"Ghosts, Spirits or Apparitions?"

Scripture: Luke 24:6-49
Preacher: Rev. Ross Purdy
Date: April 30, 2006

Ghosts, Spirits or Apparitions?   What a strange title for a sermon!   But in my mind it represents one of the questions of the afterlife that we all consider: what happens to us after we die?   Do we become ghosts floating around, hovering above the ground?   Are we trapped in certain locations, such as a house or hotel, to haunt, to play tricks on others as though we were terribly bored and needed something to do?   Or are we eternally confused in the afterlife, wandering this earth in an attempt to make sense of our surroundings?   Do ghosts, spirits or apparitions tell us about our future?   Are they real?  

What happens to us after death?   What happened to our loved ones when they moved on?   This is what I'd like to preach about this morning.   I believe our passage is the answer to our question:

Jesus, after His death, stood among his friends and they were troubled.   They didn't know what He was.   Then Jesus spoke to them - I see that you're troubled.   I see that you have questions within your hearts!   What questions?   The ones they had about the issue of death and life.

The world has always pondered this question.   The Greeks, in Greek mythology especially, attempted to answer this question.   Their Hades was filled with body-less spirits of people who floated about for eternity only a shadow of what they were on earth.   They were dazed and confused and couldn't connect with this world anymore.   Others believed that these disembodied spirits could leave their habitation of the dead and wander out.   Therefore, they were ghosts, but still unaware of their surroundings...in other words, dead people with brain damage.   Many believed that the dead were taken over the River Styx by a Boatman.   If someone could pay his/her coin, his job was to transport the dearly departed from the shadowy form of earth to the confusing form of the afterlife.   Those who were fortunate to go to the Elysian fields, or paradise, were given the blessing of sense, peace and joy.   Not many, however, made it there.  

Many of the Jewish people in Jesus' day also held to these stories and legends. Many believed, probably some of the disciples, that death was a confused place of shadowy spirits.   Everyone had their fears.

Does some of this sound similar to thoughts today?   Take away the terms of Hades or Paradise and thoughts are still the same.   But what I'd like to proclaim, this morning, is not the mysteriousness of death but the revelation of death that was given to us through Jesus' own experience of death.   How we view the afterlife indicates our understanding of God.   The god of ghosts is a cruel god if he or she simply has to leave a disembodied spirit to fend for his or herself.   The god of the confused spirits wandering this earth is an evil god because he or she takes people from some point of understanding to confusion.   The god of spirits or apparitions is a god who is out of control because he or she doesn't have time to take care of the person he or she created.   The theology behind ghosts, spirits or apparitions is one of fear.

Many of you are familiar with the Winchester House here in California. Sarah Winchester's husband had acquired a fortune by manufacturing and selling rifles. After he died of influenza in 1918, she moved to San Jose. Because of her grief and her long time interest in spiritism, Sarah sought out a medium to contact her dead husband. The medium told her, "As long as you keep building your home, you will never face death."

Sarah believed the spiritist, so she bought an unfinished 17-room mansion and started to expand it. The project continued until she died at the age of 85.   It cost 5 million dollars at a time when workmen earned 50 cents a day. The mansion had 150 rooms, 13 bathrooms, 2,000 doors, 47 fireplaces, and 10,000 windows. And Mrs. Winchester left enough materials so that they could have continued building for another 80 years.

Today that house stands as more than a tourist attraction. It is a silent witness to the dread of dead that leaves millions of people in bondage (Our Daily Bread, April 2, 1994).

Your understanding of death and the afterlife will shape your proclamation about God.   What do you believe about God?   Is God out of control, unable to see your being through from start to finish?   God created you so intricately at your birth that to assume that when you die God has no plan is a sad thought process.   God knows all about you and will not leave you to fend as a frightened creature.   Is God the god of confusion?   NO.   He is the God of a sound mind, now and forever.   Let me make this clear: death does not bring about confusion.   Death can bring clarification to the whole meaning of life.   We awaken from death able to see clearly through the dark window in which we've tried to look through all our lives (I Corinthians 13).

The God of our Lord Jesus Christ is not like those other gods.   Our God makes it all clear.   After Jesus died on the cross, as soon as possible to fulfill prophecy, God raised Jesus from the dead in a perfected body to show us what death was all about.   In our passage we read the words of Jesus regarding His being, but here is the story that precedes His dialogue.

Jesus rose from the dead.   He appeared to Mary Magdelene at the tomb.   Then, that afternoon, He appeared to two men who were His disciples.   They were walking down the road to a town called Emmaus.   They were leaving Jerusalem.   They had hoped that Jesus was the Messiah, God's anointed.   But now it was the third day and we all know that you can't keep hope going too long after such a final action, the death of Jesus.   As they walked along the path, another man joined them.  

"What are you discussing together as you walk along?"

The men stopped in their tracks.   Their faces were sad.   "Are you a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"

"What things?" the stranger asked.

"About Jesus of Nazareth."   Then they told the stranger about Jesus and their hope that he would have been the Messiah.   But he was killed on a cross and had been dead now for three days.  

Unknown to them is that the stranger is Jesus, Himself.   He begins telling them how the Messiah had to die, but to be raised to life after three days.   The two men's hearts begin burning within them.   They become excited.   They want to know more.   When they reached their destination, they invited the stranger in still unaware that it was Jesus.   Then Jesus sat down for a meal and when He broke bread they recognized Him.   (It's interesting that it was in the very moment of communion, breaking bread, Jesus is recognized!)   Then, immediately, Jesus disappears.  

Having come from Jerusalem, a little more than two hours away from Emmaus, they run from their house and head back to Jerusalem.   Immediately they return to where the disciples are and say, "It's true!   He's risen!   He appeared to us on the road to Emmaus!

As they were saying this, Jesus appeared and stood among them.   That's when they're troubled.   Is He a ghost, spirit or apparition?   Maybe He's just a bit of undigested food playing tricks on the mind!   Maybe we're all hypnotized.   Who could know?

"Look at my hands and feet! It is I, myself!   Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.   When He had said this He showed them His hands and feet.   And while they still did not believe it (how could they?) because of joy and amazement,"...He thought to Himself (my interpretation) and said, "Alright, give me some fish.   I'm going to eat.   Ghosts, spirits or apparitions can't do that."   They gave him a piece of fish and Jesus ate.

He's not a ghost, a spirit or an apparition.   He is a human man who was raised from the dead.   He is the second Adam.   The first Adam died and all his descendants, you and me, die with him.   But the second Adam, adopts the children of the first one and gives them the promise that death is not so bad anymore.   After the cross, Jesus' resurrection is the same one for His children; for all those who become adopted as children.

Jesus resurrection answers our questions about life after death.   If we see His afterlife, we see our own.   He does not float above ground as a ghost.   He does not appear as a vision without a body.   He is not confused, but He is the Holder of all mysteries.   In the same way, we will not float above ground like a ghost.   We will not appear in a vision as though we have no substance.   We will not be confused.   We will hold all mysteries with a knowledge and an understanding far greater than anything we have on earth.

Death is not the extinguishing of a light for a believer in Jesus Christ.   Death is, for the Children of Jesus, the putting out of the lamp because the dawn has come.   To depart from our body of death is to be given a new body of life (the irony is that it is the same body of flesh and bone, only perfect).   We depart, from this life, but we go somewhere.

In his book When Loved Ones Are Taken in Death , Lehman Strauss made some interesting comments about the Greek word translated "departure." He wrote, "It is used metaphorically in a nautical way as when a vessel pulls up anchor to loose from its moorings and set sail, or in a military way as when an army breaks encampment to move on. In the ancient Greek world this term was used also for freeing someone from chains and for the severing of a piece of goods from the loom. This is what death is as described in the Bible. Here, we are anchored to the hardships and heartaches of this life. In death, the gangway is raised, the anchor is weighed, and we set sail for the golden shore. In death we break camp here to start for heaven."

But our departure is not one of fear.   It is one of certainty and peace.   A few nights ago my eight-year old daughter, Heather, asked this question of me while lying in bed, "Daddy, what happens when a person dies?"   I knew in a moment that she was at the age where she needed an answer given to her.   I knew that she was considering her own future one day.   At first I was tempted to give her a quick answer (you know, a safe one).   But then I thought, "No, I am going to look into her eyes and watch her as I explain."   I figured that when her mind began drifting I would bring it to a close.   But Heather has been to funerals of relatives and I've given her the safe and quick answers in the past.   I want to give you a quick snippet of our conversation:

"Heather", I said, "I believe in Jesus.   I know you do too.   I remember the day you asked Him to come into your life.   You belong to Him and He gave you a promise.   He said that He's building a home for you.   When it's done, and for some people, for you, it will probably take a long time, He'll come to take you there.   He isn't making something small, Heather.   He's making mansions and those mansions are connected so closely to all of your family members and friends who also trust in Him.   He will never leave you.   He's here right now and with you wherever you go." (Heather asked how that could be and I told her that I wasn't sure, but He's everywhere).

"Daddy," she said, "But how does it happen?"
            "Well," Heather, "I believe with my whole heart that when it's time for us to go to the beautiful place called Heaven, our eyes will open and we will see Jesus who is already here.   At that moment, he'll call us by name and say, "Come with me, Heather.   It's time to go to your real home forever.   There is no sadness here, only happiness."

"Daddy," she asked, "what about our bodies?"   Heather had seen her grandmother's body at a funeral and she had known that we bury people in the ground.   But she wasn't afraid.   When she had gone to her grandmother's graveside service and I had closed with a benediction, the moment I ended my last word a beautiful butterfly lighted upon the casket.   Then I saw Heather and her siblings running to chase it as it flew away down the hillside. What an image for a father to see!  

"Heather," I know it doesn't make sense now, but we will have bodies just like Jesus.   While they have skin and bones, they won't ever get hurt again.   They'll be perfect.   And you, in your body, will then be able to do things like walking through walls and who knows whatever else."

I spoke to her for over 30 minutes from that moment on without her batting an eye.   She was fixated on the images I presented.   I wasn't very articulate, but I was as honest and as impressing on her as I could be.   I do believe in what I told her with all my heart.   Who says attention spans are limited?   If they are limited, the subject of death caught Heather's attention and gripped it.   I believe if an eight-year old has these questions then the world does too.

We don't need to fear death because Jesus conquered death.   Donald Grey Barnhouse tells a story of the day of his wife's funeral and his discussion with his children on the way.   He said,

"I was driving with my children to my wife's funeral where I was to preach the sermon. As we came into one small town there strode down in front of us a truck that came to stop before a red light. It was the biggest truck I ever saw in my life, and the sun was shining on it at just the right angle that took its shadow and spread it across the snow on the field beside it. As the shadow covered that field, I said, 'Look children at that truck, and look at its shadow. If you had to be run over, which would you rather be run over by? Would you rather be run over by the truck or by the shadow?' My youngest child said, "The shadow couldn't hurt anybody." "That's right," I continued, "and death is a truck, but the shadow is all that ever touches the Christian. The truck ran over the Lord Jesus. Only the shadow is gone over mother."

I want to give you hope, this morning.   You don't have to fear death.   I know it fascinates us humans, but we do have an explanation for the "unknown".   Don't get caught up in speculation when we already have the answer.   It is the Resurrection of Jesus.   You don't need to find a video camera and follow a group of ghost-busters or psychics into a "haunted house" trying to make a connection with the dead, who, if they could answer will be even more confused and mysterious than the living.   You have Jesus, He died.   He Rose again.   And He holds nothing back about the afterlife.   Why don't people investigate His claims?   Maybe it's because we are really only captivated by fear.   But in God's Kingdom fear doesn't exist.   That's why I find in funerals the best hope to proclaim the Gospel message.   People need a real truth there not an intriguing fantasy.

Now notice what Jesus did after calming His friend's fears.   He gave the way to live their lives with the sure and certain hope of that resurrection:   He told them that they were witnesses of this event.   They were simply to proclaim the confidence that we can have in God and with what God is doing.   The very core of living as a believer in Jesus Christ is simply to tell the world that Jesus is risen.   The whole message of Christian preaching and teaching leads toward the proclamation that death has been conquered by a man who rose from the dead.   Everything else is secondary.   Everything else in life is a tangent.   The disciples were to explain to the world that fear is gone.   That it's not about ghosts, spirits or apparitions.   Death has been defeated.   It is about life forever.   It is about Jesus who is alive and if we believe in His resurrection, we'll have one just like Him.  

That's our proclamation too.   Tell others about this message.   Death is nothing.   It has lost its sting for those who believe.   God does not leave us confused, empty and lost.   God brings sense, purpose and direction as He takes us on this journey that leads to eternal life.   We will be like Jesus forever and ever.   But, rise from the confusion and live a life of certainty!

And then, when our time comes to cross over, you'll be ready for it.   A great sign that one is living life the way Jesus lived is when he or she begins to understand that life here and life in the next are not so separated.   In fact, to learn how to die is to begin to live, really live.

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote these words:

"When you're old as I am, there are all sorts of extremely pleasant things that happen to you...the pleasantest of all is that you wake up in the night and you find that you are half in and half out of your battered old carcass. It seems quite a tossup whether you go back and resume full occupancy of your mortal body, or make off toward the bright glow you see in the sky the lights of the city of God." ( Christian Times , September 3, 1982)

Go and proclaim that Jesus has risen from the dead.   Let that resurrection impact your life in all you do remembering that it is the only thing that really matters.   If He died and rose again, we will too IF we trust in Him.  

Amen.