Living in the Resurrection Now (2)

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[Jesus said]: “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:13-14).

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

On first reading, this text appears to be an assortment of different, unconnected moments in the ministry of Jesus. We have a healing (vv. 1-6), a parable (vv. 7-11), and then a teaching about concern for the poor (vv. 12-14). When you look at the text more closely, however, you see that this all happens on one occasion. The text begins with a reference to a meal on the Sabbath at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees in verse 1, and it is not until verse 25 that we leave this occasion.

Recognizing this unity encourages us to look for the connection among these seemingly unrelated events. Like a friend telling us what happened last night at dinner, Luke relates many of the details of this occasion with something in mind. When you look at what Jesus is doing, you can find the connection: Jesus is patiently revealing what the Resurrection truly means.

What comes to mind when you think about the Resurrection? For some, it might be all clouds and angels and souls taking flight. For others, a reunion with loved ones. For the more Biblically minded, it may even be the broken world suddenly and fully restored. In each of these cases, however, notice how it is an event located in the future.

For Jesus, though, the Resurrection is not just a doctrinal teaching located in the future, or worse yet, a line from the Creed that we say and move on. No. It is something that shapes our lives now.

Consider the focused patience of Jesus. He uses questions and healings and parables and direct address, all to bring about a glimpse of His eternal Kingdom among those who are gathered.

The reading opens with Jesus celebrating the restoration that occurs in His Kingdom. He heals the man who has dropsy and, by a question, invites the Pharisees and lawyers to see how this is fitting for the Sabbath, a time of rest in the reign and rule of God.

Receiving no reply to His question, Jesus tells a parable that invites those gathered to see the great reversal happening in the Kingdom of God. God works by grace and, therefore, those who exalt themselves will be humbled but those who humble themselves will be exalted by God.

When there is still no response, Jesus speaks directly to His host, inviting him to live in the graciousness of God. The last line of the text seems odd: “For you will be repaid at the Resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14). But this one small phrase opens up for us what lies at the heart of these various activities of Jesus.

Here, at a dinner, Jesus is offering a glimpse of the grace that will prevail in His eternal kingdom. The sick will be healed. The poor will be fed. The humble will be honored. The faithful will be rewarded. Even the host can live now in the graciousness of God. No need to think of himself or his social obligations. He doesn’t need to look out for himself because he knows that he will be taken care of. Such divine assurance means he is free to extend God’s care to others.

The question this text poses for us today is, “What does it mean to believe in the Resurrection?” Is the Resurrection only about the future? Or, could it be possible, the Resurrection opens our life to the present? If so, how do we go about living in the Resurrection now?

An ancient group of philosophers called the Stoics believed it was important for everyone to remember death each day. Their reasoning was, “You’re going to die. You don’t know when, but you know it will happen.” Making people depressed was not the purpose of this exercise, but rather helping people actually savor life and not sleepwalk through it. They also believed that if you remembered life’s impermanence, you would not be so quick to take your loved ones and friends for granted. Who knows, after all, how long you will have their company, and they yours? There is a good dose of common sense in this perspective.

Yet stoicism doesn’t come anywhere close to plumbing the reasons why Christians, from early times, have also frequently and intentionally remembered death. Stoicism lacked framework to truly see death as it is. To the Stoic, death was just a natural part of the cycle of life: you are born, you grow old, and then you die. Death is just the concluding chapter of life.

Christians, however, remember the beginning: Genesis. We remember that death is not a “natural” part of the world because it is not what God intended for His creation. We remember that the Creator’s gift was life, a life in which all things were good.

“Death” was at first only a word in God’s new creation, part of a warning attached to the fruit of a tree. It had no concrete place in human existence until man wanted his way instead of God’s and let the monster in and turned it loose. When Christians remember death, even remembering it daily, we’re not merely recalling that there is an end to life that comes at an unexpected time. We’re recalling that our first parents’ disobedience let loose an enemy into the very fabric of creation and that it is even now at work in our own bodies and souls.

Every Ash Wednesday, in countless congregations around the world, Christians line up and come forward to receive a strange mark, ashes smeared on their forehead, while hearing the words God spoke to Adam and Eve on the day death entered the human body. “Remember, O man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Yet on Ash Wednesday, the ashes are not placed in a single blob, but in the shape of a cross. This remembrance, then, is not only about being “dead men walking,” headed to the grave. Rather, it is also a remembrance that out of incomprehensible love, there came forth from the Father His Only Son, into our flesh to know this death in His own body nailed to the cross.

It was on the very night that His sufferings began that Jesus spoke to His disciples some astounding words: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going” (John 14:1–4).

It sounded so good to the disciples; but Thomas was confused. He said, “Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?” (John 14:5). Jesus’ answer is one of His most famous sayings: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

Jesus not only provides the way to the home He has prepared; He also is the way. How He does it is called “the blessed exchange.” Jesus prepared a way for us to come home and stay there forever by becoming man, like us in every way except without sin. He willingly entered into our death—even death on a cross—to pour into it His own divine life, destroying death from the inside out.

When the Christian thinks of death daily, he or she also remembers this above all: that Jesus entered into death for us to open the way back to the home God created for us at the beginning. Because this is so, the Christian daily thinks of death in order to learn to think of it as a defeated foe. If through Christ, the way home has already been opened, then death itself has been truly robbed of its sting. Death is no longer seen as the end, but a sound sleep from which Christ will one day awaken us with a word.

Have you ever noticed how most cemeteries are generally oriented with the graves going east and west? The casket is placed with the head to the west and the feet to the east? There’s a good reason for this custom—the Resurrection. It is thought that on the Last Day when Christ returns to raise the living and the dead, He will come from the east. So, for us Christians, we have this wonderful image that when we arise from the sleep of death, the first thing we will see is our Savior.

Such an unshakeable hope in the Resurrection affects not just how we face death, but also how we live each day now. As Jesus reveals, the Resurrection gives us courage to live each day in the radical liberality of God. Christ is not concerned about social consequences in His kingdom. Let the Pharisees talk—He receives sinners and eats with them (Luke 15:1). He loves justice. He does mercy. He walks humbly with God. Regardless of the consequences. Such living could get one killed, (which it does,) but God, His Father, raises the dead and, through Him, establishes a kingdom where mercy reigns. Even now.

Imagine living in that kingdom now. Something as mundane as inviting people over to dinner can be touched by the reality of the Resurrection. Rather than living in a world governed by social stratification—a world where there are those we invite into our homes and those we do not, people we need to impress to secure our future or those whose opinions we are less concerned about, and love and charity we need to give or withhold depending upon who is watching—we live in God’s Kingdom governed by His gracious promise of resurrection. No need to push in line or rush about or always seek to be first. You literally have eternity to enjoy the moment. No need to secure our place, that is already taken care of by Christ. Instead, we are free to take care of others. Something as simple as whom we talk to or even how we talk to that person can become an occasion when we confess our belief in the Resurrection of the just.

God Himself is the model of one who invites all classes of people to His great supper of salvation. In the Resurrection, there will be people of all economic strata, including the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. We’ll be with them for eternity. How we treat other people matters—because we are living in eternity and our days are expressions, sometimes humble and other times courageous, of the certainty that God ultimately rules over all things with love.

Living in the Resurrection now makes a difference!

When facing health challenges, you can pray for healing, confident that God cares about you, He will be with you, and He promises to work all things for your eternal good. You also have the further assurance, that God will grant you healing—if not in this life, then fully, in the Resurrection.

Living in the Resurrection now makes a difference!

Mourning the death of a loved one, you have a different perspective. You do “not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since you believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep … the dead in Christ will rise … Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1Thessalonians 4:13-17).

Living in the Resurrection now makes a difference!

What you do or don’t do on the Sabbath is changed when you are living in the Resurrection. Works of mercy, acts of loving our neighbor are not forbidden, but rather encouraged. And living in the Resurrection now, where will you be found each Lord’s Day? In the presence of the Lord, hearing the Word of God. Receiving Christ’s very body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins and the strengthening and preserving of your body and soul unto life everlasting. Celebrating with your fellow Christians, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, the glorious foretaste of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.

Yes, living in the Resurrection now makes a big difference!

So, go in the grace of the Lord and serve your neighbor with joy. You are living in the Resurrection now. You are forgiven for all your sins.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.