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Bodily resurrection

Luke 24: 30 – 49

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 27 MAR, 2005

ASK A Jehovahs Witness, and he will tell you that Jesus rose spiritually from the dead, but not bodily. Ask me, and I'll tell you that Jesus is risen, body and all, forever alive!

  Some theologians suggest that it isn’t all that important whether he rose bodily or not. They say that the main thing is that people believe that he rose from the dead.

  Of course, if we don’t believe it, we won’t act on it,and if we don’t act on it, we will never discover whether or not it is true.

  But the vital thing is, if we believe something which is untrue, eventually we will find ourselves living in a phantasy world.

  I grew up on history. When I was a baby, I had Farex, Rusks and history books.

  High School, Arts degree, historical research as part of my Masters degree, there’s plenty of history in my background.

  In my Theology degree, I even did an extra unit in Church History beyond the standard requirements.

  If you put me in water, I float lopsided, because the history side is overloaded.

  I could never be content with a faith that I thought was only a good idea, but not based on historical fact.

  And I am content that Jesus rose bodily and completely from the dead, and that he did it early on a Sunday morning in AD 30, just after the Passover festival.

  I don’t deny that many noble deeds have been done by people who were mistaken. The history of the Mormons, for example, contains significant accounts of great acts of faith and courage, but it is a faith built almost entirely on ideas that have no possible historical basis.

  But Jesus rose again, and the facts are with us on that!

  It is an important fact.

  I remember when I was in my late teens, a lady in our church went through the sadness of her husband’s sudden death. He went out to get the car out to drive her down to Choir Practice. He got his car onto the street and died sitting behind the wheel.

  She was devastated.

  Somewhere along the line, she asked the pastor, “Will I recognise my husband again, when we get to heaven?”

  That is an important question for us when we grieve the death of someone we love. Will we recognise that person, or will we be totally different and unrecognisable?

  Look at Jesus. He’s the answer.

  Some of you may have guessed one of my hidden secrets, which is an interest in aircraft. I may have mentioned The Red Baron or Adolf Galland or Douglas Bader in an occasional sermon.

  There were many early experiments in flight, because people have always wanted to fly.

  They say that an English monk may have made the first working glider, back around the 1100s. Perhaps he even made a man carrying version. There are strong rumours.

  Francis Bacon, another monk, worked out that air has weight. That was pretty clever for the 14th Century. He decided to extract the air from a couple of thin copper globes, so that they would float in the air.

  It was nearly a good idea. He didn’t quite invent flight, but he probably invented the implosion — that’s like an explosion, only inwards. The air pressure crushed the copper spheres once they were emptied of air.

  Another man noticed that dew rises in the morning. So he got a large leather bag and filled it with dew. Good try... it didn’t lift off, though.

  My favourite was the man who made a pair of wings about big enough to lift a small dog and constructed a harness to hold them to his back.

  It had been tried before, of course. But he had a secret ingredient.

  “Every creature has a body suited to its own environment,” he said. “Fish have different bodies from humans, with scales and fins and gills. And birds have different bodies, too — coated with soft, light feathers. That’s the kind of body to fly in the air!”

  So he glued lots and lots of feathers onto his wings and, when they were all set, he jumped off a high wall.

  He didn’t invent flying, but he may well have invented the compound fracture.

  He thought it all over and worked out what went wrong.

  “I should have used eagle feathers, not chook feathers,” he said. “Everyone knows that chooks can hardly fly.”

  But he hit on a truth. Everything has a body suited to its environment.

  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

15:35 But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” ³⁶ How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. ³⁷ When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸ But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. ³⁹ All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another...

^15:42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; ⁴³ it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴ it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

  We saw in the gospel reading that Jesus was changed.

  For example, the two disciples whom he met on the road to Emmaus were able to walk quite a distance with Jesus before they realised who it was. It was his distinctive action when breakng the bread that alerted them to him.

  Another example is when he suddenly appeared among the disciples in their locked upper room.

  Somehow, Jesus wasn’t limited physically in the same way as we are.

  It doesn’t say that he walked through walls or anything like that, just that he was there.

  You remember when Mary met Jesus in the garden, and thought he was the gardener. At first she didn't recognise him, but when he spoke her name, she knew him at once. Something had changed, but she could still recognise him when he spoke in a distinctive way.

  Recently, I had dinner at my mother's place, because she had been visited by two friends from many years ago, John and Jenni. John is a computer geek, one of the first. He took my brother and me to look at the University of NSW's computer when I was about 10, back in the mid 1950s. He was one of the authorised users back then. Jenni is very people–oriented. She told me that she hadn't seen me since I was 16. She had been working it out.

  They were in their 30s back then; now they are around 70. They were different. If I had passed them in the street, I probably might have thought, “That couple looks familiar.” But I wouldn’t have recognised them at once. I suppose I look a bit different these days, too. It’s probably the beard. When I was 16, I weighed about 60kg, had brown hair, and always cut what little beard I had as short as a razor could make it.

  It seems that Jesus had changed, but that people would recognise him if he spoke to them or did something they recognised.

  But there were other differences

.  You find an instance of his different abilities in Matthew's Gospel. When Jesus met the women in one of his very earliest post–resurrection appearances, he tells them to tell the Twelve to meet him in Galilee.

  When the Twelve Apostles get to Galilee, it appears that Jesus got there well before them. He is able to travel faster than other people.

  So the Resurrection body is different from the previous body. It is suited for a new environment. Jesus is seated at this moment by the right hand of his father in heaven, from where he shall come to judge the living and the dead. His body is now transformed to suit that present heavenly environment.

  Yet there are even more indications that Jesus rose physically.

  In John 20, we read,

⁶ Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

  It seems that the cloths which were wrapped around the body were left where they had been, except that the wrappings from around Jesus’ head were a little way from the rest.

  It is as though Jesus had been dissolved out of the cloths, melted out and let set again. If tomb robbers had stolen the body, they would have stolen the cloths, too. The cloth from around his head was certainly still folded up in a kind of turban form.

  Somehow Jesus’ body was able to move through these heavy bindings and be free.

  This is important to me today, because it says that I will recognise those who have gone before me and are now together with the Lord.

  I think of my grandparents and Chris’ parents and my father. I think of my great uncle Ted and all the uncles and aunts and cousins who died in the Lord. I think of our family friends as I was growing up, all who died in Christ. I’ll know them, and they'll know me! But we’ll be different. I imagine that we will be younger there, at the height of our powers. Someone suggested that we will all be around 30 in our heavenly existence, because we will be like Jesus, who was around that age when he died and rose again.

  My Pop Taylor was 63 when I was born. I never knew him as a young man with a big black moustache and music running around his head all the time. But he’ll be there. And he may barely know me as the 30–year–old I became a few years after he died. But it will all work out. We will know each other, and we will be glad!

  Jesus is the model for us and what will happen to us.

If we share in a death like his, we will also share in a resurrection like his.

  The day is coming when everything that Jesus’ resurrection points towards will find its fruition. We read,

^{1TH 4:13} Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. ¹⁴ We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. ¹⁵ According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

  That crowning day is coming before too long. It will be a crowning day, and not a frowning day. It will be a shouting day, and not a pouting day, because the Lord shall come down, and the archangel will blow that trumpet, and we shall have a resurrection like Jesus’ resurrection.

  Old Eunice was another of the saints whom I will meet when I get there. She will be young Eunice then. When Ivy Whitley introduced her to, she said, “I am not Eunice, I am Saint Eunice.”

  Eunice told me that she wanted to die before the year 2000. I said, “Why?”

  “Because I believe that Jesus will probably come in 2000.”

  “So, why do you want to die before then?”

  “Well, the Bible says that the dead in Christ shall rise first, and after that those who are alive when he comes shall be lifted up as well. I want to die before Jesus returns, because I want to be in the first group to go up!”

   God has answered that prayer!

  I dont know the answer to every question about how these things will happen. That’s beyond me.

  But I am glad that Jesus truly rose again, and that I can be confident in that fact.

  And I am glad that he provides the model, the paradigm for us all.

  If I want to understand the coming resurrection of all the saints, then I need to understand Jesus’ own resurrection. He pictures that resurrection existence to us: the one who suffered all that death could fling against him, and it could not conquer him.

  Without the resurrection, what possible meaning could the cross have?

  I was talking to a workmate, Rajko, as we travelled on the bus one afternoon in early 1964. Although he was nominally a Catholic, it didn’t mean a lot to him.

  We were discussing the cross, and he said, “I know that Jesus died, but what good does it do to know that?”

  I replied, “Without the resurrection, probably very little. It’s the resurrection which vindicates everything that Jesus did on the cross, and proves that it was a sacrifice which pleased God the Father.”

  He hadn’t thought about that. He was still thinking about it the next morning.

1JN 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³ Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

  We don’t know what we shall be, but we know we will be like Jesus when he appears.

  What a great and glorious hope!

  Let’s rejoice gladly in it!

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)