The Children Get Up and Reign

Ch 5: Resurrection

This is the fifth part in a series that begins with The Conqueror.  I am pasting here the introduction from Part 1 that serves as the introduction to the whole series.

"We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  It's a pretty good one liner and I have kind of been using it as the unofficial motto of our church.  "We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  What I mean to imply by that is that the Gospel is the only thing that matters.  The Gospel, quite literally, justifies all of our other mistakes, errors, and failures.  So, I don't know how far our little look into Revelation will get but the key that I intend to use is something like this.  "I am wrong about eschatology.  I am wrong about numerology.  I am wrong about symbolism.  But I intend to be right about what the Revelation says about Christ."  Where it is necessary to try and interpret John's visions to tell my story, I don't intend to seek a coherent system of symbolism, I don't intend to offer any opinion on the chronology of the "End Times", not even in the most general of ways.  Instead, I will shamelessly use all of the imagery and mysticism to try and illustrate the Christ of Revelation.  If that is how John intended it to be used then it might work out pretty well.  If it isn't, "Oh well."

A few weeks ago while visiting my dad, we decided to go and see his mother's grave since I had not been there since her funeral.  Cemeteries always hit me in a weird place, I don't know how to describe what I think or feel when I am there, but Carpenter Cemetery most of all because that is where my people are buried.  It is just a field deep in rural Florida.  I think the land for it must have been part of a farm before because it is still surrounded by fields with just a small wild growth around to separate the cemetery from the farmland.  There is no church attached or anything, it is just a well tended lawn with a few bushes and a lot of curious stonework stuck in the ground.  The kids had been cooped up in the van all morning so while Daddy and I were looking at and talking about our people who were there we let them run about on the paths.  But when they wanted to play hide and seek I had to tell them no because I didn't want them getting wild and I was concerned that it might be disrespectful.

And I think that that was the germination of my thoughts.  Who would it be disrespectful to?  Well, to the ones who were in the graves.  To the dead.  To Granny, and to her daddy that I never met, and to Great Gran, who we buried the first time I was in that place when I was just a boy?  But these weren't some anonymous, faceless dead who's presence called for an anonymous, faceless respect.  They were people who I knew, people who were planted there as seeds in the hope of rising again.  And as I thought about who they really were, it occurred to me that they would not be upset at children playing around their graves, and then I saw for a moment the dead rising, not as we had planted them but as children able to see the truth of the graveyard where they lay for so long, able to see that it would be an excellent place to play hide and seek.

From Revelation 20: Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.

One of the great themes in Revelation is that things go like you expect them to, up to a point.  All of the ancient societies that we know anything about had a story like this, of men being judged according to their works after their death.  And Revelation follows the script.  Until it doesn't.

A lot of groups within Christianity that seem very different on the surface have very deep similarities.  I am thinking of the Church of Rome and the Dispensationalists.  I know that in a lot of ways they are very different but the similarity that I had in mind is that they both see Grace and Forgiveness as a sort of big exception to Justice, which they consider a fundamental reality.  The Dispensationalists go so far as to talk of Christ's Church and His New Covenant as existing in a "Parenthesis"-of it being an isolated thing that has no effect on the rest of time and space which lives under the rigor of the Law.  The Romanists on the other hand, see God as defaulting to a works based judgment and only being moved if some outside force, Mary or the Saints pleads in a specific instance for Grace.  Now, personally I think that both are examples of how the God of Philosophy, the God built out of what seems right to man, has been substituted for the God of Scripture.

And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life.  Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And noone found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

First off, full disclosure.  I rearranged this passage slightly, moving the introduction of The Other Book down about two verses to be adjacent to the passage that describes the significance of the Book of Life, I also moved the negation in the last sentence.  The last sentence is usually translated something like "Anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire." but I have written it as, "Noone found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire." because the point is not the destruction but the abundant Grace.

Our sins and our virtues, if any, have been made irrelevant.  In John's vision, the books of our works are read into the record and a verdict is reached about us based on those works, and then something more basic, more fundamental steps in and revises the verdicts based solely on the goodness of God. 

Victor Hugo tells a story about Louis Phillipe, who was made King of France during the Revolution. After having rejected all kings they found that they again wanted a king, for a time, and put in a good man, a man who was more proud of being a Physician, a healer, than of being the heir to the House of Orleans, a king who would pull out his Gladstone bag and treat his servants. But though the French people wanted again a king, they did not give him very much power. Louis Phillipe was in many ways a figurehead, but one power that he had, and used, was the power to ‘revise’ sentences for criminals, that is if the king could find any ground for leniency he could reduce the sentence. And Louis would stay up late into the night searching for grounds for mercy, as he put it ‘disputing every inch of ground with the guillotine’. That is a beautiful and captivating piece of history, but it is not what is happening at the judgment seat of God. All of the reasons for mercy have already been dealt with, every excuse has been made for us when the books of our works and of the Law are considered. The sentence of damnation has been fully sisted. And then…there is Another Book, not of Law or of Works because they have been fully considered. Not of mercy on this grounds or that. But a Book of Sovereign Grace.

Paul draws the scenario rather more simply when he says that the writing which is against us has simply been erased.  But in both cases what is significant is that justice, not weak and corrupt human justice but the perfection of divine justice gives way before something older, something more fundamental.  Justice is shown to be logically accidental to God's nature when it collides with Goodness and Grace which are shown to be of the essence of God.  Mercy triumphs over justice and love covers a multitude of sins, and the Law not only cannot annul the Promise, which precedes it, but is annulled by the Promise on which the Law is built.

We have tried to focus on Revelation as "The Revelation of Jesus Christ" and we have seen Him righteous in judgment and when He makes War, and holding the keys to Death and Hell, but I think that here we have the beginning and end of John's vision of Christ.  It begins with only the Slain Lamb able to open the scroll, which I have said indicates that it is only through Christ's death that we can see the true nature of God, and almost the very end, after the wrath of God is finished, after the Krisis of Judgment, in which God is shown as an impersonal Law Enforcer the very idea of God that led Adam to hide behind the bush, "Another Book" is opened, the Tree of Life has been made into a Book of Life, and this is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Revelation of Gracious Salvation, that Noone who is in the Death of Christ is subject to their own Death,  that His Death is more alive than our lives.

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From 1 Corinthians 15 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 

I remember my dead, and it is not that they had grown beyond play, that they had advanced to a sober mien and respectful deportment.  And as I am becoming older and carrying myself in a little more dignified way myself I recognize that this is not a growth or an advance.  We have not risen above play but fallen back from it, as our bodies are no longer up to the task of play.  I pray however that our hearts and our minds have not become so sick and frail as our bodies, and I know that my Granny's had not, and from what I remember of her mother she had not either.  And I dreamed them, risen as children, hiding behind and chasing one another around and over and through the graves that they vacated.

While I don't mean to say that we haven't made any progress from our childhood, much of what we have learned has been how to make do with reduced circumstances.  We have learned how to eat and live to take care of bodies that once could consume nothing but colored sugar and run and jump all day long without the slightest twinge of pain or fatigue.  We have learned how to get by in a world that provides only a scanty part of what we need mixed with great piles of futility.

It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.

We have borne the image of Adam, and what is Adam's story?  It is to begin with freedom, and health, and power, and joy and to sink into slavery, and sickness, and frailty, and misery.  But we shall bear the image of Christ, and what is Christ's story?  It is to triumph in and through all of these things, a spirit who's life overflows so much that it brings life to all around.  The problem with the world that we live in can be defined very simply.  All of the imagination and creativity, all of the dreams are concentrated in the boys.  And all of the skill and the knowledge and the capability is concentrated in the men.  By the time that we learn how to make things happen, we have forgotten the grand and noble things that we once wanted to make happen, and we use our skill and knowledge to make trivial and petty things happen instead.  And so, greatness would be to obtain the skill and knowledge of manhood without losing the vision of boyhood, and I must insist that the Resurrection is not a rising to an eternal choir practice or an eternal church service but a new life, not simply being carried to a Senior Center of a Heaven but New Heavens and a New Earth, new worlds to explore, new adventures to have, and the capacity to have and enjoy those adventures.

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O Death, where is your sting?

O Hades, where is your victory?” from 1 Corinthians 15

So, what does all of this mean?  What's the takeaway?  Just that we shouldn't let the failure of this body be the failure of our dreams.  So, I'm asking you simply to set goals and dream dreams that cannot be completed in this life.  When this life is over, our accomplishments will be meager, our contribution insignificant, and if in this life only we have hope then we are truly pitiful.  So, the book of human wisdom advises us to set goals consistent with the tight constraints we live under.  But there is Another Book, and it promises that what we can do now, compares to the potential, to the Glory that will be revealed in us, as a seed compares to a tree.  Don't let the end of this life be the end of your dreams.