Welcome to worship today at Morrison Zion Lutheran Church.  We exist to glorify God.  We have set out to do this by gathering around the Gospel so that we may grow in the Gospel and go to others with this Gospel.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from Him who is, who was and who is to come:  Amen.

In Christ, dear fellow redeemed:

This past Friday in our country we honored Veterans for Veterans Day.  I made the mistake of going shopping at Festival Foods where they were giving away all that free stuff for Veterans.  I just about got ran over by all the Veterans’ carts that were there.  But that kind of thing is really cool.  It’s really neat to see all the things that are done for Veterans around us.

I saw it Thursday night.  I didn’t look at it today, but in our Announcements before the service there was a list of all the people from our congregation that are presently serving in the Armed Forces or those who have in the past who are members of our congregation.  We should thank and honor them because this is one of the ways God blesses us.  Serving in the Armed Forces is one of the masks of God that His people wear to be a blessing to others.  It’s a God-pleasing vocation.  So to thank and honor those who have served us in this way is proper and fitting.

But today we gather together in worship to focus on the blessings God has for a different set of Veterans—for those who have left the Church Militant and entered the Church Triumphant.  We who are here on earth yet are Saints Militant.  We are still being attacked by Satan, our own sinful flesh and the world around us.  We are in this battle as Satan tries to separate us from our faith that Jesus Christ is the only answer to our sin and that His life and His death has opened heaven to us.  We are constantly under attack.

So this day in Memoriam we focus on remembering our members, the six of our members who left the Church Militant this last year and who are now Saints Triumphant.  They are in white robes and are before the throne of the Lamb, so we have the white roses and the white vases.  We have the white altar clothes from Easter with the Alleluia to remind us of the resurrection, the joy of the resurrection and the fact that those who die in the Lord, as Jesus says to us today, are children of the resurrection.  They will never die again.  This is our comfort and this is our peace.  This is our goal—we who are left behind.  It’s the goal of our final redemption where we then will have what they have now.

What did it say in our Second Lesson?  They see the face of God.  I say that in almost every single funeral sermon now.  “Your loved one is looking at Jesus.  You’re stuck looking at me.  They win.”  This is Saints Triumphant.  This is the truth.  That’s what God assures us of in our Second Lesson today.  That’s what Jesus assured us of as He spoke these words of promise on Tuesday of Holy Week.  That is just a couple of days away from hanging on the cross for the sins of the world.  He is there in the temple and they’re asking Him all these questions, trying to trip Him up.

Luke’s account has right before this the question of should you pay taxes to Caesar.  Some of the leaders of the Jews came and asked that question because they were hoping that if Jesus said yes, pay taxes, the people would be upset with Him.  Or if he said no, you shouldn’t, then the Romans would be upset with Him.  They thought this was a sure way to trap Jesus so Jesus, if you remember the account, said “Give me the coin you pay taxes with.  Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.  Give to God what is God’s.”  On the one side of the coin it proclaimed Caesar to be true god, and it’s an interesting visual Jesus used to remind them that God alone is God.

Then this happens right after this in Luke’s account of what I just read to you.  The Sadducees were one of the groups.  There were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the teachers of the Law.  The Sadducees were the ruling elite of the day.  They were in control of the Sanhedrin at this time.  They had control of the high priesthood at this time.  They weren’t as large of a group and didn’t have as much of a following as the Pharisees, but they had control of that power right now and they believed there was no resurrection.  You heard that said.  They believed you die and that’s it.  You don’t go to heaven or a hell.  You die and that’s the end of everything.  They were the ruling elite and they rejected all of the prophets.  The only part that they said was actually God’s Word was the five books of Moses.  That’s why you hear them, as they are trying to show the ridiculousness of the resurrection, with the question they ask Jesus.  They wanted to show there could be no resurrection, because even Moses shows how foolish that is.

I wonder if the Sadducees, who liked Roman rule, liked the answer Jesus had just given so now they’re going to have Jesus point out to everyone else how foolish the resurrection was.  But Jesus didn’t.  When they paint this picture of the foolishness of carrying out the Levirate law which was given in Leviticus that if a man dies without a child and he has a brother, the brother marries the widow and the first child then of that marriage carries the deceased brother’s name.  They go through the whole thing of seven brothers and now in the resurrection, whose wife is she going to be?  It makes no sense so obviously there is no resurrection.  It was logical to them.  It made rational sense to them.  But Jesus points out the folly of trying to apply rational human logic to things that are of God.  God operates on a whole different level than you or me and the idea that we should understand and explain God and be able to understand every single one of how He does things is the height of human arrogance.  It’s evidence of the sinful nature that lives in each of us.  For Pete’s sake, the sexes can’t understand each other and we think we’re going to understand God?  How arrogant and foolish is that?

So Jesus tells them, “You’ve got it all wrong.  The present age that we live in is nothing like the one that will come.  In that age, those who are worthy of the resurrection, those who believe that Jesus lived and died in their place and that the Spirit gave them faith so they believe their sins have been paid for by Christ, those are the ones that are worthy of the resurrection.  When they rise from the dead, they will no longer die because they are children of God and they are children of the resurrection.”  That’s what Jesus tells them.  He said “…they are like the angels.”  He doesn’t say they ARE angels.  It says we are going to have glorified bodies, like Jesus said after His resurrection.  We will bodily rise from the dead.  The angels are Spirit beings.  We aren’t going to become angels, but in this sense, we’ll be like angels because we won’t marry or be given in marriage.  We won’t have the need for having children because now we’re all children of God and we’ll spend eternity with God, seeing Him face to face, and there is no longer any curse (as we heard today).  All the effects of sin are gone, so we have no idea what any of that means.

Jesus lays it out plainly for them and then He even says, “You guys that cling so tightly to Moses and deny the rest of my work, even Moses taught you that if you had been paying attention!  He said in the account of the burning bush ‘I AM the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’ and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had died 500 and some years before the time that Moses wrote.  So Moses shows that there is a resurrection because God is not a God of the dead but of the living.”  This is the comfort and this is the peace that we have.

God has promised us that those who die in faith in Christ will no longer die.  They are God’s children and children of the resurrection.  What that all means, I can’t tell you.  I have no idea what they are enjoying in the presence of God, dressed in white (as it says), before the Lamb.  The Lamb is the Son and the Lamb is the Light at the center of the throne.  I don’t know what is going on.

My dad’s idea of heaven was that we would line up in our perfect bodies and we’d see who was a better lineman.  That was his picture of heaven—playing football.  I always told him, “Dad that will never happen because in heaven there are no more tears and once I knocked you on your rear end, you’d be crying.”  I don’t know if they are playing football in heaven.  I have no clue.  I don’t know if they’re milking cows.  That’s what my son wants to do—take care of cows in heaven.  I have no clue what any of it is!  I just know that whatever it is, we aren’t going to want anything else.  Whatever we are enjoying in heaven, we aren’t going to stand around.

Think of how much free time we’ll now have when we’re not complaining about stuff—an eternity where we aren’t complaining like we do so often here.  The sun comes up, it’s not a cloudy day and then you walk in and “Oh, the sun is too bright in that window.”  That’s the kind of stuff we do, don’t we?  We find problems with everything on this side of heaven because we’re still living with a curse and we’re still living as sinners and we still think we know better than God and we still think God should do things differently because we’re sinful fools.  But in heaven, whatever we’re enjoying we’ll say “This is the greatest thing ever!”  Whatever God has for us to do to serve Him, this is the greatest thing ever.  Whoever we are with, these are the greatest people ever.  I have no clue how that can work.  And I never will until I’m enjoying it because my sinful nature clings to me on this side of heaven.

While I might love you all, there’s some of you I just don’t like that much.  That’s just the way it is.  That’s how we all are.  The idea that in heaven I’ll love everyone as much as I love my wife, I can’t wrap my head around that.  That doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me.  That sounds incredible!  And these loved ones that we have lost, they are now before the throne of God and they see Him face to face and their names are written on His forehead and they are not enduring anymore curse like you and I are.  Isn’t that incredible?  Don’t ask me to tell you what it is.  But I’ll keep reminding you it’s wonderful.  And I’ll keep reminding you it’s going to be the greatest thing ever, and that’s God’s promise to us.

He doesn’t tell us that we need to know everything.  He just says “Trust me.  Believe in me.  Turn to me.”  And when we have that grief because we are missing a loved one, and that time will come because that’s the nature of the curse of being on this side of heaven, when we have those times, then that’s when each of us have a task.  We have a way that we can serve God.  We remind each other of Jesus’ promises.  We remind each other that those who die in the Lord are with the Lord.  It doesn’t take away all the pain, I understand that.  But God says “Don’t grieve as those who have no hope,” which to me means in your grief, turn to this confidence.  They are in front of the Lamb.  They are enjoying perfection.  Don’t assume everyone knows that.  Share that truth over and over and over because that is why God has us here; to be a blessing to one another.  Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ^{(Philippians 4:7.)} Amen.