SERMON “Awake, Awake”
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord my rock and my redeemer (Ps. 19.14). Amen.
We’re approaching the end of the Church year. It’s almost time to start the new year. That time will be here after just two more Sundays. Since the start of Advent last year we’ve had a time of mourning and begging God to send a redeemer, we’ve celebrated the coming of the redeemer, we’ve wondered as we realize what kind of redeemer Jesus is, we’ve humbled ourselves to walk with him through forty days of temptation, we’ve rejoiced in our risen savior, and we’ve spent many weeks now, twenty, to be specific, in the Time of the Church, the Pentecost season, living through the life cycle of the Church. And today, as we approach the end of the Church year, we have come to our observance of All Saints’ Day, which was actually last Tuesday. This fits in well with the theme we’ve seen in the last several weeks’ readings. We are moving closer and closer to the end. We’ve started seeing God’s judgment upon sin arising. And what is God’s judgment on sin? The wages of sin is death. We see as we end the Church year that God has prepared a way for his people to leave this sinful world. He has prepared a way of salvation, and that way follows him through death on the path to resurrection.
Let us never forget, then, that those who die in Christ are following him through the tomb. Let us always remember that those who have died with Jesus are also partakers with him of the resurrection. Let us remember that our Lord rose from the dead in part to show us that he is victorious over even death itself. And today we realize that many many generations of Christians have died before us, living and dying in the hope of the resurrection. So what is God’s judgment on sin? It’s death. Has he not already judged sin in his death? He most certainly has, yet we who belong to Jesus are still sinful beings. We confess it regularly. So how is our Lord going to separate us from our sinful condition once and for all? In the end he will take us through death and strip us of the sin which has so dominated us. How will he raise us? When Jesus raises us from the dead we are like him. The sinful nature has been stripped away. All that remains is pleasing in God’s eyes. Unless the Lord comes first none of us gets to skip the grave. Since Adam and Eve we’ve all been very mortal, more mortal than we like to think at times. Even teens are mortal. Did you know that? Think about it when you get into the car. And if we had some travel brochures to print here we might put in a nice picture of your final destination – Shady Gardens Cemetary. We’re all headed to the cemetary in one way or another. Some of us sooner, some of us later, but all of us are headed for death. We were born that way and we have lived all our lives that way. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t the way God created it to be in the beginning, in a world without the Fall. But it’s the way the Scripture portrays us. Every last one of us has an appointment with death. Does that make us grieve? Does that bother us? It should bother us. It should make us grieve. It’s a very bad thing to see someone we love ripped limb from limb, or rather ripped body from soul. We were never created to be anything but body and soul together. Yet our bodies wear out, thanks to the curse of sin. We have no option but the resurrection. It’s sad to get there. But there’s a glorious promise waiting for us. We can know with confidence that Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection. We can know that he has borne the penalty for our sin. We can know that he will keep us perfectly safe. As we trust in our Lord we know that nothing will harm us. The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still.
Yet I fear we look at our impressions of death too much. This is an area of life where people seem to make up their own minds and then ignore everything God has to say about it in the Scripture. But if we’re going to die, and we all can expect to do that one day, we should see how God pictures death. And here in 1 Thessalonians Paul, speaking by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, pictures death as sleep. Some Christians have fallen asleep in Jesus. In his coming he will raise them from their sleep and then bring us who are still awake along with them. You may also recall that when Jesus hears of the death of his friend Lazarus he tells his disciples that Lazarus is sleeping. He does the very same thing when he is called to the house where he raises a little girl from the dead. What’s happening here? Doesn’t God know the difference between sleep and death? Why, looking around the congregation right now I can see that there are a number of people sleeping, but they aren’t dead . . . not yet. But we need to take this seriously. God compares sleep and death, and they have a number of similarities I’d like to point out briefly.
Death, like sleep, is unavoidable. Do you know what happens if you try to kill yourself by staying awake? There are several things that happen to your body, and they are bad things, if you are sleep deprived. If you were to stay awake for a very very long time you would likely develop heart irregularities, trouble with your brain’s ability to regulate your bodily systems, and you would die. Then again, what’s really going to happen if you stay awake for a long time? Maybe you’re someone with a whole lot of energy and self-discipline. But have you ever been up all day, stayed up all night, then tried to have a normal day the next day? Know what’s going to happen when you end up sitting down and being still for ten minutes? You’ll fall asleep. Sleep will take over and take you away from the things which have been going on. In the same way, when you have lived as long as your Lord intends you to live he will take you through death. It’s unavoidable. By the way, there’s an odd little indignity that you have to undergo at the end of your life. In almost all states the death certificate requires someone to say your cause of death. But they can’t say “failure to live” or “time ran out.” So they have to assign your death to some cause other than “divine appointment.”
Like sleep, death is timeless. When you’re asleep you really have no idea if you’ve been out for ten minutes or ten hours. You don’t realize that until you wake up. When God takes us in death he is ushering us into his timelessness. We are no longer subject to time. We won’t know whether we’ve been with our Lord for a long time or a short time. We won’t know whether we’re waiting for our loved ones to arrive and be with us. We are ushered into eternity. It isn’t bound by time. That means we won’t ever be an hour late or an hour early. There are no time zones or time shifts after death. It’s a matter of no consequence, for God is always NOW.
Like sleep, death is inexplicable. There’s a whole branch of medicine dedicated to finding out what actually happens when we are asleep. Nobody knows for certain all that is going on when we are asleep. It’s a state that defies complete explanation. Death is the same way. We don’t know quite certainly when someone is dead. I talked with someone very briefly about this not long ago. She had pronounced someone dead. But it was several minutes after everyone in the room knew the person had died. Why did she wait? The moment of death isn’t quite precise. And some of us think the various monitors you can have in a hospital serve more to complicate matters than to explain them. We can’t quite explain what happens. It isn’t merely physical. There’s something that goes beyond the body. But it’s something we can’t measure, it’s something we can’t explain.
Like sleep, death is healing. There’s something I’ve been saying, and have not said to many people when praying for them, but it’s true anyway. I just prefer saying it to people who seem healthy. What do you expect to happen if I pray that you will be healed? Well, some of us expect nothing at all will happen. But some of us expect that God will in fact undertake and do something as we pray. But what kind of healing are we looking for? What do we expect? Do we expect a physical rest from suffering? Do we expect God to raise up someone who can help our bodies find rest? There are several people I pray with regularly who are elderly and whose health is declining. If I pray for God to heal them, what if he heals their spiritual wounds? What if he heals their fallen way of looking at suffering? What if he makes it possible to count it all joy when they suffer in this world? What if he makes them more eager for their heavenly home? What if he heals them by releasing them from life in our sin-cursed world? There are so many ways that we can see healing. We see some of them in sleep as well, don’t we? We can forget what’s happening while we rest. We find our bodies recover from illnesses as we give them rest. And our Lord himself, the giver of life, will give us rest and healing at the end of this life.
Finally, like sleep, death is temporary. Just as you cannot remain awake forever you cannot remain asleep forever. Even teenagers eventually wake up! And in the last day we who are asleep in Christ will awaken. We will be raised with him and be awake to life, to eternal life. There is nothing that will stop our Lord from waking us up. And who will be there with us when we awaken? Not only Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, but all who have died in Christ. We will awaken to be with our eternal family together in a place and time of bliss.
So today, as we recognize All Saints’ Day, we should also realize that those who have fallen asleep in Christ are not gone from us. They are as alive to Christ as they have ever been. In fact, they are more alive to Christ than ever before. We who believe in the resurrection of the dead should also look to our Lord in eager anticipation of his coming for us. And while we wait, let us realize that in our worship we are joining in with Christ’s people from all ages. We are not alone. We are not isolated. We are part of a great multitude which nobody can number from every nation, people, tribe, and tongue. We are able to join with angels and archangels crying out the praises of God. We are able to look to our Lord for all the hope and comfort we could ever need in this life and in eternity.
Now may the God of all comfort guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, building you up with the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from the dead, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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