The Bethany Bullet Sermon Message - Week of November 1, 2020
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V V V
Message: “A
Multistage Journey”
Text: 1
John 3:1-3
Many of you know that I am a sci-fi geek. I love most works of science fiction. I know it may be blasphemous to some but I
like Star Wars and Star Trek equally, but I am also a self-proclaimed rocket
nerd. I have been fascinated by space
travel since I was a child. I had a book
that was published sometime after JFK’s famous moon speech but before the
Apollo astronauts took one small step.
The pages of that book captivated me to think of another world, almost
another reality that one day humans would travel to.
I’m too young to remember the Apollo missions but I was fixated on
my little black and white TV when the first Space Shuttle flight trainer, the
Enterprise glided its way back to earth.
My heart broke as I heard news of the Challenger and Columbia disasters
and I can tell you exactly where I was when I heard the news. I shed a tear every time I watch movies like
the Right
Stuff, Apollo 13 or Hidden Figures. I have NASA T-shirts and stickers; I’ve
watched countless YouTube videos of rocket launches and keep an eye out when
one launches from Vandenberg.
Now, unfortunately we don’t have daily non-stops to the moon like
I had hoped when I was young, but with companies like Space-X, Virgin Galactic,
Spin Launch, ULA and many others, venturing into space is more common now than
ever and, perhaps, in my lifetime there will be a new age of space travel to
boldly go where no one has gone before.
But rockets are not just the stuff of dreams and they are not just
for scientific, military or transportation purposes. I would argue that they
suggest a profound spiritual truth and one that may give some insight to us on
this All Saints Day.
Rockets are built in stages and after they lift off, they progress
from stage to stage in order to achieve proper orbital insertion for their
payload. As one stage ends, another begins and the old stage is left
behind. Often this results in a new
trajectory and almost always changes the attitude and altitude of the
payload. Rockets may have two or three
stages that are necessary to achieve their mission objectives.
Our lives, at least in some respects, resemble a multiple-stage
rocket: the first phase is from conception to birth; the second phase is from
birth to death; and the third phase is from death into eternity. And just as
there is a critical point in the progress of a rocket stage there are certain
critical points in the life of a human being that are vital for continuation to
the next stage. At some time in the second phase (and the earlier the better),
a human being needs to experience the course changing phenomenon we call
conversion. Having been born already, we are “born again”—that is the urgent
language in which the Bible describes this critical stage. Having received
bodily life as a process of the first stage, it is crucial to receive spiritual
life in the next, or else the whole mission would be in peril and may plummet
into eternal death. For some of us this happened in the waters of Baptism, for
others it was that first encounter with the life-giving Gospel message found in
the pages of Scripture.
The success of all phases are orchestrated by the Spirit of God
who is at work. The Spirit works to knit
us together in our mother’s womb in the first stage and through Word and
Sacrament and the witness of others in the second.
All of you hearing this message have successfully passed through
the first stage of life, that is life in the womb and have experienced all that
this world has to offer. You have heard that life giving Gospel message or had
God’s name place upon you in Baptism and our text from 1 John tells us that
you, “are
actually called God’s dear children.” (1 John 3:1) And as glorious and significant and real as this womb
to tomb stage is, there is an even more glorious and significant stage ahead, a
stage that staggers the imagination and with which nothing in this present mode
of existence is worthy to be compared. I refer, of course, to heaven. John writes, “What we will be isn’t
completely clear yet. We do know that
when Christ appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is.” (1 John 3: 2) Our goal
today on this All Saints Day, is to fix our sights a bit more firmly upon this,
the last and grandest stage in our journey.
It is common knowledge that many in our world, either by design or
by oversight, regard the sometimes seventy to eighty plus years of existence on
this earth as the whole meaning of life. They mistake what is a mere stage for
the goal of the journey. There are some
who live in this stage who either turn their back on the work of the Spirit or
who decide that they know the true trajectory of life. Many ignore mission control and are in
jeopardy of having the entire mission scrubbed. Even Christians sometimes have
weak moments. I know I do and I guess
you do too. At times this stage seems
like all there is.
Perhaps you have experienced the debilitating doubts that pockmark
this stage. Maybe you have let your mind
wander into the unknown trying to use your own reason or strength to make sense
of this world and attempt to comprehend what, if anything may lie beyond this
stage. How can a person live forever? What kind of life can there possibly be
beyond this? Maybe the grave is the end of it.
And if it is, we might as well face it bravely, or at least doing what
we think is best.
Well, perhaps we can gain perspective on the stage to come by
thinking about the stage behind, that nine-month existence before we were born.
None of us today would regard that nine-month period as the whole meaning of
life beyond which there is nothing more. But let us say, by way of
illustration, that during our pre-natal life we had the capacity to think, to
hope, to dream. And let us add that while in our mother’s womb we got word that
another life lay before us, a life that might last the incredibly long time of
eighty or ninety years. A life beyond our imagination or comprehension. The new
world we would someday enter would contain light in which we could see things
and vast reaches of space in which we could move around. It would contain
towering skyscrapers, majestic mountains, odd looking quadrupeds called
animals, large plants called trees, four-wheeled vehicles traveling at shocking
speeds. Someday, we were assured, we would be able to do such impossible things
as walk and talk.
What’s more, we wouldn’t be alone in this world; there would be
millions of other creatures similar to our self, and where could there possibly
be room for them all? Yet strangest of
all would be the mode of entering this new world, a rather perilous process
called birth, involving pain, danger, doctors, and hospitals, leaving the
comfort of the known for the unknown in a process we would never guess could
thrust us into such a beautiful life as we live at present.
Now what reaction might that unborn child have toward this talk of
another and more abundant life, assuming that an unborn child can have
reactions? In spite of the fact that she couldn’t possibly understand what
earthly life would be like, she could still believe in it and look forward to
it. Doing so could make her nine-month existence much more pleasant, trusting
that the next stage is true and real. Or, she could be a realist and assume
that the darkness and cramped quarters she lives in are the whole meaning of
life and that beyond that dreaded process called birth there is no more. Then comes the day—the day of birth. It turns
out to be gloriously true, all of it!
There is another life. A life in which you can live eighty or ninety years.
There are such things as light and space and skyscrapers and mountains and
animals and plants and fast-moving vehicles. You can walk and talk. And this
dreaded process called birth, in spite of appearances, turns out, after all, to
be the gateway to this new and wonderful world.
I’m sure you begin to see what we’re after today. Our present life
is not the climax of life; it is but a stage in our journey. In relation to the
heavenly life, we might call it a pre-natal stage. It may be filled with pain
and problems, pandemic and partisan politics but we have it on good word—God’s
word— that there is another life, another world, ahead of us called heaven. In
it we shall live unbelievably long, in fact, forever! It is a world without
space or time. In it there is a room
prepared just for us. In that place we shall behold the face of God. We shall
see Him as He is. In fact, we shall be like Him. All the ills and
inconveniences of this present life, chief of which is sin, will have vanished.
And He will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
Strangest of all, the mode of entering this world is a dreaded and
painful process called death, a process involving undertakers, caskets,
tombstones, and bodily decay, a process we would never guess could thrust us
into such a beautiful life as the one found in heaven.
Obviously, we can’t conceive of this life, no more than an unborn
child can imagine life on earth. But we can believe in it and hope for it. We
can join the Apostle John in saying, “Dear friends, now we are God’s children.
What we will be isn’t completely clear yet.
We do know that when Christ appears we will be like him because we will
see him as he is.” (1 John 3: 2)
The striking truth of this All Saints Day is not how the church
remembers the saints who have gone before us; even though we rightly chime the
bells and speak the names of those who have gone before.
The real joy of this day is found in the knowledge that this stage
is not the end. Our trajectory is
heaven. Mission Control cares and
connects us to life giving words. And when, by your own actions you try to scrub
the mission, it is Jesus Himself who comes to be the mission. His life, death and resurrection provide more
than course correction but by His death we all achieve second stage separation
and on account of Christ all your doubts and sins are forgiven and you will be
welcomed into the next stage by the nail scarred hands of the Savior who knit
you together in the womb, who carried your sins to the tomb and who rose again
to knit you together with that great multitude that no one can count who have
had their robes washed in the blood of the Lamb. What a sight it will be to
behold. Until that day we remember that
we are called God’s dear children here and now for that is what we are, our
trajectory is heaven and that stage will be beyond imagination.
- Pr. Seth
Moorman
posted by Aimee Coleman @ 12:52 PM
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