Pentecost 9+ Death and Resurrection

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

The Risen Lord by He Qi

Pentecost +9 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Ephesians 2

“You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Ephesians 2:19

In 1967, Armand Nicholi, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, began teaching a class on Sigmund Freud. Students asked their professor if he could talk about a counterpoint to Freud to help them better understand Freud. Nicholi remembered reading “The Problem of Pain”during a time of heightened suffering. He decided to revamp the course and use C.S. Lewis as a counterpoint to Freud.

He ended up teaching the class for over 35 years, and in 2002, he decided to put the class into a book, “The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.” “Ultimately, the book asks the question, which man was happier, more satisfied? Is it better to be a believer or an unbeliever?”[1]

Nicholi never wanted to answer the question. He wanted students to debate it. But his book tells a slightly different story. And here I quote from the Harvard Gazette.

Nicholi’s book, however, tells another story. In response to the question of happiness, the evidence is clear: Lewis wins, hands down. After his conversion, or, as he called it, his transition, he underwent a profound change from gloomy, introverted pessimist to cheerful extrovert, described by a close friend as “great fun, an extremely witty and amusing companion … considerate … more concerned with the welfare of his friends than with himself.”

And contrary to Freud’s conviction that a spiritual worldview is incompatible with reason and intelligence, Lewis’ transition to Christianity came about as a result of a long and difficult period of critical reasoning and examination of the historical evidence. Determined to establish for himself whether Jesus was indeed the Son of God, Lewis read the New Testament in the original Greek, applying the rigorous methods he had learned as a literary scholar. Finally, he could not escape the conclusion that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be.

Freud, by contrast, was a dour pessimist who argued violently with most of his friends and colleagues. His opinion of human nature was low. He once wrote to a friend that he found “little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or none at all.”

Faced with suffering in his own life or in that of others, Freud’s only answer was to “endure with resignation.” He followed this philosophy consistently, stoically enduring the pain and discomfort of the cancer of the palate that afflicted him in the last two decades of his life. He died by assisted suicide at the age of 83.[2]

I would highly recommend reading this book.

I thought of this book when I was reflecting on Ephesians 2 this week. C.S. Lewis was transformed from death to life, from loneliness to friendship, from fear of intimacy to the risk of love. Ephesians 2 tells us that God has rescued us, given us life, and raised us into a communion of love with Him and the people of God.

This whole movement might be characterized as death and resurrection. I want to reflect upon this movement tease out some of the ways it looks in our lives. Listen to how Paul speaks of death and resurrection:

⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.^[3]

In many ways these few verses summarize the key ideas in this chapter. Here are at least four ideas we can consider:

• We were dead in our trespasses
• Made us alive together in Christ (he speaks of resurrection in past tense—this has already happened)
• Raised us up with him (we are seated with Christ in heavenly places)
• Immeasurable riches of His grace

We were dead, and we’ve been made alive. What does this mean? We were dead, and we’ve been made alive. Think of the prodigal son story. He wants his inheritance and demands it from the Father, essentially breaking relations with his family and his community. He goes away to a far country and is ultimately left alone, left poor, and starving.

These images could make us think of ancient Israel. The people turn away from God and become idolaters. The twelve tribes split into to factions and go to war. They eventually become two different nations: Judah and Israel. The people mistreat one another: the rich take advantage of the poor. Sexual immorality abounds. The people are blind and deaf to the word of the Lord and even kill the prophets. Israel and Judah are both invaded by foreign powers, their countries are destroyed, and the people are led into captivity.

These are images of death. The people have descended into Sheol. Ezekiel sees the people as a valley of dry bones. Paul sees the Gentiles as a people “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”^[4]

The Jews, God’s covenant people, lived as the Gentiles around them, so that the prophets could even say that Israel and Judah were even more foul in their sin than their neighboring pagan nations. Paul will write of the Jew and Gentiles together, “all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”^[5]

In Romans 3, Paul quotes the Psalms and says,

“None is righteous, no, not one;
¹¹ no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
¹² All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
¹³ “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
¹⁴ “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
¹⁶ in their paths are ruin and misery,
¹⁷ and the way of peace they have not known.”
¹⁸ “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” ^[6]

All humanity is dead in their sins. They break relationships. Son turns against father. Father turns son. Husband against wife. Our lusts control us. The world lives in a state of Sheol.

But God has not abandoned us. In the middle of this death, Paul writes, “But God, being rich in mercy…”^[7] Some people envision God as an angry overlord. No. No. No. But God being rich in mercy. Hallelujah. Rich in mercy.

When you see your past and present failures, remember broken relationships, feel shame that still may follow you, remember, “But God being rich in mercy.”

Because of the great love with which He loved us. You are loved by the God who called you into being, by the God who sustains you even in this moment, by the God who knows your sin and failures better than you. He loves you with a great love.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—^[8]

This is resurrection. Back to the Prodigal Son story. When the son finally returns home with the idea that he can negotiate a place as a servant, the father speaks the word of life over the son. He is a son not a servant. The father says.

²⁴ For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. ^[9] This is resurrection.

Jesus did not leave us in our low estate. While we were dead in trespasses, while we were sinking in the jaws of the evil one, He took hold of us, raised us up together. Now this word together is important. Paul is telling the people that God raised the Jew and Gentile together. He raised up the factions that have divided humanity. Think of the relations you’ve known that have broken. Made alive together.

Jesus becomes the very peace between you and the Father in this resurrection. Jesus becomes the very peace between you and others. He has made a way for us to know the true reconciliation with Jew and Gentile, Father and Son, Mother and Daughter, Husband and Wife, young and old, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, and so on. If you have broken relations this morning, lift them to Jesus. Only he can bring true and lasting peace. Only he can restore.

^{6 “}and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”^[10]

The very people who were dead in trespasses have been raised up with Christ and our seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ. But we are here. What does it mean to say that we have been raised up with Him and in Him. This is our condition. We are no longer far away. We’ve been brought near to the very throne of God. We are no longer aliens, but we have been adopted by the Father in Heaven through the blood of Jesus.

We are part of the family. Just as a child can run and jump in her father’s lap, we come boldly and joyfully before our Father in heaven. We can share our failures, struggles, joys, and victories. Thus, we live as beloved children of the Father. And this might be a good way to help us think about our calling as priests and kings.

We cry out to the Father on behalf of this suffering and sinful world. We live in this world as ambassadors of a heavenly kingdom as a people called to reconcile all creation to the Father in heaven. We are serving our world even as we are worshipping our Father.

Let me read the whole passage again,

⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.^[11]

The Father is pouring His Spirit upon us in and through Jesus Christ. This outpouring is nothing short of His immeasurable love, His surprising joy, and His bountiful grace.

Grace upon grace upon grace.

All this love and joy and grace is transforming us into the very lovers that God created us to be. Beloved let us love the Lord our God with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our mind. Let us love our neighbor as ourselves.

Let us rejoice and give God all the glory.

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[1] “The Question of God,” The Harvard Gazette, September 19, 2002 < https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/09/harvard-gazette-the-question-of-god/>

[2] Ibid.

^[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4–7.

^[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:12.

^[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:3.

^[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 3:10–18. (See Ps. 14:1–3, 53:1-3, Ecc 7:20)

^[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4.

^[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:3–5.

^[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 15:24.

^[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:6.

^[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4–7.