Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Weekly sermons from our Central Lutheran Church preaching team plus quick reflections from Pastor Ryan Braley.
Real talk, ancient wisdom, and honest questions — all designed to help you learn, grow, and find encouragement when you need it most.
At Central, our mission is simple: FOLLOW Jesus together, be a community where you BELONG, and LOVE our neighbors across the street and around the world.
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Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
What Happens When You Die? {Reflections}
Death comes for us all, but what follows remains shrouded in mystery. Drawing from ancient wisdom found in Ecclesiastes, we explore one of the most profound questions humans face: what happens when we die?
The Book of Ecclesiastes offers a beautiful perspective that predates even Jesus—the idea that death represents the reversal of creation itself. When God formed humans, He shaped us from dust and breathed His spirit into us. At death, this process unwinds as "the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." This imagery suggests our final breath—literally the last thing we do before dying—returns to its divine source while our bodies return to the earth.
I share how ancient funeral customs involved ritually breaking bowls, symbolizing life's end—a tradition so powerful I've asked young men in my congregation to honor it at my own funeral. We examine how this Ecclesiastes passage connects with later Christian understandings developed by Paul and early believers, who saw death as a temporary separation where the spirit communes with God while the body waits for ultimate resurrection. Though we can't know exactly what happens in those moments after death, these ancient texts offer profound comfort and hope.
If this exploration of life's greatest mystery resonates with you, consider joining us in person at Central in Elk River—either at our 8:30 liturgical gathering or 10:00 modern service. Can't make it in person? Connect with us online at clcelkriver.org and continue exploring these eternal questions together.
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Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome to our Reflections podcast. And you know, one of the things I do as a pastor is I do funerals a lot and many times people will ask me like like hey, pastor, what happens when we die? And I will often think in my head like something like I don't say it out loud, but I'll think to myself you know what? I don't really know, I've never done it before and come back but I do offer them something else.
Speaker 1:There's some great thoughts about death and what happens when we die in the scriptures they're not all together super clear, but one of my favorite ones that I sort of stumbled upon a while ago that I love, is from the book of Ecclesiastes. Now, ecclesiastes is this ancient book of wisdom, but it's kind of the wisdom that comes later on in life when you've seen some stuff, when you know that life doesn't always work out how it's supposed to work out, and sometimes you do all the right things and the bottom still falls out. Sometimes you raise your kids in the ways that you thought were best, but the kid still kind of becomes a knucklehead, and so Ecclesiastes has this deep, profound wisdom that is kind of the end of an age wisdom. Who's seen all these wonderful things? So anyway, in Ecclesiastes 12, there's this moment where he says sort of simply hey. So at the end here of this incredibly profound book, I want to tell you hey, remember your creator. And this is Ecclesiastes 12. And remember, you know, in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come.
Speaker 1:Then he goes on down in verse 7. I love this. He says actually in verse 6, he says remember, remember him, your creator, before the silver cord is severed and the golden bowl is broken. And I learned that, like you know, in these ancient funeral rites they would smash these bowls during the funeral. And so I was reading this chapter with some young guys, some young men, and I go listen you guys, if I die before you guys, I want you to come to my funeral. These are young dudes, right, they have that young man energy. Come to my funeral with some bowls, just smash them on my casket and walk out Like don't say a word, just walk in and smash these bowls and then just walk out. I love it. So they told me they would. So it says before the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the wheel broken at the well, and then he says this and before, the dust returns to the ground that it came from and the Spirit returns to God who gave it, and then he goes on to say that life is vapor, it's here and then gone, but I love it. Now. This is obviously before Jesus, way before Jesus, and so this idea of resurrection hasn't really become rooted in the Jewish psyche yet. But there's a sense that, hey, he believed.
Speaker 1:When you die, the writer of Ecclesiastes thought that when you died, that, hey, he believed. When you die, the writer of Ecclesiastes thought that when you died, that your body would go into the ground, which is often what we do with things that die. We plant them in the ground and the spirit, or the breath, or the wind, the soul, goes back to God from where it came. And now this is really cool, because this is actually an undoing of the creation story. In the creation, god of course takes the dirt, the ground, and he breathes his spirit, his breath, his wind into the dirt and it becomes alive, it becomes a human. And so in Ecclesiastes you have the reversal of that, where, when you die, those things become separated once again and the body goes back into the dirt from where it came, and the spirit, the soul, the wind, and the soul, the wind and the breath, which is the last thing that leaves the body the breath. The last thing you will ever do before you die is to breathe out. So there's this breath that goes back to God. The soul, the spirit, the breath goes back to God, from which it came, and I love that. It's this idea that, look, the body goes into the ground and this thing that enlivened you goes to be with God, and what that looks like, I have no idea, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Paul writes later on. Of course, this is many years later. Paul, who's certainly influenced by Greek thinking, says that to be absent from the body or to be away from the body is to be present with the Lord. So there's some part of us, like the author of Ecclesiastes is saying, there's some part of us that goes to be with God and there's an interaction there, or something like that.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, they believed the early Christians that the body would go into the ground and then wait for the resurrection.
Speaker 1:That would happen to all of us at one time, and it happened in Jesus, which was like a foretaste or a hint of what was to come for all of us, but that we wait for the resurrection in this time of restful peace. And so there you go. I don't know what happens when we die exactly, but I think it's something like that that when we die, our breath, our spirit, our soul, the wind in us goes back to God from where it came and the body goes into the ground from where it came, and we wait for the resurrection that Jesus promises. So there you go. That's the hope. All right, love you guys, peace. Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 830, which is our liturgical gathering, or 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clcelkriverorg. Peace.
