Sermon 4/19/2019 “Glimpsing eternity”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Locations: Church of the Resurrection at Immanuel Chapel, Virginia Theological Seminary
Text: Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
Day: Good Friday 2019 (April 19, 2019)
EHT Collaboration (CC4.0)
I want to talk today about the glimpse that this day, Good Friday, gives us of eternity. How Good Friday “normalizes” death for us. You wouldn’t think that an experience we all will have—death—would need normalizing. But we need to look at death beforehand because, by ourselves, we simply cannot really conceive of our non-existence.
As you may have heard …. somewhere …. before, psychologists tell us we humans cannot imagine ourselves beyond death, cannot project our consciousness into the great beyond. This is why we ALWAYS wake up before we hit the ground in our “fall off the cliff” dreams. This is why we wake up before we dream that a semi is about to hit our Smart Car head on. This is why we latch on to various works of art that open a doorway in our soul to glimpse the “beyond.” I literally cried the first time I heard Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I heard the notes and KNEW to the core of my being that I was glimpsing eternity in some way.
Maybe you felt that way when you met your soulmate, or when each of your children was born, or when you saw your first ostrich (so funny!), or every time you see redbud or cherry trees bloom. I’m betting you know what I am talking about, that you, too, have gotten these glimpses of God. Theologians say only God could reveal his presence to us in this way; we ourselves couldn’t possibly have looked at something incredible and intuit, “There must be a God!”
In our Sunday night Forum last week, we saw movie clips of a man who described himself as “dead” even while alive. That movie won five Oscars because of the glimpses the movie’s ending gave of conscious thought beyond death. The man’s beyond-death conscious thought was gratitude for life, gratitude for even a mundane life, any life, all life, even life with a horrific end, or being addicted or dependent, as sometimes happens. This movie gave us a glimpse of eternity even though there was no mention of what we Christians know, that God is the source of all, all beauty, all life, all death, ALL that leads to new life, all gratitude.
Today, Good Friday, is when we recall Christ’s death. Today, Good Friday, is when we give thanks that Christ Jesus has given us a glimpse of the beyond, given us a glimpse of our future, given us a way to imagine ourselves beyond death, after death, living a new life.
Today, Good Friday, is when Christ’s death ripped the veil in two, the veil that kept us locked into this life and its death, ripped apart the very fabric of reality. We intuit where Christ was in the time Jesus’ body lay in the tomb, what Christ was DOING in death: putting the ripped apart reality together again in a new way so we could all share in his life after death. This is how our Creator installed a new operating system for the whole universe, and we get to look and marvel each year on how Christ accomplished this.
We Christ-followers know about this day, Good Friday. Sometimes we feel guilty about what Jesus did for us, we feel guilty in colluding in his crucifixion. Sometimes we shrug off our role in Jesus’ death by reminding ourselves the ROMANS or the JEWS killed Jesus, long ago, NOT US! We forget that we, too, are Pharisees, good people doing good in the here and now, judging others who don’t live up to our expectations of good, and assuming we can be good enough on our own to avoid eternal death. The problem is that we cannot be THAT GOOD. By living as us, by dying as us, Christ Jesus has given us a glimpse beyond death.
This is why we Christians worship a dead savior on Good Friday: we know our savior who is dead today is a glimpse of eternal life we couldn’t possibly have imagined on our own BECAUSE OUR SAVIOR DOESN’T STAY DEAD. We know this, and we cannot erase this knowledge from our glimpsing.
Some people, by the way, do not offer the Eucharist today. They focus on helping us imagine our lives with a dead Christ. And that’s a worthy endeavor guaranteed to double our gratitude on Easter Sunday. But not here, not now, not today. WE are CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION. We proclaim hope; we witness to glimpses we have caught of life beyond the grave, we give thanks for the life we have while we are alive, and KNOW we will live even after we die. Because we know that WE, TOO, will not stay dead. The Bread and Wine of the Eucharist are the Body and Blood of the living Christ, the Christ we crucified today, the Christ who shows us we don’t have to stay dead. This is OUR best glimpse of life beyond the grave. Because we know the story, we are living the story: CHRIST DOESN’T STAY DEAD. We don’t have to stay the way we are; redemption is at hand.
