Sermons at St. John's Presbyterian Church

The Green Flashing Light of the Soul

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Job 19:23-27, Luke 20:27-38

Have you ever seen the green flash of the setting sun?  It may just be an optical illusion created by overly intent looking at the sun.  But it is beautiful.  On a clear day, just as the tip of the sun flattens out and disappears below the horizon, there appears a spreading of silver-green light, a flash.  What a great way to end the day!  This past week, while I haven’t been at the ocean to observe the flash, the sunsets were magical.  There is something about beauty and grace, even a flash, a sunset or Christine’s singing of Handel’s “I Know that my Redeemer Liveth,” that feels eternal.

Handel uses the line we read from Job this morning.  For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.  My heart faints within me!

The Hebrew word translated “redeemer” is Goel. The word may indicate one buying back a field that has been sold, taking up the cause of an orphan whose field has been stolen, or a person sold into slavery, or bringing a people back from exile, or rescuing one from death. 

Job has just spent most of this chapter railing against God, accusing him of ruining his life for no good reason: Like a tree uprooted by a storm, the roots for Job’s hope have been pulled out.  Like a commander surrounding a city, like Jerusalem, God has surrounded Job.

But Job still has a flash of hope that shines eternal.  The hand he is dealt is not a result of his sin or lack of faith.  Even if redemption doesn’t happen in this life, it will in the next.  His heart faints within him: why? Because life is beating him down, because it is unjust or corrupt?  Or because despite all the evidence, he can’t help but have faith that his redeemer lives?

Jesus weighs in on the afterlife in today’s passage from Luke.  One school of thought, that of the Sadducees who question him, believed that so long as Israel obeyed the law then God would rule over them and reward the righteous and punish the sinful in this life.  Job’s friend had just made such an argument; there must be hidden sins, which brought God’s wrath.  Eternal life in this scheme meant to have sons who would keep alive your name, your land, your tradition and faith.  We see in Deut. 25:5 that if a husband died before producing sons, it was the responsibility of his brother to marry the widow and ‘perform his duty” by having sons to carry on the brothers name.

Obviously, there is a problem if all the brothers and the wife die without having any sons.  So the question the Sadducees ask Jesus is which of the brothers gets the eternal life of making sons with the wife in eternity?  There is an assumption that the structure of life after resurrection (which they don’t believe) is the same as life as they know it here on earth.  A secondary question is whether or not the Law God gave Moses is binding in heaven too?  (Brian P. Stoffrengen. Exegetical Notes http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke20x27.htm)

Luke’s Jesus makes a distinction between “this age” and “that age.”  Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.

There are laws and customs and relationships, which help us to function as an individual and society that are not relevant in the age of grace to come.  If irrelevant in the age to come, then they are not essential, even if functional and normative in this age.  This has pretty big implications, but I want to finish with a reflection on the idea that our presence and being after death are different than they are in this body, in this time and in this society.  What about Job’s tenacious faith that his redeemer lives?  What about resurrection?

Faith is about acknowledging the power of an intuitive feeling or Spirit that exists, though it cannot be proven in scientific terms.  Faith is about acknowledging this presence, the Spirit, which is greater than little me and yet connects me to life beyond myself, life in “that age”, thereby making me something more than what fits within my skin.  So Job, (and those faithful who suffered exile), despite all the evidence to the contrary, which he himself gives, nevertheless says, I know that my redeemer lives.  The Spirit of that age, say the mystics, exists before me, comes to me, wells up from within me, and carries me beyond me.

There is a strange experience I have had several times at the bedside.  At the moment of death, (Paul says, “In the twinkling of an eye”) there seems to be this freeing of the Spirit from the body where it spreads out remerging with the Spirit.  It feels like an explosion outward, without the violence that the word explosion implies, just an expansion of presence.  An elated freeing. The green flash of the setting soul.  It is frighteningly beautiful.  I suppose one could attempt to explain it away as transference from the grievers mind.  But that seems a bit stubborn and I haven’t been sitting around waiting and expecting this experience.  It just jumps up and touches me, goes through me.  And there are so many other similar experiences.  At the moment of John’s daughter Shona’s death, her young niece who was fifty miles away said, “Shona is happy now.”  Now this of a young woman who in this age had been tormented by sadness.  By God’s grace, this tormented age does not have the last word.

Lo, says Paul in Corinthians.  I tell you a mystery.  We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.  O death, where is thy victory?  O death, where is thy sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who give us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.