Living Beyond Death (5)

 

2 Corinthians 4:16 – 5:10; Philippians 1:21 – 26

 

My brother-in-law Rod was my best friend. While he lived in Iowa and I lived on the East Coast, meaning that we didn’t see each other all that much, we talked on the phone frequently, and when we did see each other it was always a joy. Rod was my biggest cheerleader (next to Vickie) when I faced a challenge that I was unsure of, he had more confidence in me than I had in myself. Rod was always telling me how proud he was of me. We lost Rod about 20 years ago, when he was 42 years old, to complications from Type – I diabetes, it is a loss I still feel. I can still see his smile, I can still hear his voice.

 

A few years before Rod’s moving day, he came to know Jesus Christ as a result of the Gospel being preached at his grandmother’s funeral – from that day until his last breath he was amazed at the love of Jesus Christ. We didn’t make it to Rod’s bedside before he died, we were a few hours late – I knew when we drove up to his and Janet’s house that Rod was already gone, something inside me told me – Vickie didn’t know until our sister-in-law Janet met us at the door.

 

On Rod’s last morning here, his bedroom was filled with family and friends. Rod had been in a coma, unresponsive, the covers were pulled up to his neck in order to keep him warm. All of a sudden Rod’s eyes opened wide, he was obviously staring at something in the room – then his arms came from beneath the covers and he lifted both of them into the air toward what he was seeing – and then Rod was gone, it was moving day. Everyone felt something that was beyond them, that they couldn’t explain. My father - in - law George, who was not a Christian at that time, was quite clear that he had “felt something” powerful that he couldn’t explain.

 

As a child Rod suffered a number of injuries due to the weakness of his body – one of those was a broken arm – since childhood he had been unable to lift that arm above shoulder level – and yet on moving day that arm was lifted high in the air as he reached toward the invisible.

 

(On the day before his moving day, before he lapsed into a coma, Rod spent his time calling friends and telling them about Jesus).

 

What happens when a Christian (someone in a relationship with Jesus Christ) dies? What does life beyond death look like? There are some things we know, and many things we don’t know – and many of the things we know, we don’t understand…if we are honest and not making things up. In one sense, after moving day, there is still a sequence of events yet to happen – at least from a human perspective. For example, in 1 Corinthians 3:10 – 15, Paul is quite clear that the quality and nature of our works, of the things we’ve done in our lives, will be tested and shown to be what they are – either things built on Jesus Christ or not. When does that happen? How does that happen? I don’t think we really know.

 

Along this same line, in today’s passage in 2 Corinthians Paul writes, “For we must all stand before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). When does this happen? How does this happen? I don’t think we really know.

 

We do know there is an accountability yet to come. The quality of our lives matters. Jesus wasn’t kidding when He told us to store up treasure in heaven and not on earth (Matthew 6:19 – 21).

 

As we’ll see in tomorrow’s reading, when we live beyond death there is still a resurrection to come – so we know that there is a period of time between dying and being with Christ and the Resurrection of the Just and Righteous, of those in Christ – what does this intervening period look like? We really don’t know. The Bible is not the National Enquirer, the Bible was not written to satisfy our curiosity – it was written to reveal the True and Living God.

 

C.S. Lewis wrote a little story titled The Great Divorce, on the one hand it’s an easy read, on the other hand it gives us a lot to think about. Dante’s Purgatory can be helpful in terms of thinking about accountability for the way we live, it requires work to read and think about – but I imagine that most anything of value requires work (you might want to look for a contemporary translation of Dante if you read it – make sure it has explanatory notes). What’s the point of going to the gym if you don’t break a sweat?

 

What can we know about dying when reading Philippians 1:21 – 26? Here is an example of the Bible telling us the Main Thing, the Most Important Thing, and leaving it at that.

 

2 Corinthians 4:16 – 5:10: I’ve been writing two blogs for over ten years now, and I imagine that if I went back and counted which Bible passages I’ve quoted and alluded to the most, that 2 Corinthians 4:18 would be at the top or near the top. Why? Because this is the way we ought to learn to live – seeing the invisible (see also 2 Cor. 5:7 in our passage).

 

(This is why, in the midst of the pandemic, and social, political, and economic chaos; that I try to ask the questions, “What’s really happening? What is going on in the invisible world?” Otherwise we, like everyone else, will be like blind men walking in an unfamiliar house and always banging into furniture and hurting ourselves, maybe even falling down stairs!).

 

In 2 Cor. 5:4 Paul talks about a desire to be clothed with heavenly glory – not to escape (to be unclothed), but rather to complete and fulfill his destiny (to be clothed upon). Paul wants to ride the Big Kahuna – he is looking forward to it. Paul has this desire because he knows what’s in his wallet, he knows that Christ is in him and that he is in Christ.

 

In 5:5 Paul is saying that God made us for this purpose, for this destiny.

 

Please compare 5:6 - 8 with today’s Philippians passage – what do you see?

 

What is Paul’s desire in 5:9?

 

For the first few years after Disney World opened you didn’t just purchase a ticket, enter the park, and ride any ride you wanted to. Instead, you were given a book of tickets for rides, and each ticket had a letter on it. If the ride ticket had an “A”, that was for a ride like the carousel, the bottom of the excitement scale. At the other end of the scale was the “E” ticket – that was for something like Space Mountain, at the top of the excitement scale – so “E” tickets were the cool tickets.

 

Living beyond death is the ultimate “E” ticket ride.