Sermon for September 22nd, 2019

John 5:25-29 (NT page 96)

25 “Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; 27 and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

John 20:21-23 (NT page 115)

21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

The Apostles’ Creed – I Believe in the Holy Spirit, Part II

One day, a man is walking along the beach when he comes across a lamp partially buried in the sand. He picks up the lamp rubs it against his shirt to clean the dirt off, when suddenly, a genie appears and tells him he has been granted one wish! The guy thinks for a moment and says, "I want to live forever."

"Sorry," said the genie, "I'm not allowed to grant eternal life." So the man thinks for a moment, then says, "Alright, in that case, I want to die one day after Congress balances the budget and eliminates the national debt." The genie glares at the man for a rew seconds and says, "You crafty devil..."

For the last six weeks, we've been talking about the most ancient statement of Christian belief, the Apostles' Creed. And today we come to the end. Only it's not an end...it's a beginning. Because the final words of the Creed testify to a central belief in Christianity, a belief in the "life everlasting."

I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. As we wrap up this sermon series today, I want to talk about these three things in reverse order, starting with the "life everlasting."

The Life Everlasting

As a child, my earliest understanding of Christianity--perhaps it was yours, too--was that if you did good things, lived a good live, when you died you would go to a place called "heaven." And if you did bad things, lived a bad life, when you died you would go to a place called "hell." I vaguely understood that God and Jesus had something to do with this, but it wasn't clear exactly what.

That was actually the view of most Christians in the middle ages, and seems to be supported by Jesus' words in John 5, that on judgement day, the dead will "come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation." It's also, more or less, a view still held by many Christians today.

The problem with this view is that it's really hard to be good all the time. Most of us have done things we aren't proud of. And no one (not even within Christianity) seems to be able to agree completely on what exactly *is* good and what is bad. If being good is the standard for getting into heaven, it must bee a lonely place.

There's an old joke about God and Mother Theresa, who are sitting around in heaven one day eating dinner together. They're eating tuna salad and some crackers, when Mother Theresa looks down into hell and sees people eating four course dinners with steak and wine. She asks God why they can't eat like that, and God replies, "Well it doesn't really make sense to cook all that for just two people."

As I became older, sat through a few Sunday School classes and sermons, I came to a more nuanced understanding of Christianity. It wasn't about whether you were good or bad, but rather if you believed in Jesus, and accepted him into your heart, you would go to heaven. Because Jesus died to pay for your sins. And if you didn't believe in Jesus, no matter how good you were, you would still go to hell.

That was the view of most Christians--especially Protestant Christians--in the Renaissance and Reformation, and up through most of the modern era.

The problem with this understanding is that it puts a lot of people in hell simply because they've never heard of Jesus. And it doesn't seem very fair that people who sincerely accept Jesus into their hearts, but then do horrible things, still get to enjoy eternity in heaven.

Furthermore, a big problem with both of these views (medieval and modern) is that they just aren't supported by the Bible, or the beliefs of the earliest Christians. The concept of Heaven and Hell as places of eternal reward or punishment were late developments, influenced initially by Greek, Roman and Norse philosophy, and then by the imagination of medieval art and literature, poems like Dante's Inferno and Paradise. When the words "heaven" and "hell" do (rarely) appear in the Bible, they usually have a different meaning in their original context, which we then force our medieval and modern understandings into, rather awkwardly.

And the Apostles' Creed, the statement of belief used by pre-medieval Christians, makes absolutely no mention of heaven or hell. Instead, it speaks of judgment, eternal life, and the resurrection of the dead--concepts that do appear frequently in the words of Jesus and the New Testament.

Later in my own journey--when I began to reclaim my faith and study the scriptures more intensely, I came to what I would call both an ancient AND post-modern understanding of the "life everlasting." When Jesus uses

Putting it All Together

"You don’t have to be defined by the worst things you’ve ever done. And you don’t have to be tomorrow who you were yesterday. God wants to forgive you. God is the God of the Second Chance. Jesus suffered and died to redeem you. Ours is a gospel of redemption. God offers new life for old, grace and redemption for guilt and shame. And we can, and likely must, claim this every day." --Adam Hamilton