Back in the pulpit this Sunday after a two-weeks absence due to illness.
Remember the classic novelty song from the late 50s: Yakety Yak?
Take out the papers
and the trash—
Yakety yak, yakety yak.
Ah, they don’t write them like that anymore.
But that’s what we will be doing in a series of sermons over the next few weeks: taking out the trash.
Trash theology, that is.
In visiting old churches in England, I noticed the ground beneath the east window often rises up on the church. That’s because so many people wanted to be buried there—close to the altar inside the church.
If you had money (like Mr. Shakespeare) you could be buried in front of the altar inside.
It was believed that those closest to the altar would be the first to rise on Resurrection Day.
Silly—including the idea of a Resurrection Day.
It’s trash theology.
We are “raised” the moment we die. Life continues uninterrupted.
In a spiritual world, we will have no use for those bones in the ground.
(Or that powder after a cremation.)
Paul said, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” And every NDE tells us the soul, the true self, our consciousness, lives on.
Yet, surprisingly, many people still believe that, at death, we enter some “great sleep,” to be awakened at the “General Resurrection.”
Even the theologian John Pokingham says, “God will remember us back into existence.” Great minds can come up with dumb ideas–and bad theology.
This Sunday we will take more bad theology out with the trash.
Join us at 11:00.
In-person, if you can.