A "Living" Hope

 A “Living” Hope

1 Peter 1:1-12[1]

People sometimes make outrageous claims. Social media, podcasts, YouTube, and the internet all makes it very easy to put your message out there, no matter how outrageous it might be. The truth of the matter is that people have made outrageous claims throughout the ages. In previous centuries, they did so in published tracts or books. That made the invention of the printing press a “dangerous” new technology to the institutions that were in power at the time. It was “dangerous” because eventually, printed tracts would lead to the reshaping of the church, politics, society, the family, and our whole view of life. From the invention of the printing press in the 15^th century to the rise of radio and television in the 20th century, the printed word was viewed by some as a dangerous technology that would undermine the conventional norms and practices of both church and state, both society and home. It changed everything!

The rise of radio and television in the 20^th century changed everything as well. It created a whole new means of getting the “word” out. I’m sure there were some who cautioned against the danger they posed. But at the same time, many embraced the new technology and used it for good. Some of us remember Walter Cronkite as a voice you could trust. But there were other voices that made outrageous claims. Of course, the rise of the internet, email, social media, podcasting, and streaming services has led to vastly more ways of getting your message out there. Some of it is very helpful. If you need to fix just about anything, there’s probably a YouTube video for it. And I subscribe to several YouTube channels for insights into playing guitar more effectively. But again, there’s a lot of content out there that continues to be outrageous.

In the days of the first Christians, there were likely many who would have view Peter’s declaration that believers had been “born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3, CEB) as outrageous. For one thing, most people in the Greek and Roman world would have scoffed at the mention of anything like a “resurrection.” They believed that there was no return from death. Death was final, and that was that. Talk of a resurrection would have literally sounded like nonsense to them. It would have been outrageous!

More than that, the whole question of the afterlife was just as confused then as it is now. The prevailing view in those days was that everyone, both good and bad, died and went to “hades.” It wasn’t exactly the same idea as the notion of “hell” that has developed over the centuries. Everyone went there, not just those who “deserved” punishment. It was just the place of the dead. Good and bad, rich and poor alike, all went there at death. But it was a place of fires and ash, a kind of perpetual purgatory where you lived in regret for your mistakes forever. Not something to look forward to at all!

Into that world came the Christian gospel. As our lesson from 1 Peter puts it, “you have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). There were several aspects of that claim that would have been viewed as outrageous. First of all, the claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead would have been rejected outright. Because death was final, there was no returning from it. At least that was what most people believed. But that’s precisely the point of the death and resurrection of Jesus in the Christian gospel. As another Christian teacher put it, by dying and rising again, Jesus freed “those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Heb 2:15). So it is that Peter could call the hope that we have through Jesus a “living” one because it stems from the fact that Jesus is alive to this day. I think the Contemporary English Version does a good job of bringing out this emphasis when it says, “by raising Jesus from death, [God] has given us new life and a hope that lives on” (1 Pet 1:3). Our hope is a “living” one because Jesus “lives on” to this day.

More than that, the hope that God has given us through the death and resurrection of Jesus is a “living” one because it points us to our own future. Peter says that “You have a pure and enduring inheritance that cannot perish—an inheritance that is presently kept safe in heaven for you. Through his faithfulness, you are guarded by God’s power so that you can receive the salvation he is ready to reveal in the last time” (1 Pet 1:4-5, CEB). I like the way the Good News Translation puts it: Jesus’ death and resurrection “fills us with a living hope, and so we look forward to possessing the rich blessings that God keeps for his people. He keeps them for you in heaven, where they cannot decay or spoil or fade away” (1 Pet 1:3-4, GNT). The main idea is that the “new life” that we’ve been given through Jesus’ death and resurrection is one of the “rich blessings” that God is keeping for us for the future. And there’s nothing and no one powerful enough to take that future away from us. As Gene Peterson puts it in The Message translation, “God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole” (1 Pet 1:4, MSG). Our hope is a “living” one because it points us to our future life in the fullness of God’s blessings.

There are still a lot of people in our world who believe that death has the final word. When you die, you just die, and that’s it. Maybe some of you believe that. But the clear message of the Gospel is that Jesus died and rose again to give us something more to hope for than life that ends at death. Jesus died and rose again to give us a “living hope,” as Peter puts it in our lesson for today. That hope is a “living hope” because Jesus lives at God’s right hand and in our hearts and lives. It’s a “living hope” because it points us to the promise of new life with Jesus in the fullness of God’s presence. And I would add that our hope is a “living” one because it gives us a reason to live our lives differently. If life definitively ends at death, there are some who would think you better grab all you can while you’re here. Not everyone believes that, but some do. But if Jesus’ resurrection from the dead points us to our new life with him after death, then we have a unique reason to do all the good we can do while we’re here. At least in part that means, as Peter says later in this chapter, we’re to “Love each other deeply with all your heart” (1 Pet 1:22, NLT).

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/12/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

On This Day

 On This Day

Psalm 118:24[1]

On this day we come together to celebrate the heart of our faith: Jesus who died was raised to life! For those of us who have grown up with it, we accept that Jesus rose again on the third day as the heart of our faith. But none of us has first-hand experience with the resurrection of Jesus. At least not in the same way that his original followers did. They experienced his physical presence after he was raised from the dead. They ate with him. They could touch him. None of us has that kind of first-hand experience with the Easter miracle. But we can experience the risen Lord in our lives “first-hand” in a different way.

We can sense the presence of the Spirit, we can feel Jesus’ call to compassion, and we can enjoy the love of the God who is always with us wherever we go. At the end of the day, I think that’s what our celebration of Easter is about. We may not have the same kind of first-hand experience of Jesus the risen Lord as his disciples did. But we do have Jesus’ living presence in our hearts and in our lives. And we celebrate Easter Sunday because the same Spirit of the risen Christ that the first disciples experienced physically all those years ago lives in you and in me and in all who know his continuing presence.

If you’ve been around here for a while, you may have noticed that I do something different on Palm Sunday. We typically use verses from Psalm 118 for our call to worship. But one of the verses doesn’t sound quite right. It’s the one that usually says, “This is the day that the lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118:24). That verse has become so much a part of Christian life and worship that some might think it’s going too far for me to tinker with it. But being the student of the Bible that I am, I have to read that verse in the context of Psalm 118 as a whole.

When you do that, when you read the whole of Psalm 118, you find that the Psalm is a celebration of a kind of death-to-life restoration. The psalmsinger speaks of being in distress, of being surrounded on every side (Ps 118:5, 10-11) and being “pushed hard” to the point of falling (Ps 118:13). It sounds like the psalmsinger was engaged in battle and at the point of what must have felt like certain death. It’s in that setting that the psalmsinger affirms, “The LORD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation” (Ps 118:14). He celebrates that the Lord has delivered him from what may have seemed like certain defeat.

Because of that, the psalmsinger rejoices that “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118:24). That’s the way most English translations put it. But if we pay attention to the context, it seems like there’s more to this verse than just celebrating God’s hand in every new day. The psalmsinger is celebrating a special day of deliverance. And so that verse that’s so familiar to us probably shouldn’t be read as “this is the day the Lord has made.” It probably should be read as a celebration of “the day of the Lord’s victory” (Ps 118:24, GNT), an act so unexpected, so “marvelous” (Ps 118:23) that all we can do is to “rejoice and be glad in what he has done.” And so, in my humble opinion, we should say, “This is the day of the Lord’s victory, we will rejoice and be glad in what he has done.”

I think that’s what Easter is about. It’s a celebration that on this day, all those years ago, God acted decisively to break the power of everything that threatens to oppress or distort or destroy our humanity. It’s a celebration that, on this day, God took all our pain and sorrow and suffering and loss and death and turned it into new life. Easter is the celebration that the new life that came into being on that day will one day transform everything and everyone. It’s a celebration that, on this day, God acted to demonstrate that he is constantly working to restore the whole creation to the place where it is once again “very good,” as it was in the beginning. When that happens, “the Lord’s victory” will be complete.

I know all of that may sound very hard to believe, especially in the light of all that’s going on in the world these days. But I believe it’s part of the Easter miracle that began all those years ago. It may sound hard to believe, but our first-hand experience of the risen Christ alive and present in our lives serves as a basis for our faith in the Easter miracle that continues to “this day.” Because of what God did in and through Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Christ is alive and present in all our lives. And so “on this day” we “rejoice and are glad in what he has done.” Because of what God did in and through Jesus, we experience the “marvelous” work of the God who is bringing salvation—grace and peace and mercy and love and joy and new life—into every life. And as we celebrate that “This is the day of the Lord’s victory,” we experience that “marvelous” work of God in our own lives. And so we “rejoice are glad in what he has done.”

In one respect what we celebrate happened a long time ago in a land far, far away. But because we know Jesus’ living presence in our hearts and our lives just as the first believers did, just as faithful people throughout the ages have, we do more than remember what happened on that first Easter. For us, every Easter, indeed every Sunday, becomes a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. Every Easter, indeed every Sunday, is meant to be a celebration of the new life that God has “injected” into this life to transform us all. It’s a day for us to celebrate that “this is the day of the Lord’s victory, we will rejoice and be glad in what he has done!”

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/5/2026 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

More Than We Have Seen

More Than We Have Seen

Luke 20:27-38[1]

I was reminded recently that our “vision” is always limited. I can wholeheartedly echo the sentiment that I’ve heard many times: we typically don’t do well when we try to predict the future. I would say my ability to predict the future is virtually non-existent! Maybe that’s something we could all say. Just when we think we know what’s around the bend, life has a way of proving us wrong. If we averaged our success at predicting the future as a “batting average,” I would say that most of us wouldn’t make it very far in a baseball or softball league! Our vision is always limited.

At least part of the problem for me is that I try to use the past to predict the future. I think I’m not alone in that. When we try to envision the future based on the past, we are necessarily limiting our perspective. Some of the best things that have come into my life have come as a total surprise. Nothing in my past could have made it possible for me to foresee them. You might say the same. Sometimes, using the past to determine our view of the future leads to a pessimistic outlook. It’s the viewpoint that says with Benjamin Franklin that “in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” That kind of attitude is common, but it’s a pretty hopeless view of life. Since everyone dies, that way of looking at things gives death has the final word on everything. And if death has the final word, then we’re all trapped in the vicious circles of selfishness, hatred, poverty, violence, injustice, and despair that we can see all around us. That’s not an approach to life that gives us much enthusiasm for living today, let alone looking forward to tomorrow.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was responding in part to this kind of pessimism about life. He had been answering questions from various groups of Jewish leaders, each one intent on embarrassing him in front of the people. One question came from the Sadducees. They were the ruling priests who controlled the Temple. They were also the ones who held most of the wealth and power in their society. And as Luke tells us, the Sadducees didn’t believe in any “resurrection.” They lived in a closed system, and they weren’t open to the idea that there could be any more to life than what they had already seen. The Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him about the practice of a man marrying his brother’s widow. Moses had told them to do this so that the first child would be the descendant of the dead brother, to ensure that his name would continue to live on among the people. Their question to Jesus was about seven brothers who in turn married the same woman. They asked him, “In the resurrection … whose wife will the woman be?” (Lk. 20:33). I don’t think they were seriously looking for an answer. They didn’t believe in any “resurrection.” They were just trying to make the idea of a “resurrection” look ridiculous. And Jesus with it.

But Jesus “corrected” them. In another Gospel, he tells them “You understand neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Mt 22:29, NASB)! He said this to the people who were in charge of the Temple! Jesus corrected them by recalling the time when Moses met God at the burning bush. This was foundational for the Jewish faith. It was the episode when God revealed his “name” as “I am who I am.” There, God spoke of himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). When Moses had this encounter, the patriarchs had been dead for centuries. Jesus drew the inference that this proves that the dead are raised, for he said that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (Lk. 20:38). More than that, throughout the Bible, God is known as the “living God.” The prophets described God as the one who “lives” in contrast to the idols who were “dead” statues of wood and stone. But if God is the “living God,” and if God’s very being is defined by life, then it makes no sense to view the patriarchs, or anyone else, as truly dead. As Jesus put it, “to him all of them are alive.” In other words, God’s very nature as the “living” God challenged their pessimism.

I think one of the most important points Jesus was trying to make here is that you cannot limit God’s work in the future by what we have seen in the past. If God is the God of life, that means that our future is not one that’s defined by death, but rather by life. God’s work in the world is based on promises that point toward a future that is full of hope precisely because it’s based on God’s life. Promises like “I will wipe away every tear,” and “they will beat their swords into ploughshares,” and “He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry,” and “I am making everything new.” Our Psalm lesson for today reminds us that God always keeps his promises. The Christian faith is at heart the hope that God has begun to do just that through Jesus Christ. Our faith insists that from God’s perspective, the final word that defines everything and everyone is not death, but life.

I think that how we choose to look at all of this makes a great difference in our the work we do together as a congregation. For example, in the Reformed tradition we believe that stewardship is not just about money. It’s essentially a stance of faith in the “God of the living.” Because we believe in the life that God is bringing into this world through Jesus Christ, we practice stewardship by committing all we know ourselves to be to all we know Jesus Christ to be. I had a professor once define “conversion” that way. I think the whole Christian life is like that: committing all we know ourselves to be to all we know Jesus Christ to be. And as we grow in our understanding of who we are and who Jesus is, we’re able to see our lives more and more as a gift from God to be invested for the sake of the Kingdom.

On the other hand, if we choose to live within a closed system and assume that there’s only so much to go around, we’re probably not going to be willing to risk much when it comes to investing our lives for the sake of the kingdom of God. But if we can look at things from the perspective of God’s future, a future in which the final word is life, then perhaps maybe we can step out in faith. If we can see the future as essentially open to all that God is doing in and through us, we have a whole different motivation for practicing our faith, including practicing our stewardship. In that kind of future, our “labor in the Lord” is “not in vain” but rather makes an important contribution toward advancing God’s purposes in our community and our world. I think that puts our stewardship, our faith commitment, and everything we do, in a whole different light.

We all have the choice: we can live as if the past overrules any hope for the future, and death ultimately makes life “useless.” There have always been people who have taken this point of view, living without hope, clinging desperately to their lives out of fear. If we choose to assume that our best is back there in the past somewhere—which means it’s gone—I doubt that we’re going to invest much of anything for God’s Kingdom. But if we choose to live based on the faith that the “God of life” is at work among us and through us to make everything new, then maybe we can have the courage to stake our lives on God’s promises. It’s a risk, because there’s a lot about life that seems to contradict those promises. But when we embrace God’s vision for the future, perhaps we’ll begin to realize that God’s vision very likely includes much more than we have seen. In fact, I would say that God’s vision is such that we really have no idea what God can or cannot do in our lives, in this congregation, and in this community!

The next step is to put our faith into practice every day by praying without ceasing, by giving back what we’ve been given, by helping those in need, by inviting others to join us, by promoting a sense of community among us, by studying the Bible together, and by joining together for worship on the Lord’s Day. When we invest our lives for the sake of the kingdom of God, it’s a big vision we’re taking on. When we open ourselves to God’s vision, we can begin to grasp the full weight of the hope that God has things in store for us that we wouldn’t believe if we knew them in advance! When we base our lives on this vision for the future, we humbly recognize that we can’t do it alone. We need the living God who is the source of everything we have to send us what we need to do the work. More than that, we need God himself working in and through us, remembering that God’s last word is not death but life!

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 11/9/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Because He Lives

Because He Lives

Luke 24:1-12[1]

Today is the day when we celebrate one of the most important events in our faith: after Jesus gave his life for us all, God raised him from the dead on the third day. But, let’s face it, that first Easter Sunday happened a long, long time ago. And, truth be told, for most of us it’s something we only talk about in church. It’s not really something that impacts our lives on a daily basis. We may view faith as something that relates to our “eternal destiny.” But for many of us that feels like a future so remote that we may not really give it much thought. There are just so many other things going on in our lives that seem so much more pressing. Some of us may even wonder how something that happened so long ago and so far away could have much to do with our “real lives” right here and right now.

Of course, there are many of us who look to Jesus as an example for our lives on a daily basis. We find meaning in his teachings about how to live and how to love. But that doesn’t distinguish Jesus from any of the other great teachers throughout the ages. And the hard truth of this world is that from a certain point of view you could say it hasn’t really made much of a difference. There are plenty of people in this world who are still caught in vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. Right now, millions of people, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of human beings are at the mercy of those who put their faith in ideas like “might makes right.” In the face of all that, “love your enemies” can feel pretty empty.

But I believe that our Gospel lesson for today points us in a different direction—toward a hope that never dies, a hope for new life that makes a difference right here and right now. The story of the women discovering that Jesus’ tomb was empty doesn’t necessarily in and of itself prove anything. But there is more to it than just the empty tomb. Whatever you may think about “angels,” the gist of their message is couched in the question, “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?” The point of the question is to make it clear that the one they thought was lying dead in a cemetery is actually “the Living One.”

Now, to fully appreciate this, we need to look at the background of that phrase in the Bible. Throughout the Bible, God is “the Living One.” He is the one who gives life to all creation, including those of us who are living and breathing here today. In contrast to the idols made of wood and stone and precious metals, the “Living” God is the one who is able to make a difference in people’s lives here and now. I’ll admit that doesn’t always happen the way we expect, but I will also insist that the God who is “the Living One” shows up in our lives in surprising ways. I don’t know about you, but in my experience, those surprises usually come at just the right time.

So when the angels at the empty tomb call Jesus “the Living One,” the idea is more than just a dead man who has come back to life. Rather, the idea is that Jesus again shares God’s own life. And the first Christians became convinced that this was true not primarily because of the empty tomb or the angels’ message, but because they encountered Jesus as “the Living One” personally. Those encounters made all the difference in the world for them. Instead of a tragedy that stole all hope away, the cross was transformed into good news. The cross shows us not the heartbreaking end of a failed would-be religious leader, but rather the suffering love of the God-who-is-always-with-us and the God-who-is-always-for-us. It shows us that not even death can prevent God’s love from claiming us all.

But more than that, encountering the risen Lord Jesus as “the Living One” points us to the power of God to bring new life even from death. That’s not just something that applied to Jesus all those centuries ago. It’s a promise that the goal toward which God has been working and continues to work even now is a whole new creation. Although it’s a pretty big concept to try to wrap your head around, that’s precisely the promise of Easter. It’s a part of God’s “plan” that I alluded to in our Good Friday service the other night. God’s plan is not only that Jesus would die to absorb all the vicious circles of sin and death into himself. God’s plan also includes raising Jesus from the dead, and in so doing restoring everything in all creation. I believe the plan has always been to return all of creation to the way it was intended to be in the first place.

As our affirmation of faith for today puts it, Jesus’ resurrection brings the promise of “a new world … in which God is really honored as God, human beings are truly loving, and God will … make all things right on earth.”[2] That may sound too good to be true, but it’s a theme that runs through the entire Bible. At the end of the book of Revelation, God declares “now I am making everything new” (Rev. 21:5). And we see it in the way the Bible ends where it began: with a whole new garden, on a whole new earth, in a wholly renewed creation. There the river of the water of life is available freely to all who are thirsty. There the tree of life is available to all, and its “leaves” are for “healing” all the nations. That’s where the Bible ends, where it began!

And what makes all this more than just “pie in the sky” wishful thinking is that God raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus, “the Living One,” God’s new creation already breaks into this world. It changes our world by promising that all the pain and suffering will be turned into good, and all the death and destruction will be changed into new life. I know it seems too good to be true. But that’s the promise of what happened on that first Easter! It still has the power to change our lives right here and right now. One way it does that is the assurance that Jesus “the Living One” is with us gives us courage to face the present challenges of our lives. But more than that, as “the Living One,” Jesus points us to the final hope that we will all share the life of God with him in the end. We have this hope because Jesus is “the Living One.” Or, to borrow a phrase from the hymn, we have this hope “because he lives” in our hearts even now.

Without Jesus “the Living One” and the hope we have in him, life in this world can seem empty. When all you can see is the vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair, there’s not much left to give life meaning. But the fact that Jesus overcame even death to become “the Living One” points us to the promise that nothing, not even death itself, can separate us from the hope we have through him. Because Jesus lives even now, the new life that raised him from the dead spreads from him to everyone who encounters him. And as we encounter the “Living One,” we each take our place and do our part in spreading that new life throughout all creation until finally God makes the whole world new again!

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/20/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Adapted from “The Study Catechism: Full Version,” Approved by the 210th General Assembly (1998), qq 85, 87, 88.

Not In Vain

 Not in Vain

1 Corinthians 15:25-28, 35-58[1]

I mentioned last week that hope is something we all need to thrive in this life. But hope can be tricky, because it can be hard to know what to place your hope in. Especially in times when it feels like everything you thought you could count on in life has dropped out from under you. Those of us who practice faith in Jesus Christ have a hope for something more, beyond this life. But that hope has resulted all too often in an attitude that what happens now doesn’t really matter. That was why Karl Marx criticized religion as a kind of drug that made people passive in the face of the wrongs that were being perpetrated against them. I think that’s why we need the full version of the Christian hope: not just that we’ll go to heaven when we die, but also that God is working to restore all our lives and everything he created in the same way that Jesus was raised to new life. The miracle of the resurrection on that first Easter Sunday points us to the promise that God is working to change this world, and everyone and everything in it.

Even with that hope, there are still some pitfalls to avoid.[2] For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly optimistic view. Because we have the hope of being with Jesus at our death, we can treat death like it’s no “big deal.” It’s just “passing on” to another stage of our journey. That’s not the biblical view. As Paul puts it in our lesson for today, death is an “enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). Death has a “sting” that is real and harmful (1 Cor 15:55). Paul’s not just talking about physical death, although as many of us have experienced, that can be truly harmful to those of us who have lost loved ones. Paul is also talking about the destructive power that “death” exerts in our lives and in our world to this day through the powers and persons who align themselves with evil.[3] Our hope is not that somehow death is no “big deal.” Our hope is that in Jesus’ very real death on the cross, and especially by raising Jesus to new life, God has overcome the power of death.

The other pitfall goes to the opposite extreme. For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly pessimistic view. Because of the harm that death continues to inflict in our lives and in our world, we can decide that God must not be able to do anything about it.[4] But that’s also not a biblical view! Not by a long stretch! The God to whom the Apostle Paul points us is the God who not only worked in the lives of the people of Israel and in the lives of believers in the early church all those centuries ago. This God is the God who continues to work in and through us to bring life out of all the harm that death can inflict on us. We have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because Jesus died a very real death on the cross. But we also have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because God raised Jesus to a new life that is just as real. That means death will not have the last word for anyone.

The hope of the Gospel is the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. It’s the promise that the life God revealed in Jesus’ resurrection is a new kind of life that is stronger than the worst that death and all its powers and those who align themselves with them can throw at us. Paul points to this hope when he insists that “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54), the victory Jesus won when God raised him from death. Paul can go so far as to “taunt” death like one might do to a defeated and humiliated bully: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55, NLT). The reason he can act so confidently in the face of the harm that death still can and does inflict on us is because he knows that God has given us “victory” over all of it “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). The life that God has injected into this world through Jesus’ resurrection has already defeated death and all the powers and persons aligned with it. And the promise of our faith is that this new life will finally and fully define all creation. For everyone and everything!

Our faith and our hope exist in a balance. We don’t naively water down the power of death or the very real harm those who align themselves with evil can do in our world. Rather, with Paul we take all of that seriously as an “enemy.” But on the other hand, we don’t just give up in the face of the sometimes overwhelming discouragement we feel over the influence of those powers and persons. That’s because we’ve seen the light of new life that dawned on that first Easter morning, and with Paul and the hosts of believers throughout the ages we put our faith and our hope in the power of that new life.[5] We hold our faith and our hope in the power of God to overcome evil in this world in a balance. But the scale is tipped in favor of hope, because Jesus’ resurrection points us to the day when the final victory will come.

We don’t place our hope in some idealistic vision that attributes to humanity a goodness that can prevail against all evil. There is much goodness to be found in the human family, to be sure. But it’s not equal to the task of overcoming the powers of evil and those who align themselves with it. Neither do we place our hope in sheer determination and willpower to resist in the face of all the wrongs that are so blatantly perpetrated in our day, every day. Human willpower isn’t sufficient to the task either. We place our hope in the confidence that, as the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth said, “God is not God in vain.”[6] Or as Paul puts it in our lesson for today, ultimately God will be “utterly supreme over everything everywhere” (1 Cor 15:28, NLT).[7] And so we place our hope in God, and in the victory he has won in Jesus Christ. And that hope leads us to the confidence that God will fulfill all that he has promised to do. One day, we will share in the new life that Jesus now enjoys.

So how then shall we live in these times of turmoil? Do we retreat behind the walls of our homes and churches and sit back, waiting for God to work a miracle? Or do we “plunge into the present struggle” as our affirmation of faith last week called us to do, putting the courage and energy our faith and hope give us to good use here and now?[8] I think St. Paul would have us do the latter. After all that he had to say about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection and the hope it gives us, Paul concluded this chapter by saying, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless” (1 Cor 15:58, NLT). That last phrase is often translated more literally “in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We may or may not see tangible results from our work. But I believe that every act of integrity, every act of kindness, every act motivated by faith and hope and love can and does make a difference.[9] Not just because of our sincerity, or our determination, but because the new life of our resurrected lord Jesus means that what we do here and now is “not in vain”!

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/23/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed, 378.

[3] Paul speaks of this especially in Romans 5, where he contrasts the effects of death’s “reign” with the effects of God’s grace that lead to the “victory” that we have through Jesus Christ (cf. esp. Rom 5:17). See especially The Message translation: “If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” Cf. also Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, p.1302.

[4] This was Harold Kushner’s view in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He and his wife had experienced the loss of a child, so while I may disagree with his view, I would not want to criticize him personally.

[5] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 283. See also ibid., 285, where he says that Christians “know of a power at work here and now greater than the power of evil, a power that keeps breaking into our godless and godforsaken world to heal old wounds, make new beginnings, and (if only now and then, here and there) give us a glimpse of the final victory of God’s compassion and justice that are on the way.” See further, ibid., 375: “The God in whom we hope is a God who not only will be but is the powerful and compassionate Creator and Ruler of the world. The crucified and risen Christ who will come to overthrow all the powers of darkness and evil that spoil God’s good creation and human life in it has already triumphed over them and even now is at work to complete the work he has begun.”

[6] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.4.1:196. While he concedes that work of reconciliation that Jesus has accomplished through the cross and resurrection (elsewhere he calls it “the accomplished alteration of the whole world situation”; ibid., p. 191) still faces opposition in this world, he insists that we must see this “battle” as resulting in the victory of God.

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 163, where he points to the final victory of Jesus’ resurrection as serving “the sole and all-embracing lordship of God.”

[8] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 10.5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[9] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 280-81: “we can and must confidently throw ourselves into the fight against evil in our own lives and in the world around us, knowing that we do not fight alone but with the one who is stronger than all the forces of evil.”

Our Hope in Christ

 Our Hope in Christ

1 Corinthians 15:12-26[1]

Hope is a crucial aspect of human life. We cannot thrive without a sense of hope. While I think many would agree that hope is a mindset we can learn, it doesn’t just come automatically. And when we lack a healthy sense of hope about our lives we can find it hard to believe that they have meaning and purpose. That puts us at risk for sliding into depression, anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts. A lack of hope can affect us in more “physical” ways, like diminishing our ability to cope with the stress we all face as a part of life. Hope gives us confidence to persevere in hard times, because we believe that there is indeed meaning and purpose to our lives, each and every one of our lives. That kind of resilience enables us to move forward with our goals in life and with our commitments to family and work and service.

Hope keeps us going when everything in life seems to conspire against us. But hope can be risky as well. We can put our hope in all the wrong things. We may be hoping for a nicer car, a bigger home, a better job, a more fulfilling relationship. Hoping for those things isn’t in and of itself wrong. There is a forward-looking aspect to all hope. But when we stake too much of our well-being on hoping for the wrong things, if those hopes come crashing down, so do we. That’s when false hope can hurt us deeply. It can shake our faith in others, in the meaning of life, even in the goodness of God.

Our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians for today addresses hope from the perspective of Christian faith. Specifically, Paul was addressing the hope of the resurrection. I dare say that’s not something that’s high on our list of hopes these days. As Christians, we hope to “go to heaven” when we die, to be with Jesus and to be reunited with our loved ones. But that’s not the focus of hope in the New Testament. The focus of Christian hope is that we will share Jesus’ resurrection, in bodily form, and that in that new body we will enjoy new life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.[2] In fact, for Paul the hope of sharing in Jesus’ resurrection is so foundational for Christian faith that he could say, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless” and “we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (1 Cor 15:16-17, 19, NLT).

It may be hard for us to understand how Christians who lived only 30 years after the first Easter Sunday could somehow doubt the resurrection of Jesus. Part of the problem in Corinth may have been that in the Greek world, the idea of a future “resurrection” in which the dead live again in physical form was thought to be crude and disgusting. In the Greek world, people looked forward to being set free from the “prison house” of the body. They believed that death was a transition from physical life in a body to living among the stars in the heavens as an immortal soul. “Resurrection” just didn’t compute to them. They would have been much more comfortable with our notions of “going to heaven” when you die. In fact, it was the influence of this line of thinking about three hundred years after Paul’s day that shifted Christian hope from sharing Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation to eternal life in heaven.

Some of the believers at Corinth went to the opposite extreme. They heard some of the wonderful promises of new life in the Gospel message Paul and others had preached. And because they heard in that message that they already had eternal life fully and completely because of what Jesus did, they believed that they had all they were ever going to receive of salvation. They bypassed the promise of God’s future as resurrected people living on a recreated earth in the way God had intended in the first place—without sadness or pain, suffering or injustice, violence or even death. They believed that all they were ever going to get from their faith was what they had right then and right there.

But St. Paul wouldn’t accept either of these options. For him, the inevitable consequence of Jesus’ resurrection on that first Easter Sunday morning was that we would all share in the new life Jesus now enjoys. He says it this way: “Christ has been raised from the dead” as “the first of a great harvest of all who have died” (1 Cor 15:20, NLT). For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant more than God had intervened to vindicate Jesus and his message. For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant the beginning of the transformation of all things and all people! It meant the beginning of God’s whole new creation that would eventually “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).[3] It’s hard to wrap your head around that big of an idea. But for Paul tampering with that hope meant tampering with the Gospel message. And that was something he never allowed!

The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that he died on the cross so that we could know without a shadow of a doubt that God loves us—he always has and always will. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his death broke the power of everything that could separate us from God or harm us in any way. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his resurrection overcame even death itself and brought new life to everyone. Paul said it this way, “In Adam all of us die. In the same way, in Christ all of us will be made alive again. (1 Cor 15:22, NCV). And that means that what God has done through Jesus is nothing less than to set in motion the process of restoring everything in all creation to the way that he intended in the first place. Just as Jesus enjoys that resurrected life now, so we too can look forward to enjoying the same life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.

We need all kinds of hopes to keep us going. Hope in the form of looking forward to doing something fun. Hope in the form of knowing that there are friends and family who will always love us no matter what. Hope in the form of trusting that all our needs will be supplied by our God. But more than that, we need a hope that can motivate us to do as our affirmation of faith for today puts it: “to take up our cross, risking the consequences of faithful discipleship; to walk by faith, not by sight.” It takes serious hope to give us the courage and the strength to “plunge … into the present struggle.”[4] The reason for that is that we can see injustice and violence and even death at work all around us to this day.

Yes, we already have a taste of the amazing grace of God at work in our lives here and now. But I think our experience with the bitterness of death can help us truly appreciate the hope Jesus gives us by rising from the grave.[5] Those of us who have looked into the eyes of a loved who was there a few moments ago, but is gone now, those of us who know the bitterness of death, must know that we cannot accomplish God’s work in this world on our own. It’s just too big! Because what God is doing is nothing short of restoring of all things and everyone to the life that God intended for us in the first place. And that’s what he is doing even now through the power of Jesus’ death and the power of Jesus’ resurrection to new life. Our hope is that power is already working to change our lives now. But our hope is also the recognition that we have not yet tasted it fully and finally as we will when we all share in Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation. Sharing that life, the life that Jesus now enjoys, in God’s (re)new(ed) creation: that is our hope in Christ. And that hope gives us courage and strength to press on, come what may.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/16/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, 1229: “the resurrection of Jesus was not to restore life in the conditions of continuing earthly existence (and eventual death) but to initiate a transformed mode of existence as the firstfruits (v. 20) of the eschatological new creation.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 55, where he says that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ “the eschatological turn of the world begins, from transience to non-transience, from the night of the world to the morning of God’s new day and to the new creation of all things” (emphasis original).

[4] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 9.5, 10.1, 5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 171-72, 210-11. He holds in tension the “deadliness of death” which still persists in our experience of life with the “promise and hope of a still outstanding, real eschaton,” that is, a future that is defined not by death but by life.

We Shall Be Like Him

 We Shall Be Like Him

1 John 3:1-2[1]

I’ve mentioned before that one of the symptoms of the changes that are reshaping our society is that it’s hard to know whom you can trust. While I genuinely and wholeheartedly believe that there is plenty of goodness and beauty in our world if we have the eyes to see it, I also recognize that there is a lot of pain and fear as well. As much as it is true that we all have so much to be grateful for in this life, we also all have our share in the pain and brokenness of our world. Despite all appearances, especially in the beautiful family pictures on social media that make us think that everyone else has the perfect life, the reality is that life takes unexpected and unwelcome turns for us all. And when that happens, most of us find ourselves asking the question of God, “Why did this have to happen to me?”

Part of the problem is that we may look for our sense of safety from people who aren’t really able to provide it. Some of us may have felt betrayed by the person we love most in the world, whether a parent or child, a spouse or a friend. That kind of betrayal can leave us wondering if we can trust anyone or anything, even God! Some of us may have committed our lives to a career, even given our best years to it, only to find that the choices of others or circumstances beyond our control leave us empty-handed. Some of us have had our health go from something we took for granted to something that feels like it’s hanging by a thread. In these and many other ways, our experiences in life can leave us wondering if we can trust anyone or anything. Even God.

We come to faith drawn by the wonderful good news that God loves us and that Jesus lived and died and rose again to show us just how much that’s true. And in our best moments we know the peace and joy that promise holds for us, and we’re deeply grateful. But the way our lives may unfold has a way of taking a jolting turn at what can seem like the very worst possible time. Sometimes our faith is strong enough to carry us through. Sometimes, life’s sudden twists take all the supports out from under us. The shock of that jolt can leave us wondering where God is, or whether God loves us, or whether there even is a God at all. It shakes our faith to the core, and we may wonder if we can ever believe again.

I think our lesson from 1 John for today addresses this issue. The Elder John uses the resurrection of Jesus as a basis for reminding us that, no matter what may happen to us, God is always faithful. In a very real sense, that was also one of the main lessons of Jesus’ resurrection. Despite all appearances that his death somehow invalidated all that he said and did—as the crowds pointed out by shouting, “he saved others, let him save himself!”—the cross was not the end of Jesus’ faith in God and his life of faithful obedience to God. Death was not the final word for Jesus’ life and ministry. The final word was and is resurrection to new life. Part of the reason for that was to vindicate all that Jesus had said and done in his ministry. But part of the reason for the resurrection was to demonstrate definitively that God is always faithful. Always.

And so it is that our Scripture reading reminds us that our lives are all grounded firmly in the love of God, which has made us “children of God.” This is one of the themes of 1 John. God has not only demonstrated his love for us by what Jesus did, he also assures us of his love for us by the constant presence of his Spirit. In the face of any doubts we may harbor about whether or not we are truly beloved children of God, the Scripture emphasizes that we’re not just “called” God’s children, but that’s what we truly are. The basis for this confidence is the story of God’s love for the people of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. We may be used to thinking of it as a story of an angry God punishing a wayward people. But I think we would do better to see it as the story of a loving father who never gives up on his stubbornly defiant children. Through it all, God is always faithful to them. Always!

Our scripture lesson takes it a step further, however. As the author puts it, “we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT) While there’s a lot going on in that statement, I would say that the point of it is to assure us that just as God demonstrated his faithfulness to Jesus by raising him from the dead, so the promise that we will share the resurrection life of Jesus is the promise that God will be faithful to us as well. Just as death was not God’s last word for Jesus, so it is for us as well. Neither will any of the pain or fear or disappointment or despair or emptiness we may have to deal with in our lives.

God’s last word for us is life. And God’s final act of faithfulness will be to bring us face-to-face with Jesus so that we see him “as he really is.” What’s more, the promise is that when we stand before the risen Lord Jesus, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT)! I find it interesting that the Elder John says we don’t know exactly what that will look like. But the idea is that Jesus’ resurrection gives us at least a clue. In fact, another main theme of Easter is that very real nature of Jesus’ resurrection gives us something of an indication about what to expect about our future with God. As the Scripture says, we will be like Jesus. The promise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that we too will be resurrected to a new life, and when that happens, we will all be changed so that we are “like him.” And the point of it all is that God is always faithful. And he will continue to show us his faithfulness all the way to our eternal life in his loving presence.

Sometimes the way our lives unfold can make us question whether we can trust even God. The path gets dark and difficult, and we may wonder whether it will always be that way. But the promise of the resurrection is that God’s last word is never death, but life.[2] I like the way Henri Nouwen frames it: “Through the resurrection, God has said to Jesus, ‘You are indeed my beloved Son, and my love is everlasting,’ and to us God has said, ‘You are indeed my beloved children, and my love is everlasting.’”[3] That first Easter is a promise that we can trust God to be faithful to love us all the way through everything in this life until we are standing face-to-face with Jesus, when we shall be like him.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/14/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2:29: “God Himself in His freedom has decided that [man] shall stand, that he shall be saved and not lost, that he shall live and not die.”

[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, God’s Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, 100-101. He adds that “The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God … will [ever] get lost … . The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our curious questions about life after death, … . But it does reveal to us that, indeed love is stronger than death.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer is known for saying something similar: the promise of final resurrection is the promise that “nothing is lost, that everything is taken up in Christ” and restored “as God originally intended for it to be.” Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 170

A Whole New Life

 A Whole New Life

John 20:1-18[1]

When we think of the promise that through Jesus we have eternal life, I think most of us picture some kind of heavenly existence in the next life. And I would be willing to bet that our images of that next life are as varied as each person in this room. My favorite image of that life is a cabin in the mountains, where I’m surrounded by all the people I’ve loved, as well as all the dogs I’ve loved, and we get to enjoy the beauty of that place forever. Of course, a part of that dream is that I finally get the chance to learn how to play the guitar the way I’ve always wanted to. And likely there’s a bicycle or two around!

Our hopes for that life are important. But I think an even more important promise of our faith, especially in John’s Gospel, is that we have a whole new quality of life right here and right now. I mentioned recently that I’ve wrestled with what that looks like for 40 years. Mainly because in my opinion there are people out there making promises in God’s name about what we can expect from “new life” right here and right now that God never made! Having “eternal life” or a “whole new life” here and now doesn’t mean that all of a sudden our lives are all sunshine and rainbows. At least not in my experience!

I think our Gospel lesson for today helps us with that question, although it’s going to take some doing to get us there. Our lesson for today tells us a very different Easter story from the one we’re used to. We’re used to the story that the women who went to the tomb to take care of Jesus’ body properly were met by an angel (or angels) who announced to them immediately that Jesus had risen from the dead. But as a matter of fact, there is no such announcement in our Gospel lesson. In fact, there’s no such announcement in John’s Gospel at all! Instead of hearing that Jesus had risen from the dead, everyone in John’s Gospel experiences the living Christ. In John’s Gospel, the good news of Easter is not “He is risen!” but rather “I have seen the Lord!” (Jn 20:18).

That’s because in this Gospel, it was no angel who revealed the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection, but Jesus himself. Although Mary Magdalene was the first to see that the stone had been rolled away, it was Peter and the “disciple whom Jesus loved” who first entered the tomb. After the two disciples left wondering about what had happened, Mary returned to mourn. At this point Jesus himself appeared to her, but she didn’t recognize him. The scene is tender and touching. Jesus asks, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” (Jn 20:15). At first, like some of the others who met the risen Jesus, Mary didn’t recognize him. In fact, she thought that maybe he was the one who tended the garden in which the tomb was located. She also thought that maybe this gardener had taken Jesus’ body. But she had no idea that she was speaking to Jesus himself.

Until Jesus simply called her name. All he had to do to cut through the fog of her grief and confusion was to speak her name: “Mary!” And she immediately recognized him. It reminds me of something Jesus said earlier in John’s Gospel: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me” (Jn 10:14) and “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” (Jn 10:27). All Mary had to do to recognize Jesus was to hear him calling her name. And when she returned to the others, she simply told them, “I have seen the Lord!”

What Jesus said to Mary may leave us scratching our heads: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (Jn 20:17). We may wonder why it was so important for him to “ascend to the Father.” In John’s Gospel the ascension fills out the picture of what Jesus did for us to give us a “whole new life.” We may think of that simply in terms of his dying on the cross. Or we may think in terms of his dying and rising again. But that’s not the full picture, not in John’s Gospel. What Jesus does to offer us a whole new life begins with the fact that he is the one who was God and was with God from “the beginning,” but he came to be God with us in human flesh. And in John’s Gospel, that  means he can give us the life that only God gives (Jn 5:26). That’s where it starts.

But beyond that, Jesus said he would be “lifted up” so that everyone who believes may “have life” in him (Jn 3:14-15). A part of that means being lifted up on the cross. I think he did that to give us an example of what love looks like as our inspiration for life. But more than that, Jesus had to be lifted up to new life by rising on that Easter morning to break the fear of death that held us in its relentless grip. And in our lesson for today, we learn that Jesus also had to be lifted up to the right hand of God the Father. In John’s Gospel, what Jesus does to give us a “whole new life” is a complete picture: he becomes one of us, he offers his life for us, he rises from the dead, and he returns to the right hand of God.

We might be able to get the rest of it, but I’m not sure we understand why it was so important for Jesus to “ascend to the Father.” But I think what Jesus said to Mary meant that he must return to the Father so that his Father could be their Father, and his God could be their God. I think what that means is that he had to complete the work of ascending to the Father so that they could share the same relationship with the Father as he did. In John’s Gospel, one of the most important aspects of the “whole new life” that Jesus gives us is that we are embraced in the relationship of love that the Father has shared with the Son and the Spirit for all eternity. That was the goal of all that Jesus did to give us a whole new life. Living in a relationship of love with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit is what “eternal life” here and now looks like in John’s Gospel.

That might sound like something that’s beyond our grasp, and I would agree with you in part. But I would ask you to think about the difference it makes in your life to know that you’re loved by someone. Now take that and put yourself in the picture as being embraced eternally by the love that Father, Son, and Spirit always share. I don’t know about you, but for me, that love means everything. It means that even when we may feel alone in this world, we're never really alone. It means that even when we may feel rejected in this life, we always have a home in the love of God where we know that we're accepted. I believe that kind of love makes a whole new life possible for every one of us here and now, and every day.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/9/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

The God of Life

 The God of Life

Luke 20:27-38[1]

Life has a funny way of teaching us the lessons we need to learn. As much as we may try to deny it, one of life’s basic lessons is that, as William Faulkner is famously quoted, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” All of us live our whole lives under the influence of our experiences. We can either make peace with our past, accept it for what it was, and move forward with our lives. Or we can try to ignore our past, making an effort to forget the memories that can come back to haunt us. But whatever we try to suppress festers to the point that it exerts even more power over us. And when it does come out, it’s usually quite ugly.

While it’s true that we can never escape our past experiences, I don’t believe for a second that we are trapped by them. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be much point in living. Then Benjamin Franklin was right when he said, “in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” That kind of outlook is common, but it’s a prescription for a pretty hopeless view of life. From this perspective, death has the final word on everything. And that means that the human family is hopelessly trapped in the vicious circles of selfishness, hatred, poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. All that’s left is just to resign ourselves that “Life is useless, all useless,” as the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes says (Eccl 1:2, TEV). There’s not much room in that outlook for faith or hope or love.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was responding in part to this kind of pessimism about life. He had been answering questions from various groups of Jewish leaders, each one intent on embarrassing him in front of the people. One question posed came from the Sadducees. They were the ruling priests who controlled the Temple. They were also the ones who cooperated with the Roman empire. And they were not above bribing the Roman governor for the privilege of serving as the chief religious leaders of the Jewish people.

As Luke tells us, the Sadducees didn’t believe in “resurrection.” They lived in a closed system, and they weren’t open to the idea that there could be anything more to life than what they already knew. The Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him about the practice of a man marrying his brother’s widow. Moses had told them to do this so that the first child would be the descendant of the dead brother, to ensure that his name would continue to live on through his offspring. This was the Sadducee’s view of “resurrection”: people “live on” through their children. Their question to Jesus was about seven brothers who in turn married the same woman. They asked him, “In the resurrection … whose wife will the woman be?” (Lk. 20:33). I don’t think they were really looking for an answer. They were just trying to make the idea of a “resurrection” look ridiculous. And Jesus with it.

But Jesus “corrected” them by recalling the time when Moses met God at the burning bush. There, God spoke of himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). When Moses had this encounter, the patriarchs had been dead for centuries. Jesus drew the inference that this proves that the dead are raised, for he said that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (Lk. 20:38). Jesus went on to explain that in the next life there would be no need for ways to ensure that a dead man had descendants, because they would all be “children of the resurrection,” no longer subject to death (Lk. 20:35-36). In other words, their question was irrelevant.

I think one of the most important points Jesus was trying to make here is that you cannot limit God’s work to the past. If God is the God of life, he is also the God of the living. And that means that our future is not one that’s defined by death, but rather by life. God’s work in the world is based on promises that point toward a future with hope and life. Promises like “I will wipe away every tear,” and “they will beat their swords into ploughshares,” and “I am making everything new.” The Christian faith is at heart the hope that God has begun to do just that through Jesus Christ. Our faith insists that from God’s perspective, the final word that defines us all is not death, but life.

I think that how we choose to look at all of this makes a great difference in our attitude toward stewardship. As I mentioned last week, in the Reformed tradition we believe that stewardship is not just about money, but it’s about seeing our lives as a gift from God to be invested for the sake of the Kingdom. If we choose to live within a closed system and assume that there’s only so much to go around, we’re probably not going to be willing to take much risk when it comes to our money or our lives. But if we can look at things from the perspective of God’s open future, a future in which life is the final word rather than death, then perhaps maybe we can step out in faith. If we can see the future as one in which our “labor in the Lord” is “not in vain” but rather makes an important contribution to advancing God’s purposes in our community and our world, it puts our stewardship in a whole different perspective.

We all have the choice: we can live as if the past overrules any hope for the future, and death ultimately makes life “useless.” If we choose to assume that our best is back there in the past—which means it’s gone—I doubt that we’re going to be interested in going out of our way to invest anything for God’s Kingdom. But if we choose to live based on the faith that the “God of life” is at work around and among us to make everything new, then maybe we can have the courage to stake our lives on God’s promises. When we embrace God’s vision for the future, perhaps we’ll begin to realize that we have no idea what God can or cannot do in our lives, in this congregation, and in this community!

The next step is to put our faith into practice every day through prayer, giving back what we’ve been given, helping those in need, inviting others to join us,  promoting community, studying the Bible together, and joining together for worship on the Lord’s Day. When we invest our lives for the sake of the kingdom of God, it’s a big vision we’re taking on. None of us can do it alone. It will take all of us doing all we can together in a spirit of humble prayer, asking the “God of life” who is the source for everything we have to send us what we need. More than that, it will take God himself working in and through us, whose last word is not death but life!

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[1] ©2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 11/6/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.For a video recording of this sermon, check out my Pastor Alan YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/JSjQzIxI7HE

The Living One

 The Living One

Luke 24:1-12[1]

Sometimes I wonder whether what we do and say here still makes a difference in people’s lives. After all, the focus of our faith is on events that happened a long time ago in a far away place. I think it’s easy to just set it all aside because it doesn’t seem like something that happened so long ago and so far away could have much to do with “real life” in the 21^st century. Or we may view faith as something that relates to our “eternal destiny,” which for many of us feels like a future so remote that we don’t really give it much thought. So on a day like today I may not be the only one wondering whether anything we hear or do makes a real difference in our lives right here and right now.

Of course, many of us do look to Jesus as an example for our lives. We find meaning in his teachings about how to live and how to love. But that doesn’t distinguish Jesus from any of the other great teachers throughout the ages. And the hard truth of this world is that from a certain point of view you could say it hasn’t really made much of a difference. There are plenty of people in this world who are caught in vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. Right now, millions of human beings are at the mercy of those who put their faith in “might makes right.” In the face of all that, “love your enemies” can feel pretty empty.

But I believe that our Gospel lesson for today points us in a different direction—toward a hope that never dies, a hope for new life that makes a difference right here and right now. The story of the women discovering that Jesus’ tomb was empty doesn’t necessarily in and of itself prove anything. But there is more to it than just the empty tomb. Whatever you may think about “angelic messengers,” what they told the women was confirmed in their encounters with Jesus. And the gist of their message is couched in the question, “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?” The point of that question is to make it clear that the one they thought was lying dead in a cemetery is actually “the Living One.”

Now, to fully appreciate this, we need to look at the background of that phrase in the Bible. God is “the Living One” throughout the Bible. He is the one who gives life to all creation, including those of us who are living and breathing here today. In contrast to the idols made of wood and stone and precious metals, the “Living” God is the one who is able to make a difference in people’s lives here and now. I’ll admit that doesn’t always happen the way we expect, but the God who is “the Living One” shows up in our lives in surprising ways. I don’t know about you, but in my experience, those surprises have come at just the right time.

So when the angels in the empty tomb call Jesus “the Living One,” the idea is more than just a dead man who has come back to life. Rather, the idea is that Jesus again shares the life of God. And the first Christians became convinced that this was true not primarily because of the empty tomb or the angels’ message, but because they encountered Jesus as “the Living One” personally. Those encounters made a great deal of difference for them. Instead of a tragedy that stole all their hope from them, the cross was transformed into good news for us all. The cross shows us not the heartbreaking end of a failed religious leader, but rather the suffering love of the God-who-is-with-us and the God-who-is-for-us. And nothing, not even death, can prevent God’s love from claiming us all.

But more than that, encountering the risen Lord Jesus as “the Living One” points us to the power of God to bring new life from death. It’s the promise that the goal toward which God has been working and continues to work is a whole new creation. As our affirmation of faith for today puts it, it is the promise of “a new world … in which God is really honored as God, human beings are truly loving, and God will … make all things right on earth.” That may sound too good to be true, but it’s a theme that runs through to the very end of the Bible. At the end of the book of Revelation, God declares “now I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

And what makes all this more than just “pie in the sky” wishful thinking is that God raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus, “the Living One,” God’s new creation breaks into our lives here and now. It changes our world by promising that all the pain and suffering will be turned into good and all the death and destruction will be changed into new life. Just the assurance that Jesus “the Living One” is constantly with us encourages us in the challenges we face. But more than that, as “the Living One,” Jesus points us to the final hope of sharing the life of God’s new creation with him in the end.

Without Jesus “the Living One” and the hope we have in him, life in this world can seem empty. When all you can see is the vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair, there’s not much left to give life meaning. But the fact that Jesus overcame death to become “the Living One” points us to the promise that nothing, not even death itself, can separate us from the hope we have through him. The new life that raised him from the dead spreads from him to everyone who encounters him. And as we encounter the “Living One,” we each take our place and do our part in spreading that new life throughout all creation until finally God makes a whole new world!

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[1] © 2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 4/17/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.