son of Man will send his angels and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evil doers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then, he says, using similar language used of him on the mountain of transfiguration, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

And I hope we who have pressed in closer truly do have ears to listen...We live in a world where folks are constantly preaching a different gospel than Jesus’ gospel. A gospel that says that the world is evil...that we are evil...and that the solution is for God to destroy the world. These persons preach that the only hope for anyone is to accept Jesus as savior and Lord and then one day, when the trumpet sounds, these souls will fly away or be raptured into eternal bliss, leaving the evil world behind to burn in judgment. There are entire series of books and movies based on this anti-gospel...and that’s just what it is--not the gospel.

In the Gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus invites us to a different understanding of the world and salvation...an understanding that is in continuity with the grand sweep of God’s creative and saving activity from Genesis to Revelation. This story, in similar fashion as Jesus’ parable, presents God as the Good Creator who makes the world and everything in it and calls it “good.” Note that the beginning of the story begins with God’s affirmation of it ... with God’s enjoyment of it and not with God’s condemnation of it...God does not make evil...This is what is revealed in the very beginning of our story in the book of Genesis, when after God creates, we are reminded by the biblical text, “And God saw that is was good.” This phrase is repeated from the 3rd day of creation through the fifth day of creation...and then on the sixth day, just in case we didn’t quite understand, this time we get a superlative...it is not just that God saw that the creation was good...no, after God had made human beings and everything else in the world, we read, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

Back when I was a children’s pastor in Tennessee, I remember teaching the children the creation story one Sunday morning...we used creation cards...helping them to make a card that represented each of the six days of creation. With each day of creation, we stressed to them how much God enjoyed what he had made and expressed that by naming it as “good.” The seventh card would be different, however. The children were given a blank card and asked to pray and ask for a good way to demonstrate what happened on that day. Many children left their card blank, representing the rest that God took and the rest that is woven into the fabric of creation. Some drew pictures of God’s love for his world and for them and their families...there were some creative responses...but one stands out for me...the picture has never been erased from my mind. One little boy drew a picture of all the different parts of creation...he drew the ocean with fish and dolphins jumping out of the water...he drew birds in the sky...a bright sun and only a few clouds...he drew islands in the distance...with palm trees and fruit trees...i believe there were some monkeys and other kinds of land animals...and human beings...then, out in the middle of the ocean, on a gigantic floating lounge chair was God...with lemonade in hand with an umbrella popping out of the lemonade, relaxing with a GREAT BIG smile on his face...with one of those little cartoonish bubbles extending from his mouth saying, “This is all so COOL!” To this day, i think that is some of the best theology of creation...God is pleased...God enjoys what God has made.

Like Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field.”

Well that’s all fine and good...but we are all overcome by the fact that the antithesis of good exists in God’s world. Like the disciples, we want to know, “Where did these weeds come from!?” Where did this heart disease come from? What caused my son to be taken away from me? Who gave mom this cancer? What caused that man to rape that woman? Why did those men fly those planes into those buildings? Why did those white men beat that black man? Why are those Americans so mean to those people from the middle-east? Where did these weeds come from!? Who put them here?

The parable and the bible’s answer is that these things do not originate from God. God is not up there somewhere testing us as some theologies suggest...he doesn’t see that mom is strong enough to deal with cancer and therefore gives her cancer...he doesn’t work with terror to give nations wake-up calls...he doesn’t take children from their parents or parents from their children...God is not the author of evil, chaos and death. God is the giver of life and the life God gives God says is very very good!
Jesus’ parable, and the larger narrative of the bible wherein we read Jesus’ parable makes it clear that an enemy has done this...the evil in the world does not originate with God. In Genesis 3 we read the story of the Fall of humankind and the snowball effect of evil from that point forward until finally “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” Our disobedience...our bowing down to the enemy rather than the Creator, has brought about evil at a systemic level in God’s world. Now the entire creation moans and groans...is subjected to the horrible consequences of human sin...our disobedience has led to evil consequences of suffering and strife for not only human beings, but the entire cosmos... We opened the door in curiosity and behind that door was a multitude of demons that once the door was opened and they began stampeding through it, it was impossible for us to somehow muster up enough strength to shut the door back...we opened the door to evil, Genesis says, and evil has left it’s mark on the world in ways that sometime seem irreparable.

Oh, but we think we can...we respond to evil with evil...we go to war...we drop bombs...we fire our weapons...we want revenge...but all that has ever accomplished is the multiplication of evil...like those servants in the parable, we want to go out and pull up all those weeds...we think somehow we can...but Jesus makes it clear...YOU cannot! Not now, not ever.

But, contrary to what many popular theologies claim, God chooses to stay with his world that has become so broken and scarred by the evil that runs rampant due to human sin. God has not given up on human beings and on the rest of creation. God’s plan is not to mark a few to be rescued from the world, but to restore the image of God within his people that the world might know the order and beauty that God intended in the very beginning. And though we can do nothing about the weeds, God can and God has.

From the very beginning of our story, God is at work bringing restoration...justice...new creation. He called forth a people from Egypt and made them to be his people ... a people he hoped would be the image of God restored, shining the light of salvation for the entire cosmos to see...to bring restoration and salvation...but the people of Israel, overwhelmed by evil’s strong grip, kept rebelling...kept doing what they had been doing since the fall...and every-time they made a few steps toward the goal of restoration and justice, their sin would cause them to take ten times as many steps back...God never gave up on them though...he never does...he raised up judges and prophets to show the way to salvation...and when, time after time, they found themselves unable to respond to God’s gracious initiative for the world, God himself, instead of giving up and abandoning ship, became one of us in Jesus Christ, taking upon himself our flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the obedience of His mother Mary.

He became one of us and lived as one of us, without sin...in Him the image of God was restored...in him, the creation, once again, got to experience what it is like to be ruled by one who is truly human...who lives in the world as God intended when God made us in the very beginning. Jesus, fully human, did not rebel against His Father. He lived in a broken world among broken people, and rather than adding to it’s brokeness, he brought forth justice and grace--healing and wholeness. When we look at his human life, we see what human life is truly meant to be...but when the entire world is living contrary to the way God intends for them to live, it is tough for the one who lives that way. The world did not know what to do with such beautiful humanity. So we condemned him...that’s right...we are so far from the truth that we are actually condemning what is right and good--God himself...but even when he was condemned and beat and spat upon, he did not return evil for evil, but loved us to the very end...even when we had him suspended and hanging from the cross, the electric chair of the first century world...treating him who knew no evil like the worst of criminals, he prayed for our forgiveness and invited us into the paradise he was about to open for us.

On the cross, God faced death. Jesus died. He didn’t fall asleep and then wake up...he was as dead as dead can be. Death is the ultimate consequence of sin...it is Satan’s greatest boast. And oh how the devil celebrated when the 2nd person of the Trinity was six foot under! But as St. John Chysostom so beautifully preached one Easter: Evil took a body and, face to face, met God! It took earth and encountered heaven! It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen! "O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory?" Christ is risen, and you are overthrown! Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen! Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb! For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the First-fruits of them that slept.”

This is the good news of the Gospel. What happened to Jesus will happen to us and the creation rather than experiencing the horrible consequences of human sin, will, again, experience the caring rule of the image of God in the world, causing it to radiate with beauty that is unimaginable.

What happened to Jesus in His resurrection will happen to us...as St. Paul says in Romans, “ we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” Elsewhere Paul calls the resurrected Jesus the “first-fruits” of those risen from the dead. He is the prototype of the new creation--the firstborn from the dead...this language means that more are to come in like manner. And note Jesus did not fly away to an eternal bliss never to return. In Jesus God has made it clear that matter is not evil...that physicality is not bad...in Jesus, God has healed the physical world...he has brought forth new creation from the sinful creation...and this is the goal of God for all people...not rapture but resurrection...not soul flight but new creation, walking upon the good earth God has not given up on...creation as God intended.

Jesus made clear in the parable that what is taken out of the world is not the children of God but the weeds--evil. The excision of evil will happen...and that will be new creation. Like a cancer that must be cut out or like weeds that must be pulled out so that the garden may flourish, God will rid His world of the cancer of sin--the weeds--and the world he has called very good will flourish again...God will, again, lounge in the pool and say this is so cool...

St. Paul really sums it up well when he says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation , but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

This picture painted for us by the apostle Paul, is not a picture of God removing his children from the world and and then pouring out destruction on what is left. No, this is a picture of renewal--transformation--new creation. The image is that of the creation crying out in labor pains. As we all know, birth is a transformative process. Here the picture is of the current creation being pregnant with possibility in the resurrected Christ, one day giving birth to something beautiful, that though is obviously different from that which gave it birth, stands in continuity with that which gave it birth.

The creation cries out, St. Paul, says: cries out for the real children of God to be revealed...and we join it’s cry, in eager anticipation of the day when Christ shall return and we, like him are resurrected to be fully what he intends us to be...when that revelation happens, the world will once again sing and rejoice and radiate with beauty like we’ve never seen or known...

Until then, we are called by the Gospel to be Easter people--children of God--the wheat among the weeds...to live among the weeds as Christ--love in the midst of hatred -- life in the midst of death -- new creation in the midst of anti-creation. There will be suffering...the world won’t always respond the way we’d like them too--i mean they killed our Lord...but the hope of resurrection--the future glory that is coming, cannot be compared to what we see or imagine...it will be worth it all...we will shine in the transfiguration glory of Jesus Christ our Lord where evil has been eradicated and the world is full of the glory of God as the water covers the seas!

May the Holy Spirit empower and encourage us from deep within that we might go into the world bringing the new creation to fruition everywhere we go by our faithfulness to the Risen King. Amen.