SEPARATED NO LONGER


A Sermon On:

HEIDELBERG CATECHISM Q/A 40, 41, 42

1 CORINTHIANS 15.1-28



PREPARED BY

KEN GEHRELS

PASTOR

CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

NEPEAN, ONTARIO



Up until very recently there was a five-letter-four-letter word which people spoke about in very hushed tones in our society.
DEATH
If at all possible one didn't discuss the situation. It was certainly not publicized, and hopefully children could be shielded from it.
We spoke about it with euphemisms such as "passing away."
Rather than having people die in their own homes, the very ill were brought to institutions to expire. From there they were sent to specialized funeral parlours rather than to be laid out in the family's living room, as was once the case.

Recently we have seen somewhat of a shift away from this extreme position. For example people are once more choosing to be in their own homes at the end of life. Books are being written to help little children understand the concept of death. Funeral directors are encouraging families to bring young children to the wake and funeral of a loved one. More people are beginning to openly talk with family members about preparation of a Last Will.
But still it is a high level of discomfort surrounding death. In funeral parlours, at home, and in cemeteries we still experience a measure of awkwardness over the subject. We still find it an out of place item, not sure where to place it. It's like an odd card in a deck that otherwise fits together quite nicely.
Which ought to come as no surprise. For that's exactly what it is.

Back at the beginning of time death had no place. It was not a part of God's perfect plan for his universe. It did not exist when God sat back at the end of building his creation masterpiece and exclaimed, "It is very good!"

The witness of Scripture is that death is a backroom impostor, gaining access to God's good earth only through the sinful rebellion of our first parents. By their disobedience they brought down on their own heads, and on the heads of all their descendants the curse which God had made known to them beforehand:
"You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." (Ge 2.17)

They did eat, and at that very moment the great black plague entered, the plague that has hounded the human race ever since.

"You will surely die."
What did God mean when he said that? What is death, in its most essential form? For, as is obvious, the bodies of Adam and Eve did not expire at that moment when they ate of the forbidden fruit. So what, then, is death?
In its most essential form death is separation.
Death is separation.

And that deadly separation occurs in three ways:
First, there the deathly separation from our world and our fellow humanity. In this way death DID come immediately to Adam and Eve. Gen 3.7: "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."
The closeness, openness and intimacy that had been there between man and wife was gone. It had died. That death exposed itself even more hideously when Cain killed brother Adam. We, too, experience this separation when a beloved person dies and around the dining room table there is this terrible sense of emptiness. The empty gap once filled by this loved one seems like a huge black cavern. And when, for example, a son and a father are not on speaking terms, ignoring each other -- that is as good as death. It is a form of the separation of death.

Secondly, there is the deathly separation from our body. The moment Adam and Eve sinned their bodies began the irreversible process of ageing, the movement towards physical decay and that ultimate moment when the body would expire altogether, worn out. The eternal soul of a person would be unnaturally ripped away from the body, with which it was meant to remain as a united whole for ever.

Thirdly, and most horrible of all, is the deathly separation from our God. This, too, was experienced by Adam and Eve. Gen 3.9: "But the LORD God called to the man, 'Where are you?'" The closeness of God and humanity, the fellowship of being able to walk together through the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening was shattered forever, and would - unless some miracle could occur - result in eternal separation, the horrible end called hell.

Death, in short, fragments what was designed to be a beautiful, united whole Creation. It wormed its way in and began to rule supreme as the Impostor King, the Usurper on the throne of creation. Nobody and nothing could avoid its icy grip.

That is why people aren't sure where to fit death into the scheme of things. It doesn't fit! That's why it can so badly upset the lives of people it affects (for years... for ever). It destroys and separates what was never meant to be destroyed or separated.
So people end up fumbling around with it. They try to grasp it, and slip. Or they try to avoid it altogether. Which, in some paradoxical way to the greater openness about funeral homes, etc, seems to be a trend of our day. People want to avoid death in their own lives. They want to try to live forever, or at least pretend that they will live forever.
One well-known trend watcher has labelled this the STAYING ALIVE trend, one of the big movements of the '90's.
"Do the right thing, do what you must, and you never have to die."
That's the motto of the trend and the myth that in one subtle form or another is being transmitted to us and by us.

-Use the right skin treatments and your skin won't wrinkle.
-Use the best colouring agents and your hair won't go grey.
-Exercise right and your muscles won't sag to your belly.
-Avoid preservatives, eat fibre, watch your cholesterol and your body will not be poisoned.
-Check with your doctor regularly, and then double check the physician's advice with that of a homeopath, a nutritional consultant, a reflexologist and chiropractor to ensure that health stays on your side.

It's to the point, says this person, that we as a society seem to be ready to pay almost anything to stay youthful, to stay alive.

Yet it is also so that even as we play this game and try to outwit this impostor, that we recognise the futility of the exercise. We all know, deep down we know, that in the end we all lose the game. Death wins.


Now it is into this kind of a world, a world under the grey pallor of Genesis 3, that our Lord Jesus Christ came.
He submersed himself into our fragmented experience called life on earth, and did it with the express desire of meeting this impostor death and conquering him.

The bible tells us that this Jesus -
who came to distorted, disjointed, fragmented people living in a distorted, disjointed, fragmented world.
- dead people in a dead world
this Jesus came to undo the tangled web of sin and condemnation to eternal death that humanity had woven for itself.

And there was no other way to accomplish this greatest of saving tasks than by descending to the deepest levels of human suffering himself; by descending to the pit of death and bearing the full brunt, the complete extent of the curse which God placed on the human race after their rebellion in Adam and Eve. And only then, by bearing the full weight of the curse himself, could Jesus release us from the horrible prospect of facing that curse ourselves.

So it is that our Lord met the deepest levels of death, of separation:
from loved ones
from body
from God


So it is that he descended to the deepest levels of human humiliation, the humiliation of having a once vibrant living personal body lowered in to the ground to return to dust and disappear to nothingness, obscured totally;
So Jesus Christ descended to the humiliation of the grave.
Very and completely dead.

Now.... if this is where it all ended, then everything of which we have spoken would be a complete waste. If the Son of God had seen decay, if the worms had attacked his flesh - if Jesus had remained a prisoner of death, a captive in Sheol, then there would be absolutely no sense in our carrying on with the Christian religion. Of all people, we would be the most pitiful!
What good is it to follow a Saviour, a King, who has been defeated by the invading enemy? The end result is that sooner or later we will be taken captive anyway. Might as well join the impostor's forces right away.
The result? Death wins! Hope and heaven lose. The vision of a Paradise restored is gone forever. The curtain drops on life for good.

Enter 1 Corinthians 15... which proclaims that this is NOT where it all ended!! Yes, Jesus faced death head-on. Yes, he entered the realm of the dead. Yes, he sunk to it's lowest realms.
- He was crucified, dead and buried...
so the scriptures proclaim and so we believe
so we recited the apostles' creed.

But that is where the whole process was short-circuited! That hated enemy, Death, sought to sink its terrifying stinger into Christ, to remove him forever from his body, forever from the fellowship of others, forever from his God and father. Christ, however, reached out and grabbed that stinger, as it were, ripping it out of the clutches of death and tossing it into the eternal fire.

The sting of death - the terrifying sting of eternal separation - was destroyed by Jesus.
The worms were not allowed to feast on his body.
The grave was not allowed to hold him.
The separation from friends, from body, and from God was ended!
Death was swallowed up in victory.
The perishable was clothed with the imperishable
The mortal with immortality.
....All in Jesus Christ!

Our future - the future of all who believe in this Jesus, who surrender their lives wholeheartedly to him as Saviour and Lord - is no longer obscured by the prospect of eternal darkness. Instead there is waiting for us the prospect one day of eternal light, eternal life, a home in the glory-filled presence of God forever!!
Genesis 3 has been surpassed by Revelation 21 & 22.
There still remains, of course, one question.
Seeing as Jesus has won the victory, why does death still hang around like some unwelcome visitor? Why is it not totally removed from creation right away?
The answer to that, finally, is unknown to anyone. It is something kept in the secret counsel of God. No verse of scripture gives us any definitive direction. For whatever reason of timing, God the Father has held back from bringing this present order, as we know it, to an end yet. Until that day, the day of final judgement, death will still hang around.
So until then, we will have the prospect of facing death in our own lives and in the lives of loved ones.
But, as 1 Corinthians 15 makes clear, and as the Catechism reflects it, facing death as a believer in Jesus Christ is a far different prospect than were there no Saviour.
As we discussed this morning when we reflected on Christ's saving the criminal on the cross (Lk 23), death becomes but the doorway to eternity in Paradise. It is totally powerless to hold us in its icy grip.

A young child once lay in bed quite ill. It was unknown if she would recover. She knew it and called out, "Mama, what's it like to die? Will it be scary?"
Her mother, after taking a deep breath to regain composure, was able to say, "No, sweetheart. It's not scary. You know how sometimes we go on a trip to Grandma's house. Remember how you fall asleep in the car on the way? When we arrive, Papa carefully picks you up, brings you inside and puts you to sleep in the bed that grandma made ready for you. Next thing you know you wake up and you are there. It is morning and breakfast is ready downstairs!
"That's how it will be when we die. We will go to sleep. Our heavenly Father will carefully pick us up, and carry us into his home where, next thing you know, we will wake up. It will be good there and happy there, and we will stay there forever. Jesus will be there, waiting for us!"

"Where, oh Death is your victory? Where, Oh Death, is your sting?"
The sting is gone. Of course, and we may never forget this, the mere presence of death - IN ANY FORM - is still horrible. It is still a present enemy. It is still unnatural. It still hurts. And we are faced with it, we still grieve -- YES! even as Christians we still grieve.
For though the separation may be temporary, it is still separation from loved ones, and that always hurts. It still takes years, often to recover. Sometimes it changes people forever.

But at least through our tears we can have hope. We need never despair in the presence of death. Instead we can fly to the arms of our Saviour, and with his hand holding ours, we confront it bravely!



We confront the enemy death, and we look forward, with eager longing, to the day when Christ the Victor will return to kill death once for all, banishing it once for all to the eternal abyss, the outer darkness, the lake of fire, that has been prepared for it.
We look forward to the day when the mystery will be fully revealed, when all will be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, when the dead will be raised, and those who are still alive changed -
the day when all separation will be banished:
-souls will be reunited with bodies
-people joined together in untarnished fellowship on earth
-people and God joined in a relationship unchecked by sin and darkness; living in the beautiful presence of God forever!