Sermon:(Re)CreatingChurch: Resurrection Hope
May 24th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: 1 Corinthians 15:1-22, 50-58 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
What happens when we die?
The fifteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth focuses on the questions of death and resurrection. What is resurrection? Was Jesus resurrected? Will we be resurrected? What does that look like? Why is it important? The questions that the believers in Corinth were discussing basically boiled down to the question many people todaystill ask: what happens when we die?
Paul’s response is to insist on the truth that Jesus was resurrected – his physical body, his corpse, restored to life in a transformed, but nonetheless, bodily nature. God gave Jesus a resurrection body. But why would God care about bodies; isn’t it our souls God really cares about? Why can’t we just believe that God is love, that we are called to follow Jesus’ teaching to love one another, and leave it at that? Do we really need to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead? Is it important that we live in the hope that Jesus will return, that He’ll come again?
Paul is adamant that our belief in the resurrection of the dead is vitally important to our Christian faith and to the hope we proclaim. In fact, without it our hope is empty, our faith is meaningless – without it we’re just fooling ourselves.
Death is real!
Tomorrow is Memorial Day – the day that we are called to remember those who died in service of this country. Flowers are laid by graves, people visit crossesthat cover grassy fields. This year Memorial Day feels especially poignant in midst of a global pandemic – when every day we check in on the death toll. How many more people have lost their lives to the attack of the virus today? How many in our county, our state, our nation, the world? We hear of bodies piled up in morgues, of coffins stacked in funeral homes, of refrigerated trucks parked outside hospitals to contain the dead. In some places communities seem to be conquering it, flattening the curve, but in other communities the disease is still winning. There is certainly something reminiscent of wartime losses.
Death is a human reality. And not just from war or from COVID-19. We hold in prayer those who have had cancer return, who are dealing with Parkinson’s, or the effects of diabetes, or just the decline and decay of aging bodies. For those who have lost loved ones, you know that death stings. The pain of it lingers; the grief can rise up to bite when you least expect it.When Paul speaks of death, it is more than just the last breath, the final heartbeat. Death is the enemy. Death is the brutal force that robs us of life and health and dignity. Death is all that destroys God’s good creation and steals God’s gift of abundant life.
In these days it seems more urgent than ever that we affirm the answers God gives to the question, ‘what happens when we die?’ The Good News that Paul is announcing, the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection, is that the Creator God, the God of Life, has defeated death!
Matter matters!
It is tempting to think that God doesn’t care about our bodies. Yet, “matter matters to God.” That is something a seminary professor I’ve learned a lot from always says (Kathryn Schifferdecker, Luther Seminary). Matter – the stuff of this world, the stuff of our bodies – matter matters to God. It matters so much that God chose to become matter, to become flesh, to become an earthly human body. And when Jesus died in his human body, God was not content to simply raise the soul, the spirit, but God raisedJesus’ body. It was not left in the tomb for a ghostly spirit to appear to the disciples; Jesus was given a bodily resurrection! This is a God who cares about the physical stuff of this world.
Paul emphasizes this when he writes this letter to help new believers understand what resurrection means. He uses a very earthy word – nekros, which means corpse, as he describes what is being resurrected. The phrase we read as “resurrection of the dead,” could just as well be translated, “resurrection of the corpse”. Paul is clearly not saying that a person’s spirit is resurrected, or that the soul is raised up to go be with Jesus. He is focused on corpses, on bodies being given new life.
As Paul writes in his letters to various churches about what happens after we die, never does he talk about loved ones floating around or spirits looking down from heaven as our goal. If that were the case, sin and death would besucceeding in its destructive scheme. A ghost is not victory over death, for death is still getting the final word. If all we have in the end is piled up bodies and stacked coffins, if rows of crosses is all that’s left, then as Paul writes, we are indeed to be pitied.
The Hope of Resurrection
So how is it that Paul can claim that death has been defeated, when we continue to experience the reality of death each day? How can he cheer that it has been “swallowed up in victory.” Which, by the way, is Paul quoting the words of the prophet Isaiah when he declares, “On this mountain the LORD will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces.” (Is.25:7-8)
Paul can claim that death is defeated because of Jesus’ physical resurrection. Jesus’ body was not allowed to decay in the tomb, it was given new, resurrection life. Jesus’ transformed body was a sign that death no longer gets the final word. It was a signal that God’s promise was not like a politicians’ promise, exciting us now but letting us down later. It was something we could stake our lives on. Seeing Jesus’ resurrection body was like taking a peak at the end of the mystery we are reading, catching a glimpse of how the story will turn out, at the resurrection bodies we, too, will be given.
Bodies matter to God; matter matters. Jesus will return and at that time all creation will be transformed, renewed into a new heaven and a new earth, a new creation – one that is imperishable, where health and life and wholeness can never be taken away. That’s why in his next letter to the Corinthian church, Paul can say, “So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!” (2Cor.5:17)
That’s is why in his letter to the church in Rome, Paul can write, “I believe that the present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us. The whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters. Creation was subjected to frustration, in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children. We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free. We were saved in hope.” (Rom.8:18-24)
This is why many of our brothers and sisters in Christ join their voices together during their practice of communion, a celebration of Jesus’ physical body and blood, to declare, “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!”
When we have this hope, that the physical stuff of this world is important to God, important enough to put in placea rescueplan for creationthrough Jesus, rescuingus from sin and disease and death, that hope is an anchor, firm and secure, that keeps us living and working on behalf of life.(Heb.6:19) When we know that God cares about this created world, our bodies and the bodies of our loved ones, then we know that everything we do in this world matters.
I’d like to end with a quote from Bishop Tom Wright – as many of you know, one of my favorite Christian authors. He writes, “It is a matter of the greatest encouragement to Christian workers, most of whom are away from the public eye, unsung heroes and heroines, getting on faithfully and quietly with their God-given tasks, that what they do ‘in the Lord’ during the present time will last, will matter, will stand for all time. How God will take our prayer, our art, our love, our writing, our political action, our music, our honesty, our daily work, our congregational care, our teaching, our whole selves – how God will take this and weave its varied strands into the glorious tapestry of His new creation, we can at present have no idea. That He will do so is part of the truth of the resurrection, and perhaps one of the most comforting parts of all.”(NT Wright, Paul for Everyone – 1 Corinthians, pg 228)
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!
Closing Song: “Soon and Very Soon” led by Lisa Reshkus
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