Acts 4:5-12
Ps.23
I John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18

4 Easter B (RCL)
HE 2A 10:0C

RESURRECTION II: THREE LIVES & THE ETERNAL AWAKENING
(Second of two sermons on the Resurrection)

I would like to share with you this morning a way of looking at the Resurrection that I owe to my father. It helped many people, and it may help you also.

We live three times - three lives, yet one life.

1. Our first stage is when we are in the envelope placed within our mother. In this very simple life we are continually asleep. There is no light because we have no need for light. We are alone because we have no need for company. And in that life we are hemmed in on every side, in a contracted and very small envelope, in the confines of our mother's body.

We live that first life for one purpose only, to develop a self, and the instruments which we will need in the second life, the life which we call "the world".

While in the "womb we know nothing of the glory and the joy of the second life. If we had the ability to think, we could not even imagine the use of another life. We are warm and comfortable and fed. To us, the future, second, life would be an absurdity. A fine eye, a beautiful mouth, a hand, a foot, lungs to breathe with: all these things would appear quite useless to the child within, if he thought about it.

And the child would be right. Those things are useless in the first life. But they are made for another world of "which the child at present knows nothing. He might guess if he thought. But actually, the child cannot even imagine.

11. Now comes the second life - yet it is the same life. As the child's instruments for this world become ready, he is suddenly compelled, without his permission or desire to leave the warm body of mother, in a way which is hard and perhaps painful, and with a moment of transition which must seem curiously like death to the child.

This second life we live differently from the first. We live it alternately in darkness and light, alternately between waking and sleeping. Suddenly and immediately, the nose, the ears, the mouth, the lungs, have use never dreamed of before. The world of light and color and tone; of perfume and taste and feeling, opens up a new realm to be used and enjoyed. The new life is as different, as unimagined, from the first life, as light is different from darkness.

But now asking the same question, what is this second life for?

Just like the first, its purpose is to develop the instruments which shall be of use in the third life.

As in the first, so in the second life, we are but dimly conscious of those instruments and their uses. We are just one step nearer to reality. We now eat and sleep and play and work and worship - we make love and we weep. And what a change, what a marvelous change, from the hibernation of the first life. But as yet, with our whole consciousness bound to mortal flesh, we know little of the splendor and harmony, the radiance and the freedom, of the third life, except by partial revelation from God our Father.

And it is foolishly easy to think that the dark and narrow way which leads to this glorified life, is a blind pitfall from which there is no outlet. We are "slow of heart to believe," as the risen Jesus said to the disciples.

Ill. Finally the third life. Here we must be cautious about making rash assumptions. A flat denial of any possibility of a life beyond this one, is as silly as for the unborn child to deny the life of this world.

We know from common sense and from revelation, a feu things about this life which we have not yet entered. The third life is an eternal awakening. There, everything is as clear as the life of the unborn child is, to the physician who studies it. There, separation ends and we realize in full what is here but dimly felt. What we call death here, is no more death than the birth of the child is death.

That third life is a marvelous adventure in which everything developed and cherished here that is unseen - love and beauty, faith and goodness, hope and trust - becomes what is seen and real, for ever and ever. There, we shall know what our prayers accomplished. And we shall know who prayed for us. And likely there will be some wonderful surprises on both accounts!

The next world is more real than this world. For those of us who have seen people die, and have seen holy Christian deaths, we know this and stake our lives upon it. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God.

****

We lay the bodies or the ashes of our loved ones to rest, the remains of the house in which they lived. But make no mistake about it: Full Christian Resurrection faith means that even, the dust and ashes of our bodies will finally be glorified. The whole visible creation will be raised and transformed, to a new level of life. Nothing will be wasted or left behind.

Christ has led the way, and because of His Resurrection, we can entrust our souls and cur bodies to Him. Alleluia!

*****

The Rev.Richard T.Loring (III), retired priest, condensed the above from the Easter 1938 sermon of his father, the Rt.Rev.Richard T.Loring (Jr.),D.D., Bishop of Springfield,IL, when he was Rector of St.David's, Baltimore, MD. Sermon reprinted in The Living Church 5/2/1948 & 4/13/1952, and in other publications. The part following the asterisks on p.4 was added by Fr.Loring III.

Previously preached at Danvers, Easter 2007 and at numerous funerals