... when the morning comes


By and By

Luke 20:27-38 (NRSV) The Question about the Resurrection
27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus 28 and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, his brother shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30 then the second 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
34 Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 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. 36 Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
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With Jesus the shibboleth doesn’t hold, “Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer.” Of integrity, he is honest and truthful. We do not claim omniscience for the man Jesus of Nazareth as we may for God the Father or the glorified Son, if only because (Philippians 2)
Christ Jesus,
... though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death
    even death on a cross.
But what he says becomes a rock of Christian doctrine. We may acceptably point to the words of Jesus as truth. We can point to Luke 20:34f as doctrine: dead, we shall be raised. How? By the Word of God. When? When God says “Get up.” For Saint Paul it would be with the coming of the kingdom of God at the End Time, which he believed was imminent. Impatient these twenty centuries, we may prefer to believe we slip from this world into the next, as commended in (BCP 464)
Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world;
In the Name of God the Father Almighty who created you;
In the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you;
In the Name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you.
May your rest be this day in peace,
    and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.  
And as in (Luke 23:42,43, KJV)
And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Again as always, “just because we believe it, that don’t make it so,” but here is a statement of the mind of our church as expressed in the Catechism (BCP 862):

Q.
What do we mean by the resurrection of the body?
A.
We mean that God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being, that we may live with Christ in the communion of the saints.


Q.
What is the communion of saints?
A.
The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.


Q.
What do we mean by everlasting life?
A.
By everlasting life, we mean a new existence, in which we are united with all the people of God, in the joy of fully 
knowing and loving God and each other.

Is it clear? It's as clear as seeing through a glass darkly. As clear as it needs to be considering we are not dealing with certainty but with faith, the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. As C. A. Tindley’s hymn sings, 
By and by, when the morning comes,
when the saints of God are gathered home,
we'll tell the story how we've overcome,
for we'll understand it better by and by.

TW