“ … who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.”

(Philippians 3:21)

 

Why people take a morbid interest in what happens to the human body after death, I don’t know, but they do. It was nauseating for me to listen to tourists talk of viewing the mummified bodies in the cemetery at Qaunajuate, Mexico. Why they take an interest in the freak funeral products of that high, dry climate where bodies placed in vaults above the ground are turned into stone in less than five years, I couldn’t understand. And yet I ultimately found myself going, in morbid curiosity, into the subterranean chamber where human bodies are stacked row on row like stove wood, turned to stone by the atmosphere and turned out of their private vaults in the cemetery because the families could not or would not continue to pay tomb rent.

Why people persist in wanting to know what happens to the souls of man after death in spite of the combined efforts of the materialists, the moralists, and the intelligentsia to keep us oriented to “this worldliness” instead of an “other-worldliness,” I don’t know, but they do. Just let someone lose a loved one by death and before the grave is closed over the coffin they are asking: “How shall I think of my son, my wife, my mother now? Where has my beloved gone? Does he still live and what is his life like there?”

When Tennyson lost his dear friend, Arthur Henry Hallum, he asked: “Does my old friend remember me?” A young person seriously ill in the hospital said to me: “What is the nature of the resurrection body? What resemblance will it bear to our earthly body? Will we recognize and be recognized in heaven by those we’ve known in this life?”

It seems that man is incurably obsessed with curiosity about human destiny beyond the portals of death. Like a child, he may be diverted for a season with trinkets to handle and places to go and see, but he always comes back with his curious questions and sits down before that locked door. It has been that way at least since the first century when St. Paul found the Corinthians asking: “How are the dead raised up and with what body do they come?”

Well, our Christian faith deals with all these questions in a very straightforward manner. The scriptures tell us just about all we want to know on this subject and some relevant things, it would appear, we are loathe to learn and determined to pay no attention to.

First, the Bible teaches that for God’s children life does not end with death. On that night before his death and departure from the circle of his friends, Jesus said: “Let not your hearts be troubled. In my Father’s house are many rooms. I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there you may be also.” And before Lazarus’ tomb, “He that believeth on me though he were dead yet shall he live, and who so liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” As God raised Jesus from the dead, so shall death be powerless to hold any man or woman who is God’s through faith in Christ.

In the second place, the Bible teaches that the dead in Christ shall be raised up with a new, transformed spiritual body. We shall not be disembodied spirits forever in a ghostlike existence. It is not that same body which is laid to rest that is raised up. That body decays and returns to dust. St. Paul says: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” But as God has furnished His child with an earthly body adapted for life in this world so will He furnish his own with a suitable body for the needs of eternal life beyond death.

In that heavenly body there will be no more pain, no more wearing out, no more disease and death, no more weeping and sorrow, no more separation, either by death or spiritual alienation, or by national or racial differences, for John, in the Revelation, writes that he glimpsed in heaven “a great multitude, which no man could number, out of all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne and the lamb, clothed with white robes, and psalms in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9)

In the third place, the heavenly body will be a body designed to express perfectly the soul of each child of God. Our heavenly body’s outward appearance and functions will correspond exactly to our inner nature. We can understand how “St. Paul, with his magnificent soul, obstructed at every turn by his ailing body, was sensitive more than other men to the humiliation he had constantly to suffer.” So, by faith, he declares that “Christ shall change our vile body to be like his own glorious body.” (Philippians 3:21) (E. F. Scott — Interpreters Bible)

In this life our physical bodies sometimes hide or conceal our true natures. Haven’t we known some beautiful dispositions hidden in horrible looking bodies? On the other hand, haven’t we encountered behind beautiful faces, despicable characters, ugly natures, small selfish souls living in handsome glamorous bodies?

Our word “sincere,” as you know, is born of an old Roman practice. It comes of two Latin words, “sine” meaning “without” and “cire” meaning “wax.” For in ancient Roman art shops, the finest statuary was always displayed in the out of doors, under the hot sun, and the perfect specimen was marked with a sign “Sin-cere” without wax. Dishonest craftsmen might hide marred or imperfect statues by filling in with wax, but the heat of the sun would prove whether or not they were “sine” “cire” — sincere.

Our heavenly body will be sincere, without pretense, accurately and adequately revealing and expressing our true spiritual nature. They will be high fidelity recordings of what we really are.

Also let us take note of this fourth scriptural teaching about our heavenly bodies: We are now in the process of growing or maturing the immortal soul which will then be revealed by that spiritual body. This is the startling and horrifying fact with which Holy Scripture confronts us and which we are so loathe to accept intellectually or practically. A sort of spiritual “pre-fabricating” of our heavenly bodies, then, is taking place every day of our earthly life. Young John Keats was speaking very biblically when he wrote in his letter that “this world is a vale of soul making.” And while the soul is in the process of maturing or degenerating, the heavenly body counterpart, through which the soul will express itself in complete sincerity, is also being fabricated.

How ridiculous of us to assume, in a soft headed sentimental sort of way, that the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body means that we will be automatically outfitted with a sleek, glamorous heavenly body at death.

It’s God’s creation, of course, this heavenly body. As St. Paul says: “God giveth it a body as pleaseth Him.” But man is not inactive in the earthly pre-fabrication of this heavenly body. A man’s relationship to Christ, the Lord of life, is the formative factor in the maturing of his soul. Christ is the goal — “that we should all attain unto the stature of the fullness of Christ.” His are the perfect measurements for the heavenly body. Ponder that, all we who read the waist, bust and hip measurements of Miss America. His is also the transforming power by which we are developed toward the goal of perfect man: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another.” (II Corinthians 3:18) But this power of the living Christ is operative in us in direct proportion to our relationship of trust, love and obedience to Him.

Do you remember how the mother of James and John came to Jesus saying: “O promise me that one day my two boys will sit on your right hand and on your left in the places of honor when you come into your Kingdom?” Jesus’ reply to her is significant for us at this juncture. You will remember he asked her boys: “Are you able to drink of the cup I drink, and to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

What does this mean? Why, to meet the experiences of this world — its harsh betrayals, its losses, its opportunities, with the same spirit that our Christ had of obedience to the Father, of love for all, even his persecutors and enemies, and to hang on a cross saying: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” To take the treasures of life, its vitalities, relationships, joys and sorrows and lay life down for others, not greedily grasping what He could for Himself — this is the cup He drank, this the baptism with which He was baptized, and those who are able, are those who will with Him in glory shine.

It is preposterous for us to think we can live any old sort of way and be clothed with immortality at death, as if God would forcibly thrust us into the straightjacket heavenly body we have shown no taste for, nor interest in, during this life.

Remember this world is also our Father’s world. Jesus said heaven is just another room in the Father’s house. He will be the same Father there as here, and He will not force us to become, against our wills, what we refused here. Yes, our heavenly body will be designed to express and reveal whatever qualities of heavenliness are now being developed within us by the grace of Christ, during our sojourn in this room of our Father’s house. Don’t think that our Father in heaven is going to make us become another kind of nature against our will in that other room. There, as here, He is a loving Heavenly Father who teaches us His moral law, and entreats us through the mercies of Christ, but He will never force us.

So long as we prefer sensuality to spirituality, superior airs and lording it over our fellows to humble service of the lowliest, after the example of Him who took a towel and bowl of water and washed His disciples’ feet, so long as we prefer hatred and violence to love and gentleness, so long as we choose our own notion of right and wrong in open rebellion to the plain moral demands of His holy scriptures, so long will He let us. But we ought to know what we are doing. We are refusing the grace of Christ to change our vile bodies into the likeness of His own glorious body.

And just what is the business of the church in this vale of soul making in this task of pre-fabricating our heavenly bodies? Is the church for you a gathering of congenial souls where you can meet on a Sunday morning the same crowd you meet on a Sunday evening at the club for supper and a drink and a show? Is church a brief interlude of soft music and pious platitudes in the midst of the harsh realities of the week when something that lives deep inside us can be given a few moments to breathe before it is submerged again in the rough and tumble of real life? What is the church and how does it fit into this business of soul making?

Just here — the church exists on earth as the body of Christ. Please take note of this biblical, New Testament term — the church is the body of Christ — the broken and bleeding, yet living body of Christ. In His church, when it is His church, Christ is alive in the world performing His saving and reconciling ministry, doing His work, pouring out His love. Church is not just eleven o’clock Sunday morning. Church is every minute of every day where, singly and by twos and threes, the living Christ is made manifest, real, alive, in all those places where men and women live and work and struggle and die.

And that part of church which is eleven o’clock Sunday morning is just a season when the body of Christ is — by giving attention to His word, communing with His Spirit, finding encouragement from the faith, obedience, and love of other men and women in Christ — giving Him a chance to fashion, mold, make over, these souls of ours, into something more and more like Him. Hence, all the scriptural injunctions about how we ought to come into God’s presence: humbly and not in pride, lest even the spirit of eternal God wrestle with us in vain; penitently confessing our sins, that there be some hope of changing us; in love toward our fellow man out of obedience to Christ’s commands. The church, its teaching, worship, service ministry, is for soul making in this vale of tears.

Have you noticed the wooden scaffold on our church tower, right at the top, here at Idlewild? Do you know what that has been put up there for? For workmen to stand on as they repair the damage of that lightening strike some weeks ago. That’s all it is. It is not that the officers of this church have moved the pulpit of this church a little bit further from the world of reality so that the gospel of Christ will come to gear into the very stuff of contemporary experience where we live and move and have our being.

This life is a vale of soul making, and the heavenly body God will give us will be fashioned to express that soul which, by the grace of Christ, He is seeking to fashion in us day by day, and the church of our Lord is here, now and always, to help with that soul making.

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

O Thou Eternal Spirit, who hast set our noisy years in the midst of Thy eternity and hast put eternity in our hearts making us citizens of that imperishable realm where with Thee the saints in glory shine and who, by Thy Son Jesus Christ hast called us in this fair world to acknowledge Thy fatherhood and to set our affections on things above, visit us now in this hour of common worship with an inward vision of Thy glory.

Confirm our feeble striving after truth, beauty, and righteousness. Defend us from temptations to spend ourselves for those things that defile, destroy and corrupt our immortal souls.

As in Christ our Lord, Thou hast come to us, claimed us, and redeemed us as Thine own, so in Him keep us by an indissoluble personal relationship in faith, obedience, and devotion, that we shall die to sin and live to righteousness and our souls be perfected by all we experience so we shall grow more and more into the stature of the fullness of complete man in Christ Jesus.

We lift to Thee the names and needs of our close friends and dear kindred and fellow members of this congregation. We intercede with Thee for Thy divine assistance in the desperate spiritual needs of our nation, world and Southland. Heal the sick, comfort the sorrowing and bereaved. Give courageous patience to the dying. Endow us individually and collectively with love, faith and steadfast obedience that love may take the place of hatred, brotherly kindness adorns our common life rather than deeds of violence and cruelty. As we earnestly desire that all men everywhere should respect our rights as persons and accord us the dignity of immortal souls, so may we respect and serve all our fellows as Thy children through Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught us to pray saying …