Sermon for the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity - Phil 3:17-21

                                                                                                Trinity 23

                                                                                                Phil 3:17-21

                                                                                                11/8/15

            “I am not a role model.  I’m not paid to be a role model.  I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court.  Parents should be role models.  Just because I dunk a basketball, doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”  The NBA basketball player Charles Barkley spoke these words in a 1993 Nike commercial.

            At the time, these words caused quite a stir.  On the one hand, some people were offended by the fact that Barkley dismissed the influence that sports figures have.  We are a culture that is obsessed with sports, and in our setting today professional athletes appear not only in the games themselves, but in advertising campaigns for products and for the leagues.  They are featured in magazine articles, appear on talk shows, have millions of Twitter followers, and do humorous ads for ESPN.  This near universal exposure sets them in front of young people all the time as examples of a successful life. They have money, glory, fame, and a beautiful wife or supermodel girl friend. Of course impressionable young people look up to them. With all the benefits of their position in life, isn’t there a responsibility to be a positive influence?

            But at the same time, others thought the ad was a good one. They said that it was a needed corrective.  After all, why should a person be a role model simply because he can shoot a ball through a metal hoop or hit a ball over a fence?  Shouldn’t it be the job of parents to serve as role models for their own children?

            Sometimes in recent years Lutherans have overreacted and said that not even Jesus should not be used as a role model.  In particular this reaction has been given to the frequently seen acronym “WWJD” – which stands for “What would Jesus do?”  Now insofar as the primary emphasis in the Christian faith must be on what Jesus has done for us in order to give us forgiveness and salvation, there is truth to this. But a truth pushed too far is how you end up in heresy.  And the simple fact is that Scripture does hold up Jesus as a model and pattern for our life. And more than that, it even holds up individual Christians.

            St. Paul provides a classic example of this in our text for today.  He first points to himself as an example, and then includes other Christians as well when he writes: “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” 

            We know that role models are very important in life.  We learn by watching and imitating others.  Children learn how to do things by watching their parents. They learn skills in this way such as how to fix things around the house, how to cook and bake, how to do a hobby, or how to hunt and fish.

            This is true for the Christian life as well.  It is true for other Christians around us, especially new Christians.  It is true for the children in our home.  We are role models for them and we are constantly teaching them.  But what lesson are they learning?  Are they learning that Sunday morning at the Divine Service is simply how life works, or are they learning that church must accept its place further down the pecking order as we do other things instead?  Are they learning that prayer and reading of Scripture are important parts of our daily life, or are they learning that the rest of the week has nothing to do with Sunday?

            In our text, Paul is very clear that the Philippians are to imitate him and other Christians in their midst who follow the pattern of Paul.  He does this because there is another example out there.  He says in our text, “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.”

            Paul is probably describing people who called themselves “church.”  By their manner of life they showed themselves in fact to be enemies of the cross because they were living in ways that were the exact opposite of what Christ’s cross means for us.  The apostle is crystal clear that the outcome of this would be eternal destruction.  Such people had their own satisfaction as their god. They gloried in things that God’s word declares to be shameful.  They had their attention focused on earthly things – by which Paul means that they oriented their life toward a sinful, fallen existence that is ruled by the devil.

            The same thing is true today, and it true whether you talk about the church or the world, because often they look the same.  Our culture says that “I” come first.  It focuses on acquiring more money and all the bells and whistles of “the good life.”  It says that sex is something to be used however we want to produce pleasure.  And all of this is something that we find very, very seductive.

            In contrast to this, Paul holds himself up as a model to be imitated. And he has just explained what should be imitated earlier in this chapter.  The apostle has warned the Philippians about those in the Church who are saying that they need to be circumcised and to start doing parts of the Torah in order to be righteous before God.  He rebuts this by declaring, “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more.”

            Paul goes on to say that if our confidence was about the status we have on our own, he could trump everyone.  After all, he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

            But Paul had come to understand that everything he did on his own was poisoned by sin.  It was filled with pride.  It was never really good in God’s eyes because it was never perfect.  And instead, Paul had found something even better – he had found Someone even better.  He said, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.” 

            Paul says that in Jesus Christ who died on the cross and rose from the dead he had found the salvation – the treasure – that made everything else pale in comparison.  The apostle says that he willingly counts everything else as nothing – as loss – because of Christ.  In fact Paul uses a crass term in Greek that really demands a crass word in English.  He writes, “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as crap.”

            Paul says he places Christ at the center of his life. And he does this, “in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”  Because of baptism you are in Christ.  Through faith in Christ you receive the righteousness that will allow you to stand before God on the day of judgment and receive eternal life with him.

            Because this is what Christ means for us now, Paul goes on to say that he seeks “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

            Now did you hear what I just said?  Paul talks about knowing the power of Christ’s resurrection and attaining to the resurrection of the dead.  But he also says that he shares in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like him in his death. The call to follow Christ is a call to die.  It is a call to die to sin.  It is a call to share in Christ’s sufferings as we follow him in the narrow way that rejects the world.  It is a call to share in Christ’s sufferings as we experience the world’s rejection of Christ.  For some Christians around the world today, it is a call to martyrdom.

            That’s not the way we are used to thinking about the faith.  That’s our fault.  And God is in the process of teaching us this truth.  I spent three days last week in Canada with Lutheran pastors there.  It is a cultural setting that is probably at least fifteen years further down the road that the United States is currently travelling.  It is a world where the majority of people have no use for the Church.  It is a world were from the very earliest grades the belief that homosexuality is normal and good is actively taught in school, and the mere suggestion that this is not correct lands both teachers and students in real trouble. 

            Things are hard for Christians here. They are going to get much harder.  And of course they were even more difficult for the very first Christians to whom Paul was writing.  So what could help Christians to reject the way that is opposed to the cross; that leads to destruction; that glories in shame, and that sets minds on earthly things of a sinful world?  The apostle reminds the Philippians about who they are – the status they have. And he points them to what this will mean for them.

            Paul writes, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”  He says that the Philippians’ citizenship was in heaven.  Why should the Christians keep their focus on the things of God instead of the fallen world?  It was because they had the status of belonging to God.

            Philippi was a Roman colony.  Those who lived in a Roman colony were Roman citizens – they had the status, all of the rights and privileges of someone who lived in Rome. That didn’t mean they belonged in Rome or that Rome was their home – after all, their home was Philippi!  But they had a status and rights that most people in the Empire did not.

            Paul says that because of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, you have a unique status – a status that guarantees your future.  You have received the Holy Spirit through the water and Word of Holy Baptism.  You have been reborn and are a new creation in Christ.  You have been joined to the saving death of Jesus.  Jesus died. But then he rose from the dead and forty days later he ascended into heaven as he was exalted by God to his right hand.

            For now we only see and touch the risen Lord as he is present in, with and under bread and wine.  For now we only hear him through the word of Scripture and through the voice of our pastor speaking Holy Absolution and preaching.  But your citizenship in heaven – your status now as God’s child – means you having something big coming your way and therefore you have hope. You have a hope with resurrection power.  Paul says that “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

            The Spirit who has given us new spiritual life is the same One who raised Jesus from the dead and transformed his human body so that it can never die again.  Jesus will do the same thing for us through his Spirit on the Last Day. The Spirit provides the power that already now enables us to follow Christ’s way as those who enjoy the heavenly status of children of God. And because we have this status now, we find encouragement in the certainty that Jesus will return to raise and transform us to be like Him.

                    

           

             

           

Sermon for the East District of Lutheran Church - Canada pastors' conference - Mk 12:28-37 M

                                                                                  LCC pastors' conference

                                                                                  Mk 12:28-37

                                                                                  11/2/15

            Even a casual reader of the Gospels can spot the difference between the Gospel of John and the synoptic Gospels.  The long addresses by Jesus, the relative scarcity of miracle accounts and of course the language itself soon sets it apart from Matthew, Mark and Luke.

            Naturally, those of us who are in the vocation of preaching on the Gospels work more carefully with them, and so we also recognize that there are difference that set apart Mark from Matthew and Luke as well.  Matthew and Luke both provide accounts that describe the conception and birth of Jesus.  Both Gospels provide accounts of events that occurred after the resurrection.  And of course, Matthew and Luke share common material that is not found in Mark, such as Jesus teaching the Lord’s Prayer.

            Mark is different. And when you begin looking a little closer you find that it is a quirky Gospel, when compared with Matthew and Luke.  Mark provides no infancy account for Jesus at the beginning of his Gospel. He just jumps right into things with John the Baptist and his ministry.  His ending is certainly unique.  Every discernible criterion indicates that the longer endings are not original. But that leaves you with a Gospel that ends with the words, “for they were afraid.”  Not exactly what we expect.

            Mark has been described as a passion account with a prologue because one third of the Gospel deals with the events of Holy Week.  And yet while Mark includes fewer individual pericopes, the ones that he does relate are in fact usually longer than Matthew and Luke – our text is a case in point of this.

            And then there are the unique features not found in Matthew and Luke.  Only Mark tells us about the spitting and touching of the tongue as Jesus heals the man with a speech impediment in chapter 7.  Only Mark tells about the two stage healing of the blind man in chapter 8 who reports after the first stage that he see what looks like trees walking.

            The same thing is found in two accounts in which Jesus interacts with someone – we hear something unique only in Mark.  In chapter 10 we hear about Jesus’ interaction with the rich young man, and only Mark tells us that Jesus “looking at him, loved him.” 

            And then in our text tonight we hear about Jesus’ interaction with the scribe during Holy Week.  Here, only Mark provides the scribe’s very positive response to Jesus’ answer.  And only Mark tells us about Jesus’ intriguing comment, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

            “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God is of course the central feature of Jesus’ teaching.  In Mark’s Gospel Jesus begins his ministry by going into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”  Jesus announces that the reign of God is present in his person as he turns back the forces of Satan, sin and death.

            That work of bringing God’s saving reign is nearing its critical moment as Jesus is in Jerusalem during Holy Week.  He has been facing an onslaught of attacking questions from groups as diverse as the Pharisees, the Herodians and the Sadducees. We learn that one of the scribes came who had heard them disputing with one another.  We are told he could see that Jesus had been answering them well.  Here was something different.  It was not frustration at the inability to trap Jesus, but instead an appreciation for what Jesus had been saying. 

            And so the scribe asks in our text, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”  Our Lord responds with his expected and well known summary of the two tables of the Ten Commandments as he said: “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

            Jesus takes all of the Torah – something that had generated a massive oral law which sought to explain and apply it to life – and boils it down to two points: Love God with all that you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. And then the scribe responded enthusiastically that Jesus was correct.  He said, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

            We learn that when Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  Not far from the kingdom of God.  Clearly the scribe was on the right track. But he wasn’t there. And our location at this conference is a reminder that being not far away and actually being there are very different things.  The United States border is not far from here. In fact, when people who knew that I was going to speak to a pastors’ conference of the Lutheran Church – Canada have asked about where in Canada I was going, I felt rather silly telling them Niagara Falls. After all that’s barely Canada!

            But while we may not be far from the United States, that distance makes all the difference in the world.  When I agreed to come and speak at this conference, it meant that I had a get a new passport.  Mine had expired and I hadn’t used it in a long time.  I hadn’t been to Canada since my college years at Concordia College, Ann Arbor, MI.  At that time you could drive across from Detroit into Windsor with no need of a passport.  But of course, the world has changed, and now without a passport the fact that I am not far from the U.S. border doesn’t make any difference if I want to get back home from here.

            The scribe understood what the Torah was all about. The genuineness of his answer no doubt indicates that he really wanted to love God with all that he was and love his neighbor as himself.  Yet Jesus is clear that this alone left him outside the kingdom of God.  It meant that he had not received the saving reign of God.

            The same thing is true for Christians today.  You know this.  You preach it every Sunday to the members of your congregation.  You preach that the way of the law – the way of doing – cannot produce fellowship with God.  It can’t because they don’t; they can’t.  You declare to others that they are curved in on themselves; that they love themselves instead of God and neighbor.

            But as those who still carry the burden of the old man it is an unpleasant word that needs to be addressed to you as well.  You don’t love God with all that you are, for you love things and so you grumble that don’t get paid more as a pastor. You love what the world defines as success, and so you make decisions that are gauged on the basis of how they will be received, rather than on their fidelity to God’s Word. You don’t love your neighbor as yourself – not even the neighbor who lives in your own house, your own family. You act towards them in selfish and hurtful ways.

            The scribe’s answer left him not far from the kingdom of God. But that distance was the difference between salvation and condemnation.  You must look at your life and confess the same thing.  Your love of self over God and neighbor leaves you in sin.  If unaddressed it leaves you cut off from the God. There is only one way to close the distance – to return to the kingdom of God.  That way is to repent, and then in faith to move on to the second half of our text.

            There, Jesus speaks about the Christ and how the Holy Spirit through David had described him as David’s son who is in fact David’s Lord.  He describes the Christ as the One seated at the right hand of God. The Christ is David’s son, and yet he is so much more. 

            In Mark’s Gospel, Peter has confessed Jesus as the Christ. Then Mark goes on to tell us, “And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.”  Jesus is the Christ, David’s son who is also David’s Lord because he is God’s Son.  He entered this world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. 

            He loved God with all that he was.  He loved his neighbor as himself.  In fact he loved you more than himself because he sacrificed himself on the cross in order to win you forgiveness for all of the ways you fail to love God and neighbor.  He declared that, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

            By his death Jesus ransomed you from sin – he won forgiveness for you.  And by his resurrection from the dead he defeated death.  He began the resurrection of the Last Day.  Through baptism you have shared in the saving death of Jesus the risen Lord. And because of baptism you know that you will be raised too.  You look for the return of Jesus Christ who will transform your lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

            This is the Good News by which you live in the present.  And though perfect love of God in body and soul will not take place until the resurrection of the Last Day, already now through the work of the Spirit we seek to love God above all things. We seek to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Jesus’ life of service and sacrifice for us becomes our model and pattern.  As our Lord told the disciples: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.”

            This is not something that we can accomplish on our own.  It is not even something that we can fully do at all times.  But with faith in the Christ who is David’s son and David’s Lord we now approach this altar.  We come in repentance seeking forgiveness for the sins we have committed.  We come seeking food by which the new man in us is fed and nourished. For through the true body and blood of Christ, the Spirit sustains and strengthens us in faith so that we can return to the world as the forgiven children of God who seek to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves.

           

           

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints - Rev. 7:9-17

                                                                                                All Saints

                                                                                                Rev 7:9-17

                                                                                                11/1/15

            It is easy to look around us and conclude that we live in difficult times.  We continue to experience a very weak economy and the unemployment situation is even worse than the figures indicate because of the way we count the unemployed.  Islam seems to be ascendant and threatens the status of Europe during the twenty first century.  Worldwide, the Church is experiencing the worst persecution that she has at any time in her history.  And here in our own country the new orthodoxy about homosexuality, and now even transgenderism, seeks to exterminate the biblical view of sexuality from the public square. This at the same time that sex outside of marriage is considered normal and internet pornography ravages our culture.

            Now these are all serious problems, and I certainly don’t want to minimize any of them.  But sometimes a reflection on history helps to put things into perspective.  For you see, things could be worse – a lot worse. Things were worse in the fourteenth century in Europe.  First, between 1315 and 1322 there was the Great Famine which was caused by the arrival of climate changes that were part of the “Little Ice Age.”  It is estimated that the famine killed 10-25% of the population of Europe.  Then, between 1336 and 1353 the Black Death arrived in Europe.  It is estimated that this plague killed 30-60% of the population of Europe.  As if that wasn’t enough, beginning in 1336 and lasting until 1453, the Hundred Years War was fought in western Europe between England and France, bringing with it widespread death and devastation.  And meanwhile in eastern Europe Islam was a major problem as during the fourteenth century the Turks began to conquer the Balkans and push into Europe.

            The fourteenth century was a time of tremendous suffering and death.  And during this period the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse became a powerful image in the medieval world.  The four horseman are depicted in Revelation chapter six, the chapter just before our text for the Feast of All Saints.  In that chapter six seals of a scroll are opened by Christ the Lamb, and after each of the first four seals a horse comes forth carrying a rider. The horses are white, red, black and pale.  They bring conquest, war, famine and death upon the earth in events that are part of the end times leading up to judgment day.  The people of the fourteenth century thought the four horsemen had arrived and that the Last Day was near. It’s not hard to understand why.

            The Book of Revelation is certainly unique. It is unlike anything in the New Testament.  Filled with dramatic imagery and symbolism it has always been something people use to promote bizarre beliefs – like the idea that Christians should only worship on Saturday.  We need to approach the Book of Revelation with a healthy dose of humility – there are going to be places where we can’t claim to be absolutely sure about an interpretation.  But at the same time, we can never lose sight of the fact that Revelation is meant to comfort believers.  It sets forth the big picture of what God is doing.  It leaves no doubt that he is in charge.  It is absolutely clear about where the life of faith will take us.

            On this day in the church we remember and give thanks to God for the saints he called to faith; preserved in the faith; and who now are with Christ.  We are reminded that we too are saints because of Jesus. And we find in our text that all of God’s saints will share in a future peace that will have no end.

            The book of Revelation is actually a series of visions that repeatedly tell the same basic facts with variation in emphasis.  Our text is really the end of the first vision.  John has been shown that the last days are a time of terrible hardships.  I say “are” because we are living in the last days.  The last days began with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because it was the last days, Christ poured forth the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, just as the prophet Joel had said.  We live in the last days, and so we should be eagerly awaiting the Last Day.

            The present is a time of suffering for Christ’s Church.  We especially see this in the world today. John’s vision addresses this because he tells us that after the fifth seal had been opened, “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”

            We look at the persecution of the Church and it seems pointless to us.  It seems to us like God is nowhere and has abandoned his people.  That can cause us to doubt.  Yet our Lord said that taking up the cross and following him is the Christian life. The word “martyr” means witness, and death of the saints is the ultimate witness to the power of the Gospel.  And through Revelation God tells us that he is still in charge.  Events are still moving according to his plan and timing.  And note what these saints are told to do – they are to rest a little longer.  They have died in Christ and now they are at rest as they await Gods’ final action.

            Immediately before our text in chapter seven John sees an angel carrying the seal of the living God and then he hears that the number of the sealed is 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel.  This is you. You are the Israel of God. You are part of the fullness of the Church that God is creating through the proclamation of the Gospel.  You have been sealed with the Spirit of God in your baptism as you were born again of water and the Spirit.  There you were joined to the saving death of Jesus who redeemed you, and so in the baptismal rite you were marked with the cross on your forehead and heart.  In baptism your sins were washed away through water and the word. For this reason you are saint – you are a holy ones.  You were clothed with Christ’s righteousness in your baptism, and so when God looks at you he does not see your sin, but instead he sees you as one who is in Christ – one who is holy because of Jesus.

            And what is true of you is also true of those who have died in the Lord.  They were made disciples by baptism and teaching.  They were born again through the work of the Spirit as children of God. They were made holy through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit preserved them in this faith through his Means of Grace.  And now they are with the Lord.  They are at rest with him.  They no longer struggle against the old Adam. They no longer suffer the physical and emotional pains of this life.

            That is good. But by his grace, God has something even better in store for them and for us.  We hear about it in our text.  John tells us, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”

            John gets a glimpse of the final victory God will bring to all his saints.  He sees the saints clothed in white and carrying palm branches – a symbol of victory – as they gather before Christ. When asked about who they are, he doesn’t know.  Finally the heavenly elder says, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

            The elder describes the time when we live in as a great tribulation.  Jesus said, “In the world you have tribulation.  But take heart, I have overcome the world.”  When Jesus returns in glory and raises our bodies to be like his, we will share in this victory.  The tribulation of living as Christians in this fallen world discourages us. But Jesus says “Take heart” because he has overcome the world.  And in our text he gives us a glimpse of what this will mean in order to encourage us to continue on the way in faith.

            We hear John told: “Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

            The future of all of God’s saints is one in which we will dwell with God forever.  It is one in which we will no longer experience hunger or thirst or discomfort.  It is one in which God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and never again will be there a reason to cry.

            This dwelling of God with his people has already started.  It started as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us in the incarnation.  It has started because the risen Lord who is still true God and true man continues to dwell in our midst in the Sacrament of the Altar.  Here he gives us forgiveness and strengthens us in faith as we press on and look for Jesus’ return in glory.  Here he guarantees our resurrection, for bodies that eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood will be raised up to be like the Lord on the Last Day.  At this altar we gather around the Lord with the angels, and archangels and all the company of heaven – all the saints.

            And because it is the risen Lord who does this in our midst we know that this is merely a foretaste of the feast to come.  We know that it will find its consummation in the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the flesh.  Our Lord raise us up and renew his creation so that once again he can look at all that he has made and behold that it is very good.