Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Mark 12:18-27, 1 Corinthians 15:35-44

This weekend we received the sad news of Marian Buteyn’s death. For those who are new to our church, Don Buteyn was our Interim Head of Staff Pastor ten years ago before I arrived. He came to our church on retirement and served for years as an Associate Pastor. When the Sr. Pastor left, Don was approached by our staff and elders with the request that he step into the head position during the search that eventually brought me here. Then, with typical humility, Don completed his call as Interim Head of Staff and stepped back down into an Associate position. Don and Marian moved back to their Michigan hometown a couple of years ago. And now Marian has moved into the next chapter of her life.

When Don talked with me he said that near the end there were only two things Marian could still recite from memory. One was the Lord’s Prayer which they prayed together each day during their devotional time. The other was the Apostles’ Creed. How appropriate that we are reviewing the key passages in this ancient creed. I wonder what Marian thought as she recited the phrase for today, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” What do we mean as we recite this passage?

Few of us know the name of Mrs. Martin Van Butchell. She died more than two hundred years ago. Her death drastically affected the funeral industry in our country. Mrs. Van Butchell left a significant estate to her husband. However, there was one condition. He could spend the money only as long as her body remained above ground.

Mr. Van Butchell hired a scientist to preserve her body. The embalming process worked so well that he kept her body in the family room for years as he spent the estate. Over the next years the funeral industry began advertising the newly discovered embalming techniques. There were embalmed bodies in barbershops. County fairs often included glass-topped caskets with an embalmed body on display. The funeral business boomed!

This weekend we want to tackle another phrase from the ancient creed of early Christianity known as the Apostles’ Creed. The phrase says, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” Do we mean, with Mrs. Van Butchell, that these physical bodies must somehow be protected and kept unchanged until Jesus comes to claim us for eternity? Let’s consider what happens when we die.

But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.

- 1 Corinthians 15:35-44

Susan Matice attended a dog-training workshop years ago where she was taught that pet owners could test the disposition of their pets. For instance, one way to test a dog is to pretend to be hurt or dead. If the animal tends to be mean tempered he may bite the owner while the owner is down. If the dog has a nice disposition, the animal will lick the face and show concern for the owner.

That evening, Susan decided to test her two dogs. She was watching the television and eating pizza, when she suddenly pretended to have a heart attack. She grabbed her chest, moaned loudly, and fell to the floor. Her two dogs looked over at her lying on the floor, looked at each other, and then raced to the coffee table for her pizza.

What happens when we die? For many, the idea of a resurrection body is confusing. When we speak of resurrection of the body and life everlasting, we do not mean that the exact same molecules of these present bodies will remain together for eternity. God created these physical bodies of ours to last only a short while. This is why, when the Saducees tried to trap Jesus with their circular reasoning, Jesus explained that resurrection and eternity are very different from what we now experience. Likewise, the Apostle Paul struggled to find an image to explain what happens after we die. He finally used the idea of planting a dead seed and watching a new plant grow from it.

There are two opposite and equal misunderstandings about our future bodies in heaven. One is that we must preserve these earthly bodies so that we can have them again in heaven. When people move too far this direction we end up with expensive caskets, perfectly prepared bodies, and even cryogenic heads being saved for posterity. The opposite error is the idea that the only thing that counts is our spirit apart from the body. The most common form of this is the idea that after we die we become disembodied angelic spirits that simply float around (complete with halos and harps).

Perhaps the mix-up is with the word “body.” We tend to think of our physical flesh when we hear the word “body.” It might be helpful to know that the Greek language had two different words for body. The word for the physical body was sarx. It can also be translated as “flesh.” This is not the word used to describe the resurrection body and the life everlasting. The word used in 1 Corinthians 15 is the word soma. Understanding the difference between sarx and soma can help us move from confusion to clarity.

Soma means more than simply flesh. It includes the idea of unique personhood, personality and character. Soma is the whole person. According to the Apostle, It is our soma that is resurrected, not simply our sarx. In other words, we believe the flesh will return to dust, but the true person lasts into eternity.

We must be very careful here. Separating the true spiritual person from the fleshly body has sometimes led to a common false teaching that tends to hang around Christianity. It was in the early church and every so often shows up today. It goes like this: since this body is merely temporary flesh, it doesn’t matter what I do with my body.

In the church at Corinth some used this argument to justify having sex with prostitutes. “The stomach is for food,” they argued. Taking this reasoning a step further, they reasoned, “It doesn’t matter what we do in the flesh, because we will leave these bodies behind when we die.” The Apostle Paul argued against this view. He reminded them and us that our moral choices made on earth with our physical flesh set a direction for our lives.

Some may recall that last month we touched on C. S. Lewis’ idea that hell is the playing out in eternity of the direction we choose in this life. If we remain angry and bitter, it sets us on a course that will eternally separate us not only from each other but also from God. The opposite is also true. Every time we repent of our sins and humble ourselves to seek God’s forgiveness, we come back into harmony with the Lord. It is God’s very nature and character to love humility. God welcomes us back every time we humble ourselves. One of the main lessons we learn in these mortal bodies is humility.

The lessons we learn here and now in these mortal bodies set the direction for our eternity. We could compare it to baby teeth and adult teeth. When a child notices the first baby tooth getting loose it can be a scary thing. The adult, of course, calms the child and reassures the child that it is only a baby tooth which will drop out so that a permanent adult tooth can grow in its place. We are familiar with the temporary nature of baby teeth. Now, just because baby teeth are temporary, should the adult tell the child it is okay to eat all the candy he wants and avoid brushing his teeth? “Go ahead and eat all the candy you want. You don’t need to brush your teeth. Since they’re only baby teeth, it doesn’t matter if they get cavities.”

Of course adults teach children to brush even their baby teeth. Why? Because we know that the habits our children develop with their baby teeth with pay off in the care of the adult teeth. If children do not learn good hygiene with their baby teeth, their adult teeth will pay the price.

In this same way we learn important lessons in these temporary fleshly bodies on earth. In our bodies on earth we develop the direction of our lives that continues into eternity. We can choose humility and learn how to redirect our hearts to God or we can choose to live for our own selfishness and physical pleasures. We can choose to use these bodies to serve others, or try to make others serve us. One day we will leave behind these temporary, deteriorating fleshly bodies in order to receive our new, resurrection bodies that are appropriate for eternity. When we get our new resurrected bodies will we be ready to enjoy heaven? Shifting from Paul’s metaphor of dead seeds turning into living plants, or of baby teeth and adult teeth, how about the metaphor of writing a book? Some theologians have played with this image. One view is that during our earthly lives in these fleshly bodies we are authors writing God’s story. Other theologians say God is writing His story using our lives as illustrations. Are we the authors of the book or the characters in the story? I like where C. S. Lewis took this discussion in the ending of his famous Narnia stories.

Lewis’ fantasy series ends as the children meet up with all the characters they had met throughout their adventures in Narnia. The refrain of this last chapter in the last book is “further up and further in.” Together, the children and talking animals head into the mystical real Narnia where everything gets more vivid and real. Every time they cross a mountain the next valley is even more beautiful. Every time they swim through a waterfall they discover the sensations of water are even more wonderful than anything they felt in their ordinary human lives.

They realize that what they have left behind was nothing but “shadow-lands.” They are now graduating into eternity. Even Aslan, the Christ-figure in the form of a lion, is transformed. Listen to the last paragraph of the last book.

“As He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth had read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” I like this image that our life here on earth is the title page for the Great Story. I am thinking about Marian’s title page that she finished writing this weekend. On her title page I see words like “humility, love, joy, gentleness.” What words are we writing on our title pages?