The Pastor’s Piece, Pastor Kevin Cernek, FCFI Chaplain

April 27, 2025

A few years ago, while driving, I received a phone call I’d been expecting and waiting for. Since I was in some hilly countryside, I suspected the call might get dropped so I looked for a place to pull over. It just so happened I was driving past a cemetery. So I pulled in there and parked while we chatted. When it was time to go, I thought I would follow the U-shaped path around and exit on the other side. The only trouble, as I found out, was that the path dead-ended on the other side of the cemetery, which meant I had to turn around. The only other trouble was that there was no place to turn around.

So, I “carefully and gently” backed up into what looked like a clear space behind me. All of sudden I bumped into something. I pulled ahead and got out to investigate. What I found was that I had knocked over a headstone. It wasn’t broken, just knocked off the concrete pad it was sitting on and fell face up in the grass. I tried to lift it back up. Too heavy. Way too heavy. I found a rock and got a piece of 2×4 that was about six feet long out of the back of my truck, thinking maybe I could leverage it up enough to get under it with my back and legs and push it back upright that way. I felt a rush of Superman-like adrenaline, but it was still way too heavy. I’m guessing that piece of granite, even with the names and dates carved out, weighed more than a ton. Now I didn’t know what to do. If I left the scene and someone saw me, I’d get in trouble for vandalizing a cemetery. And that wouldn’t look good on my resume, not to mention I’d have a lot of explaining to do. 

I could see there was a farmhouse just up the road with several pickup trucks parked in front of their shop. Maybe there’d be a bunch of guys in there who could help me. So I went there. Sure enough, when I opened the door, much to my relief, there were four young men about in their 20’s with their dad, drinking coffee and standing by the workbench shooting the breeze. They looked at me suspiciously when I walked in – at least that’s what it seemed like to me. I explained my situation in the cemetery with the phone call, the dead-end, the headstone toppling over, the desire for extra-human strength – and all that – And to my relief again, they got a hearty laugh out of it. Dad told his boys to go and help me and together, the five of us got the granite headstone upright and back in place. Funny part is, there wasn’t a scratch on the headstone or on my bumper. I guess I hit it square on with my trailer hitch that didn’t have the receiver in. And, you couldn’t even tell by looking at the headstone that it had been hit or knocked over.

I was thinking about this little mishap, and how, one of these days, Oh Glorious Day it will be, when Jesus comes to rapture us up – all the believers in all the cemeteries everywhere in the world, will give up the righteous dead that are in them, and we will be united in the heavens with our Wonderful Lord and Savior. Jesus said: “Because I live, you too shall live.” Thank God for the resurrection. (Headstones won’t matter then).

I will explain further. When a born-again believer dies, his/her body goes to the grave and their soul goes immediately to heaven and into the presence of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8 says: “We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.”)

In heaven, the soul consciously awaits the resurrection of the body. Then, when Jesus comes back at the Rapture of the Church – our old bodies that are buried, will be raised, and will be changed into new heavenly bodies in an instant – and we will go off into eternity with these new bodies that will be flawless and incapable of getting sick, tired, old, or even able to die. They will be bodies just like the resurrected body Jesus now has. 1 Corinthians 15:51-52: “Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Your soul, which has been in heaven with the Lord, will now be united with your new, resurrected body.

We get a glimpse of what our resurrection bodies will be like when we consider what Jesus’ body was like when He appeared to people after His resurrection. Jesus still resembled Himself. He still had (although now healed) visible wounds. His disciples could physically touch Him. He ate and drank with them. He was able to travel without effort, appearing and disappearing at will. He entered a room where the disciples were praying behind closed and locked doors, without opening a door or window.

In Philippians 3:21 it says that our lowly bodies will be just like Jesus’ glorious body. We won’t just be spirits floating around in heaven, but we will have resurrected bodies, and they will be bodies that will not depend on physical sustenance or natural means for supporting life. We will have imperishable bodies just like what Jesus now has.

In sum: Believers who die are absent from their physical bodies and present with the Lord in conscious bliss awaiting that grand resurrection day! On resurrection day, we will receive new, imperishable bodies that we will have for all of eternity.

(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin).