The Search for Home

 

A traditional African-American church in Tennessee, has more than 33 graves: some in disrepair, others more recent. But as churches always have understood, the remains of departed loved ones are not the soul. As a Christian said on Easter morning, "He is not here."

Cemeteries, sometimes, can give us some things to think about. As the preacher Paul contemplated the shortening of his steps on this side of life, he said Christians can't be hopeless.

Brothers (and sisters), we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him."

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

In my own Christian walk, in my own recent experience, a preacher said we each have our own waking-up morning in Heaven — and that's despite the fact that millions are going home in Jesus.

Often, funerals have become moments for teaching. Maybe it was during a time of grief that Pa-ul said "absent from the body, present with the Lord." Maybe he was further defining that going to sleep in Jesus is to return to a heavenly waiting place, like a womb in Spirit, until the earth is made new and every saint is released to a day of rebirth we cannot now comprehend.

Some times of earthly loss also become times of preaching. A eulogy may morph into a tirade about marriage (1 Corinthians 6:18).

One might preach that after passage through the grave, there is no second chance to marry (Matthew 22:30).

One also might preach that not everything is marriage that men deceitfully say is marriage.

• Marriage isn't hitting a woman up to have some of her food (Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:5, Matthew 6:33).
• Marriage isn't cohabiting (John 4:18).
• Marriage isn't fornicating (Galatians 6:7-8, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 6:18).
• Marriage, in the heavenly fold of the church, isn't polygamous (1 Corinthians 7:2, Hebrews 13:4).
• Marriage isn't immoral (1 Corinthians 5:1).

No preached message can cover all of the Bible, His cautions and warnings. But some messages can say it all in one breath:

“If you’re having sex and you’re not married, it’s not called dating, it’s called fornicating," a women's speaker once said. “Homosexuality is no more right, holy, or acceptable today than it ever was in Bible times — neither is heterosexual fornication, adultery, or pornography-driven lust. It’s not just that sex outside of God’s plan for marriage ... breaks His law. His rules are given as a gift to keep us from breaking our hearts.”

A preacher on the above link went so far as to say the Bible didn't give us marital vows, but gave us common sense about how to relate to one another. The pastor doesn't forbid marriage! But he implies life in Jesus should speak to us in heart about what marriage is.

When the pastor questions whether Ye-su (Jesus) ever married, and whether Pa-ul (Paul) ever married, he wasn't saying not to marry, but was trying to help us understand that being in marriage for the sake of marriage isn't for Heaven's sake.

Neither are being a neighbor and being married at all the same (Leviticus 18:20). In fact, in Jesus, a neighbor is who binds up a hurt person's wounds and pays an inn keeper to shelter and keep safe the injured (Luke 10:36), without any sexual overture whatsoever! And, in Jesus, gentle correction can never mean torture or sexual abuse (1 Timothy 5:1-2).

Jesus' way is easy. To understand Him, or to know Him, is easy, is peaceful. But just thinking about being unfaithful to life in Him, and suffering someone else's unfaithfulness, is unpeaceful, ungodly, not for Heaven's sake at all.

Jesus did not marry, and may have been very underdeveloped in flesh (Matthew 19:12), for Heaven's sake. And Paul likewise rebuked the idea that we live to have sexual relations. He spent much of ministry laboring to bring people's minds out of the gutter, so to speak.

Paul preached fidelity to faith. He secondarily preached marriage, for believing people who God doesn't satisfy with heavenly devotion alone.

And in many ways, the Bible's New Testament teaches friendship in Jesus.

What the Bible does not allow is a clinging to the grave. How unpeaceful life can be if we're dwelling there in heart!

Jesus tells us of those who hung out at tombs, in the "underworld," as some versions of the Bible say. It was at a tomb where Jesus met with one demon-possessed.

Before Jesus gave Himself in death leading to eternal life, as only His way can, there was a cleaving to graves in a way that didn't produce peace in heart.

Warning against people's failure to recognize the importance of living godly, Jesus lashed out, "You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!"

Often, traditions, no matter whether sexual iniquity or some simple hypocrisy, keep people thinking of the self-taught glory in graves, instead of just living for Heaven.

A lot of people strive to make life be some way other than God's.

But how thankful we are when we find deliverance, in heart, to let go of ways God doesn't intend and just seek the peace and comfort of feeling at home in Him, now and always. ...

Jesus gives us a new way of living. Jesus gives us peace.