Live into Life (1
Corinthians 15:1-20)
Rob Tennant, HillSong
Church, Chapel Hill, NC
Sunday, April 20,
2014 (Easter Sunday)
At the beginning of this year, I posed a
question to our pastors, deacons, and elders.
What does it mean when a
believer says, my identity is in Christ? If you were explaining Christianity, how
would you help someone understand what it means to be in Christ? Do you understand
that phrase and that idea?
I have been taught from a very young age that
Jesus lives in my heart. Now, I am a
parent of young children and they think of things very literally. My four-year-old daughter ponders what her
daddy tells her. She does not question
the validity of the statement. But she
does ask if Jesus gets really small so he can be in there.
Do we even know what it means to have Jesus
in our hearts? Do we understand that
when we claim Christianity, it literally means we are ‘little Christs?’ We are followers of Jesus, doing things the
way Jesus did them and commands us to do them?
We see people the way Jesus wants us to see people. We actually think his way is better for our
lives than our own ways, so we turn to him, appeal to his Holy Spirit, and try
to live out his plans and purposes. When
his way and our preference are opposed, we go his way. Well, we try.
That is a clumsily effort at summarizing what
it means to be in Christ. My effort is not clumsy because I did not try
to make it smooth. It is just that the
way of Christ is thoroughly different than how we are conditioned to think,
choose, speak, act. Jesus’ way is the
way of the holy God. The world around
us, prompted by Satan and vulnerable to our own tendencies toward sin, leads
away from God. How do we walk the Jesus
way and what does it look and feel like?
On Easter Sunday, I wrestle with this
question because the resurrection defines who we are in Christ. Yet we can’t
see it and unable to see, we end up living toward death even though we have
trusted Jesus. That’s what Mary Magdalene
did when she went to the tomb on that Sunday morning. We read her story at the sunrise service. I’ll read a bit of it now.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she
bent over to look[a] into the tomb;12 and she saw two
angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the
head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to
them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid
him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus
standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.15 Jesus
said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing
him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away,
tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in
Hebrew,[b]“Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).
Sir if
you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him. Mary was still looking for a corpse. Just before this encounter with the risen
Christ, she brought Peter and the Beloved Disciples, presumably John, to the
tomb. They saw the empty tomb and it
says John believed (v.8)? Believed what,
exactly? The very next verse tells us
they did not understand the scripture, “that he must rise from the dead.” And in what I just read, Mary sees two
angels.
The tomb was empty. John believed … something. The scriptures indicated that the Messiah
would be the first resurrected. Angels
appear. Jesus stands before Mary.
Yet, her worldview conditioned her to accept that when someone dies,
they are dead. Even all this evidence
could not awaken her to a new way of seeing and living. She was incapable of living into life.
This fundamental idea, that God is God of the
living and in God there is only life, no death, this idea was impossible for
his followers to grasp the day Jesus was resurrected. We struggle to understand it and embody as
much now as they did then. In writing
about it in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul describes resurrection as a matter of first
importance.
He recites all those to whom Jesus appeared:
the 11 disciples, 500 other followers, his half-brother James, and Paul
himself. Then, Paul makes the case that
the bodily resurrection of Jesus is essential.
Everything else that he says about God rests upon the fact that Jesus
was buried and rose from death, resurrected back to being fully alive. “If Christ has not been raised, then our
proclamation has been in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).
He concludes that portion of his argument by saying, “in fact Christ has
been raised from the dead” (1 Cor. 15:20).
All else that Paul says proceeds from that truth. Resurrection defines him and all followers of
Jesus.
Of course our circumstances are different
that Mary’s and Paul’s. In very
different ways, each looked the resurrected Jesus in the eye. These events happened so long ago from our
perspective, we call it antiquity. Something
that is history happened a long time ago; antiquity is a really long time ago. We
think someday we’ll sort of gain understanding when we enter the resurrection,
or when Jesus comes back. But that is in
an unknown future, so it might as well be a million years from now and between
now and then each of has to go through that unpleasant thing we call the death
of the body. The only way we can accept
any of this is on faith.
Faith can be shaky. It is easier to fall in line with the
worldview of the world around us. So, we
live like people who are dying instead of people who will live forever. Can we do otherwise? When the diagnosis comes – the cancer is terminal, no cure – can we
in all honesty sing the song of Paul at the end of 1 Corinthians 15? Where O
Death is your victory? Where O Death is
your sting?
I came across a story this week that gave me
perspective on what it means to live into life instead of living toward death. In the Central African Republic thousands and
thousands of Christians and Muslims live peaceably, side-by-side. However, political groups vying for power under
the names, Christian and Muslim give more energy to killing each other than
practicing their faiths. They also kill
everyone caught in between. We call it
genocide.
In the Central African Republic the Muslim
groups had control and killed Christians in waves. Then, the tide swung and now the Christian
militants have the guns and the Muslims are the targets. Both the BBC and Christianity Today magazine have a story of Catholic Priest Father
Xavier Fagba. His church is in the
middle of Boali, an embattled town. His
church is full of people who are convinced they will be killed on the spot if
they step foot outside of the church building.
They are all Muslims. He, a
Catholic priest, is protecting them from murderous men who bear the name
Christian. His life has been threatened
for doing so.
This
man of God is putting his own life on the line for the sake of protecting the lives
of people of another faith. Here is a
quote from the article
“Now is the time for men of good will to stand up and prove the strength
and quality of their faith," said Father Fagba, standing in his floor-length
black cassock beside a concrete wall peppered with bullet holes. “When I did this, nobody in the community
understood me. They attacked and threatened me.
The Muslims discovered in our church that the God we worship is the same
as their God. And that's the vision the
whole of this country needs to have. We
should consider them as our brothers. What happens here gives me a certain
conviction."[i]
He is living into life
even though he may die. He understands
that the resurrection is a statement of the life God wants us to have. We may quarrel about whether or not Muslims
and Christians worship the same God. I
think a lot of people – Muslims, Mormons, Christians – have imperfect ideas
about God. My theology is far from
complete. But discussions and even
arguments should happen as the dinner table where we sit together in peace, and
extend love to each other even when we disagree. Father Fagba is not endorsing Islam. He is endorsing the lives of these humans who
are Muslims and are threatened with death by people bearing the name Christian.
Jesus himself said it in
John 10:10. He came to give abundant
life. When we live into life, we follow
him to the cross trusting by faith alone because faith is what makes us certain
that resurrection comes after the cross.
When we live into life, we protect people who are threatened with death
even if doing so puts us in the path of those bent on bringing about death. We know the death of the body comes, but it
is not the end.
In other words, if this
is possible, we think about death differently than other people. It is not possible, of course. The only sure things are death and taxes; but
with God, all things are possible. When
we are with Jesus, we are with God. We
can see everything from the Resurrection point of view.
I am reading a memoir of
someone who grew up speaking evangelical Christian lingo but not understanding
freedom and life in Christ. She spent
her high school days fantasizing about going ‘on mission’ and living ‘on mission.’ One of the many things that shattered her
faith was what happened in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She writes,
The pilots of the planes were on a mission. Their mission was death that would take
others to their death, death big enough to speak a message to the American
people and to the world. I wasn’t
comparing the missionary boys I knew to terrorists; it was clear to me that
something had broken in these men that had caused them to see humans as disposable. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the word mission.[ii]
God creates each
person. No matter how anonymous we may
seem in a world of 7 billion people, we are known to the almighty God. God sees us.
He has invested himself in us, first in making us, and second, in dying
for us on the cross, and third in resurrection, inviting us to Jesus, to
eternal life in God’s embrace. This
eternal life begins now – the moment we give ourselves to Jesus. For God, humans are not disposable.
Mary at the tomb seeks a
corpse. She loves Jesus, but she has not
escaped death’s grip. Some fanatics board planes and fly them into buildings,
killing themselves and thousands; living
into death. A group with murderous
intentions lurks around a Central African Republic church, sometimes spraying
the building with gunfire. They bear the
name ‘Christian,’ but they are living toward death.
Inside that church, a
Catholic priest risks his life to protect the Muslims the mob wants to kill; he
may die, but he is living into life. The
Apostle Paul, who only met Jesus after the resurrection, said “I will not
boast, except of my weakness. … [Jesus]
was crucified in weakness but lives by the power of God” (2 Cor. 12:5; 13:4a). Mary and the disciples could not know it
until they fully understood resurrection, but once they did, nothing could stop
them from sharing the gospel with the world.
The African priest, the Apostle Paul, and millions of Christians know
that to live into life does not delay the body’s death or even make it less
painful. It is just that knowing
resurrection is real, we know the body’s death is not the end.
And sometimes, the body’s death can happen in such
a way that our deaths testify to someone else the truth of Jesus. In those cases, by dying, we live into
life. It is the life of Christ and life
in Christ that gives us hope.
Additionally, life defines us.
Do we understand?
Easter is good news because of the promise of
salvation that is eternal. Easter is
hope. Easter is the best news when
because we know He lives, the knowledge defines how we live.
This weekend, a few of our church members worked on
a ramp at the home of some women who cannot do the work themselves and cannot
hire someone to do it for them. Our
members were living into life in that work.
The women graced our folks by receiving what they offered. We live into life when we give and honor
others who give to us by graciously receiving their gift.
This afternoon Grace Church, which used to meet
here in our building, and St. Joseph’s CME Church will meet at the town commons
in Carrboro, right by the fire department.
Everyone in town including anyone here who’s interested is invited to
gather for a meal of smoked pork barbeque and sides and desserts. They’re calling it the Easter Feaster. They want Carrboro to see how Christians
celebrate Resurrection Day. These two churches
are living into life.
Next Saturday, more folks from our church are
working on ramps to help people; living into life. Next Sunday, we will take communion, have a
potluck meal, and spend the afternoon together as a church,; we’re living into
life.
Work projects, shared meals, shared laughter, going
out of our way to care for each other – these are examples of the people of God
living by the love God showed in sending Christ. Easter is the best news there is when Easter
defines how we live.
Celebrate Easter with joy, with bright colors and
happy music, with friends and family; and, live Easter out by discovering you
can meet God as you live into life.
AMEN
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