1 Corinthians 15:12-19 (What the Resurrection Tells Us)

04/29/12 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Grace UMC

When I was a kid, I remember always being confused by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Christmas, after all, is only one day. It might be the case that we spend a few weeks building up to it, but it is just one day; that's it. Sometimes, we will speak of there being a "Christmas Season" but what do we mean when we say that? We mean the season of Advent. If you were to look at the church calendar, you would find that there actually is a Christmas season, and it is after Advent; in fact, you will find that the twelve days of Christmas are twelve days of celebration starting on Christmas and going until Epiphany. We might not always pay very much attention to it, but there is a whole season dedicated to celebrating Christmas, but what often happens? We tend to talk about Jesus coming into the world during Advent and then stop thinking about it altogether once the presents are opened.

The reason why I bring this up at the end of April is because there is an Easter season, too, and it isn't just the season of Lent. There are six Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, which is just enough time to forget about one and how it connects to the other. Well, I want to do my part to try to make this an Easter season and spend some time talking about the resurrection of Christ, but not so much the Easter story as such but what the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead in glory has to tell us about you and me and this life that we live in this world of ours.

It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of people who are not all that interested in taking the resurrection of Christ seriously. After all, do you know anyone who has been raised from the dead like Jesus was, in glory and never to die again? In the modern era, there has been some concern about whether the church should really be proclaiming such a gospel that includes a physical resurrection since it is so foreign to our experience. In the last few hundred years, there has been a significant reinterpretation of the story of Easter. The whole mainstream of what we call today "modern" theology has tended to say that the story of Easter is far less a story of what actually happened to Jesus in a tomb that morning and far more a story of the experience of the disciples that same day. That is to say, when we say that Christ was raised from the dead, we don't mean, according to this view, that a dead body spontaneously returned to life, got up and walked out of a tomb; we mean that the disciples had a profound encounter with the spirit of Jesus that was so strong that it was as if he was raised from the dead.

Now, what is the problem with that? If you look at it from a particular point of view, it doesn't seem all that bad. After all, if we imagine that Jesus' ministry was primarily, if not exclusively, about telling us how to be good and how to live in harmony with everyone else, what difference does it make whether he was physically raised or not? Not a whole lot. What it means to be a so-called "good person" doesn't fundamentally change if a particular person is alive or dead. In fact, given that we can all agree that we ought to love one another, like Jesus said, and resurrections are hard to believe, maybe we should spend our time talking about the former and kind of ignore the latter, perhaps hoping that it will go away and we won't have to deal with it.

As it turns out, the question as to whether Jesus was literally, physically raised from the dead is extremely important. According to Paul, it is something upon which the whole gospel stands or falls, which is not something he says about just anything. In his first letter to the Corinthians, which we just heard, he lays out an argument that goes something like this. "Now guys, I hear that some of you are saying that there is no such thing as people being raised from the dead, that dead is dead and that is the end of it. Now, if there is no such thing as resurrection, then nobody is raised from the dead, which means even Christ has not been raised from the dead since he is a somebody. Here's the problem, though. We have been proclaiming, and you all believed, that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that it is through this death and resurrection of Christ that God has worked out our salvation and we have been reconciled to God. So, if it is true that there are no such things as resurrections, then Christ has not been raised, which means that the gospel that is built on his death and resurrection is useless, which means your faith is useless, and we have all been deceived. If we trust in a Christ who has died and will live no more, we are the most pitiful people in all the world."

Now, I pointed out earlier, that if Jesus' main point was simply to teach us a good way to live and that we should be generally nice to each other, then it doesn't matter whether he was raised from the dead or not, but Paul seems to think that it makes a huge difference whether Christ is really raised or not. What then are we to conclude from this? If nothing else, it is that Jesus came to do far more than simply turn us into "nice" people. What is it that we learn from the resurrection of Christ from the dead?

We learn that our bodies really matter to God. I remember that I used to imagine that, once Jesus ascended to heaven forty days after he was raised, it was the end of his humanity, that Jesus shed his humanity like a snake sheds his skin. I don't know for sure why I thought that, since the Bible doesn't say that anywhere. I imagine that I thought that, since it was such a tremendous sacrifice for God to become a human being, when the time for being physically present with his people was done, he wouldn't need his body anymore. After all, what purpose would it serve? And yet, what we actually read in the Bible is that God becomes a human being, dies as a human being, is raised from the dead as a human being, ascends to heaven as a human being and will one day come again in final victory as a human being. That means that Jesus is a human being right now and will be forever.

This is really astonishing news. It means that, not only did God enter into our world of space and time in Christ but it means that God has taken our world of space and time back into God's own life in Christ. It means that the God who is so self-sufficient that he never needed to create anything has so loved humanity, has so loved you and me, that he has taken humanity back up into his own life, that human beings are so loved by God that he would join himself to our humanity forever. If nothing else, this means that salvation was never meant to be merely a gift of spiritual joy where we get to go to heaven, as amazing as heaven is. Rather, salvation is something that impacts every area of our lives, both our souls and our bodies.

The resurrection of Christ from the dead means that God knows what it is like to be a human being and to endure all of the trials of life, including that final trial of death. It means that when Jesus sends his disciples out, giving them a Great Commission to go and fulfill, he is not simply doing so as the God of the Universe who has the authority to command and expect it to be done; he does so as our elder brother, as the one who knows our suffering, our hurts, our limitations, our fears as well as our hopes, and entrusts his plan into our hands (which we might sometimes wonder whether it is a good idea to do so). When Jesus says that he will be with his disciples until the end of the age, it is not just that he is going to disperse like a gas cloud to the farthest reaches of the earth but that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ the God-Man will be by their side, in the nitty-gritty of life and the hard work we find ourselves engaged in.

I don't know about you, but I am quite glad to know that I have a God who knows what it is like to live in this world because, in spite of all the differences between first century Israel and twenty-first century Iowa, people are people. We all still have problems with money, with other people, we still have days where we don't like the weather, we have accidents, we make mistakes, and we live with broken relationships that seem like they never heal, regardless of what we do. God doesn't just know about all of that because he is God and knows everything, but because he has actually stepped into the middle of this broken world and experienced it for himself in an incredibly intimate and personal way.

One of the most welcome things that the resurrection of Christ from the dead means is that the way things are is not the way they will always be. It is easy to get into the mindset that, when we see Jesus raised from the dead, its just something for him and has nothing to do with us, other than the guarantee that our sins have been forgiven. And yet there are places in the New Testament where we read things like this, in the letter to the Romans: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you." Paul wants to make it as clear as possible that the resurrection of Christ from the dead is not just a nice thing to believe and a thing to sing about on Easter Sunday, but something that impacts your life and your future. The good news is not simply that Christ is raised, but that, because Christ is raised, you too shall be raised.

At the end of the day, that is what Paul is saying in the text from First Corinthians. He starts out by responding to the claim that the dead are not raised, which is in many ways a reasonable claim as I pointed out earlier, by pointing out how disastrous such a claim is to the belief that Christ was raised from the dead. But we need to remember that Paul has no interest in doing what many Christians, especially Christians who are interested in theological issues enjoy doing, and I realize that I myself fall into that category; he has no interest in simply arguing a point that has no real impact on our world. At first glance, if we looked at it the right way, we could say that Paul is simply combatting with others over the issue of whether they have the "right" doctrines or not. We could interpret it as a preeminent example of a theological bully, marginalizing the beliefs of others in order to assert his own. But that would be terribly misleading.

After all, Paul is not interested in reinforcing a "party line," a narrow orthodoxy that is more interested in drawing lines to keep people out than sharing good news with them. According to Paul, the reason that we need to take the resurrection seriously is not because we need to pass some doctrinal examination, but because our future is bound up with it. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

In the resurrection we see our future. It is a future of glory, of life, of healing. We see that, as final as death may seem to us, and we have all seen what power death seems to have, for it has touched each of us in one way or another, it is not the last word for us. Our God is a God who conquers the grave, and who not only conquers it for himself, but makes us share in that same victory. There can be no wonder why those first Christians remained bold in the face of persecution. They knew the truth of what Jesus told his disciples, "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more." The worst the enemies of the gospel could do is kill Christians but they had no power beyond that, and in Christ, we can see that a power that can kill the body but nothing more isn't all that powerful compared to God.

We as Christians are called to be bold, to live strong in our faith in the good news of Jesus Christ. But what is the source of our boldness? It certainly isn't because we are better than non-Christians because it doesn't take much to look around and realize that Christians are sometimes some of they very worst behaved people around. It isn't because we have all our answers right in our heads because most of us give very little careful thought as to what we believe; speaking for myself, I am reminded daily about how much of God I do not know. Rather it is because we follow a God who has overcome the grave and has done so from within our own humanity. We are people who have been liberated from the need to fear death. In the light of the good news, we can say along with Paul, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

The good news of Jesus Christ is not that things will never go wrong. They will. Often. The good news of Jesus Christ is that the things that go wrong are never so wrong as to be the final word. Something I have found myself saying to many people is that, when we as Christians say "It will be alright," we don't mean it in any kind of wishy-washy way. Rather, what we mean is, "It will be alright, even if it kills me." That is why we are called to be bold because, in a very real sense, we simply cannot be stopped. There is persecution of Christians in various parts of the world, where people have to quite literally choose which is more dear to them, their faith or their life; and yet, they are not stopped. How much more so should we here, in the relatively safe and persecution-free community of Spencer, live with boldness knowing that, as John says, "greater is the one who is in [us] than the one who is in the world."

I would like to share words from Paul's letter to the Romans that are quite familiar, but I hope that, as we dwell on the incredible implications of the gospel, they might have greater weight than they might at other times. "What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let us pray.

AMEN