Sermon - Proper 27, Year C, 2025 - Luke 20:27-40

Resurrection of the Flesh, Luca Signorelli, 1502

The Resurrection of Man

Intro

1. The body/soul composition of man

2. Death is the unnatural separation of the body from the soul

3. The intermediate state of man

4. Resurrection is the reunion of the body and soul

“There came to Him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection.” Just as today among God’s people, at the time of Jesus there were divisions and distinctions amongst the Israelites. Most well known to us are the Pharisees and Sadducees. Today we see in particular the group known as the Sadducees.

The Sadducees were a Jewish sect that flourished right around the time of Jesus. They were wealthy and powerful individuals, primarily made up of high-priestly families and aristocrats who controlled temple worship. Additionally, they were friendly to the Romans and worked with Roman authorities. While the Pharisees were lovers of man-made laws, the Sadducees were more interested in their family heritage. The Sadducees were also the theological liberals of the day, denying the resurrection of the body and even the immortality of the soul and future judgement. They denied the existence of angels and spirits.

While the Sadducees ceased to exist when Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70AD, the spirit of the Sadducees continues on today. Like them, there are plenty of people who are more interested in worldly power, wealth, and prestige, and their family lineage than they are in Jesus, the Savior of the World. In fact, there are plenty of people who claim the name of Christian, and also deny the resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul, and existence of a spiritual realm. These people are more interested in power and wealth in this life than they are in the eternal rewards in the life to come. It’s akin to the social gospel which forsakes eternal justice and replaces it with social justice on earth.

Additionally, as there are fewer Christians and our collective biblical literacy decreases, people begin to come up with strange unbiblical notions of what happens when a person dies. This often leads people to come up with bizarre superstitions about death and the afterlife. Couple that with death being a marketable business, from funeral services to flower shops to memorials to grave decorations, and you end up with a lot of confusion all around.

So just as Jesus simply shut down the Sadducees with the scriptures, let us today simply ponder the resurrection of the body with the scriptures. To begin with, we need to have a basic understanding of anthropology, we need to understand what man is. From Genesis we read of our creation: “The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Then Jesus speaks of death in Matthew, saying: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Thus, to be human is to have both a body and a soul. You are made up of two parts: a body and a soul.

To be clear, you are not a body with a soul, nor a soul with a body, but you are simultaneously body and soul. This is significant! You are more than your body, life is more than fulfilling your bodily needs and desires, because you are also a soul; you’re a physical and a spiritual being. This needs to be a constant reminder for us because our bodies have all sorts of passions and feelings which are spiritually hazardous to us. For example, it might feel good to sleep in and stay home on Sunday mornings, but that is spiritually bad for us to not go to the divine service.

It’s also extremely significant that you are more than your soul, but you are also your body. Your body is you and it’s not disposable, and so you can’t just do whatever you want with your body, because your body, just like your soul, belongs to the Lord. He bought you, soul and body, for a price. Namely, He bought you with His own precious blood shed on Calvary’s cross. So we don’t only glorify God with our souls, but we glorify God with our bodies.

This is particularly important to understand in death. Death is not annihilation. We’re not like grasshoppers or trees. When you cut down a tree and burn up the wood or grind it to mulch and it decomposes, that particular tree ceases to exist; it’s annihilated. So death for man is the unnatural separation of the body from the soul. The soul and the body continue to exist. Yes, even the body continues to exist, even if the body is so decomposed that its particles are not findable, it exists. Jesus says: “Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”

Death, the separation of the body from the soul, is unnatural. God did not create us to die, that is the result of sin, and therefore death is unnatural and most understandably upsetting. When we grieve and mourn for those who die, we do so because death shouldn’t exist. Death is sad on a fundamental level because it is separating what God has joined together. Humans are meant to live, with both a body and a soul together.

So when a person dies, what happens? The body is laid to rest. Because when you die, that body lying there is still you. Your body is not a disposable extra part, like a husk which is discarded, like a burden that drags down your soul, but your body is still you. This was understood since ancient times and explains why a person’s body would be carried sometimes great distances in order to bury the body in the family grave. When you die, you shouldn’t think of your body as just your body, as if you don’t need that anymore, because your body is still you. For thousands of years, forever really, this fact that your body is still you has shaped the way that Christians have treated bodies, both living and dead. 

But what about the soul after death? The soul of the unbeliever, like the rich man in Jesus’ parable, is taken to hell and is in perpetual torment. The soul of the Christian, however, is taken to heaven. As St. Stephen was dying, he cried out: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Jesus said to the malefactor on the cross: “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” St. Paul says his desire “is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” What exactly this looks like cannot be discerned from scripture, and in many ways is inconceivable since we have not yet lived without our bodies and our senses. Is it like the sensation of dreaming? Perhaps, but I couldn’t say for sure. I know we won’t yet have our bodies, and that it will be very good and comforting, and that’s as far as I can go.

But thankfully the intermediate state, the time between death and resurrection, is temporary. For the Lord Himself says: “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him.” The separation of the body and the soul is not going to last forever! “For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will repay each person according to what He has done.” 

Since Christ Jesus died for our sins, was buried and raised on the third day as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, He will also raise with Him all those believers on the final day. “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” 

As you remember those blessed saints who died with the Lord, as you think on those beloved brothers and sisters in Christ who are nearing death, and as you ponder your own mortality and eventual departure from this life, think on these things, and meditate on the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead to life everlasting. Learn to reframe the way that you think and talk about Christian death. We must learn to scrape our tongue of that worldly morbid way of thinking about death so clinically. The Bible has such a lovely way about it. The scriptures call it not death, but sleeping. It’s not a casket, but a bed. The cemetery is just a bedroom, a field with planted seeds awaiting the second coming of the Son. For the dead in Christ shall awaken, and death is therefore nothing more than a slumber. “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”