Message: Remembrance Day/ Sunday, November 11, 2012, Lansdowne and Caintown Presbyterian Churches, Ontario, Canada

Anything but a quiet week……

 

 

 

Date – November 11, 2012 Place – LC

Scripture – 1 Kings 17: 8-16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9: 24-28; Mark 12: 38-44
Other – P + 24; Remembrance Day/ Sunday; Session next evening

 

SERMON: ” More than All Those ”

Mark 12:38-44

As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

[Here is a word of assurance to those concerned about their deceased loved ones. It says that God has the living and the dead in Christ in good care and the end is the same: one of glory and of life lived in the presence of God. Grief need not overwhelm them as they have hope in the resurrection. There is today a growing concern in parts of the world-church about the return of the Lord. The thrust of this text is not to worry about these things – for the time is not known to us – but to encourage one another, to live in hope and confidence that God has all these things under control. Preparedness and readiness are all we can offer as we wait for the coming of the Lord.]

 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
4:13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
4:14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.
4:15 For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.
4:16 For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.
4:18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

“It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown…” For over 30 years, that’s been the beginning line of a story spun out every week on a radio program called Prairie Home Companion. It’s about a fictional place , based upon an actual town where the narrator grew up. We could change the name of the town, and say the same thing – well, it’s been either a quiet week OR sometimes quite a week in Kingston, or Lansdowne or Mallorytown or …. or, my hometown, my neighbourhood, my life….

That’s true, frankly, about these past few weeks. Lots of things have happened. 2 Sundays ago , we recalled the Reformation of the church 495 years ago. That same week, it was All Hallow’s Eve, an end of a month, which also felt like the beginning of something, for it was also only a week ago Thursday November 1^st and All Saints’ Day when the Church historically remembers Christian giants upon whose shoulders we stand today, people thought of as saints.. Friday, November 2, was All Souls’ Day when we remember those personally-known giants, people who modelled before you and me what it means to be Christians but who will never be named as saints by any church hierarchy – people like us who wanted to live Christianly and did so in lesser-known ways in ways that affected us. This week may also have contained other joys and sorrows for each of us, gains and loss — making these past few days quite a week indeed, and anything but a quiet one.

As always, this time of the year brings forth fields of poppies that grow in our hearts and on our lapels. Perhaps you remember one special veteran who died on fields of battle, or several that you’ve known in the years since. Like my own veteran father who died on October 31 twelve years ago, you recall with pride the one in your family or circle of friends who lived with quiet distinction in your hometown.If they were those who also were vets in the battle of living Christianly, then their scars somehow were used to bring you a clearer picture of how to live in your personal life. Their example may have had some kind of family resemblance to Jesus, to the very character and nature of God, and it changed you forever. That’s what heroes do — they draw us upward and outward, to God and to others, by their example of living , and dying, well.

I was deeply impressed by 2 Remembrance ceremonies held this past Friday – along Remembrance Road in Mallorytown and at Thousand Islands Elementary School in Lansdowne. Each had differing ways of somberly honouring those who gave the last full measure of their devotion to their families, their countries and their love of freedom. To see both veterans and very young children coming together in a shared awe of what our military has done to fight for freedom which is never free was awe-inspiring and causes us all to want to be better citizens specifically and more just and loving people specifically.

In the light of this day and week and season of the year, we do well to pause and ask questions of primary importance. In that cause, we are aided by Paul who shares with us some thoughts about what our eternal alliances to things eternal means.

In the letter he’s written to newer Christians, Paul tells his original readers and us the answer to that question: what happens when we die? He says: you should, + you can live always with the Lord. Up to this point, he’s encouraged and praised them in their walk with God, he’s reminded them of what it means to be Christians who make a difference. In this 4^th chapter, clear teaching about living pure lives and loving other people has been given. Then, he goes on to address their concerns for believers who have died.

Now, why would they be asking these kinds of questions? Simple – because they’re like us! We wonder the same kinds of things about what happens to those who die, because we’re human beings. Our lives are referenced in relationships and when our relational circle is broken, we wonder what has happened to them, we feel profound loss, and we ask the reasonable question: is that all there is? To that plaintive query, God gives us his answer through Paul: NO! There’s much more to life.

This portion of scripture gives us a few handles to grab in getting hold of this mysterious future for our loved ones and for us. Now, we don’t know all that we would like about the future and what we do know is still shrouded in some mystery; however, brothers and sisters, one thing that is very clear from the scriptural record is that we will always be with the Lord. One of Paul’s favourite phrases, used often in some form in his letters is being “in Christ Jesus”. It’s so important to understanding Paul’s writings that theologians have dubbed this ‘the Pauline formula’. God being intimately connected to his creation through living, loving relationships — that was the irreducible minimum for Paul, who wanted people to know God as intimately as he did himself.

So in this part of the letter, he essentially says: Friends, those relationships you had before, with brothers and sisters/mothers and fathers/ friends/ neighbours – they don’t ever have to end. How should you live — with hope, with true knowledge, without despair. Relationships will continue forever, both with the Lord and with others that you have known in Christ Jesus.

Paul’ logical mind in this letter leads to theological truth and it goes like this.

• Jesus died and rose again. The basis of our hope is in the knowledge that Jesus somehow made death dance backwards, as one has put it. It’s possible that there had been some false teaching among the Thessalonians during the months since the church had begun, ideas that are still rampant today – that life is nasty, brutish and short, then you die – or that all there is to life is to die with the most toys – or that history tells us that it’s all going to disappear so eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we die. No, Paul writes: Jesus’ life, death and resurrection makes that all different! Now, we know from our experience that the living God who brought Jesus back from death will also bring us back with him — we will always be with the Lord.
• Then, according to Jesus’ own words, God has a sense of humour – for those who already have died in him get to go first, before those of us who are still alive on earth. As Eugene Petersen puts it in The Message: ‘when the Master comes again to get us, those of us who are still alive will not get the jump on the dead and leave them behind. In actual fact, they’ll be ahead of us.’ What Paul has in mind here is the truth that our bodies will be dead but our spirits will be alive from the moment of our physical death and will be with Jesus always. Some versions of scripture use the word ‘sleep’ as a substitute for bodily death, not the soul’s death, and makes sense of this next section. And Paul writes, it’s only logical, then, since they died first, then they will go first in line to be with the Lord, with new resurrection bodies like the differing one that Jesus had when he was raised.
• There will be the shout of command, the archangel’s voice, the sound of God’s trumpet, and the Lord himself will come down from heaven. Again, we see here the reality that, if we are believers, we will be always with the Lord. Paul’s main concern in life was that people believed that Jesus was God. The whole of the record about Paul’s life points to the radical change in his life due to that experience on the road to Damascus. Jesus, who had died as far as Saul/Paul knew , spoke to there, as recorded in Acts 9. Paul caught on : Jesus is alive, and he raised me from the dust of the Damascus road to a brand new way of understanding God. I can know God, and so can anyone else, by believing in Jesus. For Paul, resurrection wasn’t just in the sweet by and by . NO! It was for here and now, eternity begins for the believer as soon as one is brought back to new life in Christ. And our physical death, then, is only a minor blip on the chart of being always with the Lord. Always begins now in this life and continues on to forever, with our Lord being first to be raised and leading the parade when all who believe in him are raised.
• Then, we who are living at that time will be gathered up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Petersen puts it like this: “Oh, we’ll be walking on air!” Somehow both those who were are newly resurrected and those who are still living and believing on earth will get to be together in that event when Jesus shows up again! On cop shows, the officers ar back at the precinct office and realize that the criminal they’ve been pursuing has been seen by someone who phones in; so, they say to the desk-sargeant, ‘ we’ll go out and snatch him up.’ And that’s it! He’s removed from society. Somehow, when we least expect it, we’ll be snatched up to be with the Lord forever. There are lots of differing ideas as to how long these many actions take, all together, but we know for sure that…..
• …… we will always be with the Lord. So, then, encourage one another with these words, Paul writes. Whether we have had quiet weeks, or quite a week, our hope is in this: Jesus loves us, this we know, and he wants us to be with him forever.

Friends, there are some simple truths from Paul’s letter teaching things which are clear:

1. Jesus died and rose again, and set the example for what will happen to us if we believe in God through him and live for him.
2. The Lord Jesus will be coming back in a dramatic way in God’s good timing, just as he came in a dramatic way as a human being.
3. The dead in Christ will rise up first, then living believers will join the party.
4. We can always be, now and always, in a forever-family,with the Lord Jesus.

 

Brothers and sisters, in these days of endings and beginnings, in this changing season of the year, in this reflective time of remembrances of saintly heroes and the glorious fallen war dead — it’s a good thing to think about the God who loves us so much that he went to war with the enemy of our souls and gave up everything of Himself in giving us the gift of His one and only child Jesus, sent to a foreign land to do battle for our futures —– so that we could live forever, forever, forever. Our main concern today is the decision to follow Jesus now , so that we can be with Him and loved ones always. Let’s pray….