Easter Sunday, 2014

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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[i] Christianity Today (April, 2014), p.17.

[ii] Addie Zierman (2013).  When we were on Fire.  Convergent Books, Santa Rosa, CA, p.107.

Easter Sunday

Easter Imagined (Isaiah 65:17-25; 1 Corinthians 15:12-26)[i]

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter Sunday

            Luke reports that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, another woman named Mary, and several other unnamed women came to the place Jesus had been buried.  Luke’s telling of this, as it relates to the women, may be the most helpful of the four gospels.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the women are grouped together and come to the tomb together.  They see the angel and then the risen Lord together.  In John, Mary Magdalene has individual experiences.

            If the gospels were written, as historians suggest, at the earliest 35 years after the events surrounding the resurrection and maybe 50 years later, then it is plausible to think the gospel writers were fuzzy on details.  We know there were women and they were the first witnesses to the resurrection.  We can’t be sure of how many or exactly what they saw.

            Some Christians are comfortable with the thought that the reporting was inexact.  Others hear this and say, “Wait a minute!  If the reports in the four gospels are not precise to the finest detail, then the entire Bible is flawed and must be disregarded.”  But look again at Luke.

            In his account of the procession from Jerusalem out to the site of the crucifixion, he mentions a large group of people, many of whom were women.  As he is being led to his death, Jesus talks directly to his female disciples who showed more courage in their faith than did the men (Luke 23:27-28).  These women who were Christ followers, who provided financial support to Jesus and the 12 (Luke 8:3), continued to hang around all through the crucifixion and onto the 3^rd day.

            They came as a group to anoint his dead body, but not necessarily only one group.  Luke indicates many women, more than those he named.  Perhaps what is told in Mark and Matthew deals with one group of women who made their way to the tomb.  John’s account of Mary Magdalene’s individual experience may relate another wave of Jesus’ female followers coming to honor him one last time.  A skeptic wanting to weaken the Gospel accounts by focusing on discrepancies could disregard my idea as mere speculation.  But, the facts as we have them are that Luke mentions many women and does not give a specific number.  There is no declaration from any gospel writer that one group of women made one trip to the tomb the Sunday after the crucifixion.  The implication is that between the female and male disciples, multiple trips were made.  My suggestion is speculative, but plausible. 

            It is certain that all of Jesus’ followers, women and men, were pretty sure the Jesus story was done.  Some sectors of Jewish society believed in a resurrection.  But that belief was in an end-times resurrection of all people.  Both the evil and the righteous – all – would be raised for judgment.  Several New Testament scholars who claim that Jesus was truly dead and truly resurrected make the point.  Jews at that time, even those who believed in the concept of resurrection, did not think the Messiah was going to die and be resurrected.  They did not think a single person was going to be resurrected prior to the general resurrection at the end of history. 

They were sure that Jesus was dead.  They were sad, but not confused.  They went to the tomb the way you and I would go to a cemetery.  They went to visit a burial site and to remember the one who had died.  There expectations were clear. 

We know things did not go as expected.  But even though we know how it turned out, how tears were turned to laughter, we may have a much difficulty with expectations as did those disciples who went to anoint a dead body and instead met a resurrected savior.

Expectations are tricky.  Several years ago, I planned a hiking trip to Glacier National Park.  It was my dad, my good friend, and me.  We would backpack in the Rocky Mountains for five days and nights.  Neither my dad nor I had ever been to the Rockies.  Our friend was from Colorado.  He tried to describe it.  We looked at photos of the national park.  We recalled our numerous experiences of backpacking in the Appalachian Mountains.  But the mountains are higher out west.  The vegetation is different.  There is less humidity.  The wildlife is different.  I had great expectations for the trip.  I anticipated a lot of fun.  And thankfully, that trip greatly exceeded my expectations.  As much as I tried to imagine Rocky mountain beauty, imagination was all I had until I was there. 

That was 13 years ago.  Because the actual experience was so far better than what my expectations could imagine, I will someday go back, I hope.  Other times, I have great expectations and the anticipated event doesn’t quite end up as well as I hoped it would.  This past baseball season, I expected the Detroit Tigers to make the World Series.  They did.  I imagined the joy I would feel when they won it.  My expectations crashed to earth as their hitting dried up and they were swept by San Francisco.  Expectations can be tricky. 

We know that the women expected to find Jesus’ dead body and were utterly blown away when they instead met Jesus alive and in the flesh.  That’s the story.  When historians analyze it scientifically, the best conclusion from the available evidence is that the resurrection actually happened.  Even if other accounts from the Bible are scrutinized and even is some of the evidence is discounted for being unreliable, still, the weight of historical proofs that are as close to indisputable as can be indicates that Jesus really did live, die, and rise to life.  Whatever else we conclude about Christianity, the resurrection happened. 

Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 15.  “If Christ has not been raised … then your faith has been in vain.  … But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died” (v.14, 20).  That phrase “firstfruits” means more resurrections are to come, following his.  Paul continues, “[Christ] must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (v.25-26).  Jesus’ resurrection was with a purpose.  He died to take on himself the penalty for sin.  His death undid the consequences of the fall.  His death accomplished victory over sin and his resurrection accomplished victory over death.  When we are in him, we surely will be resurrected.  We will all die, but our deaths will be temporary.  Our lives after resurrection will be forever.

We have to deal with that.  How do we anticipate and prepare for eternity?  What expectations do we have?  We know details of the story Jesus’ disciples did not have when they went to the tomb that morning.  But, we are a little like I was preparing for the Rockies.  I could read about Glacier National Park and look at pictures.  But until I went, all I had was my imagination.  As Christ followers, we live as resurrection, Easter people, but until we move past death and past the interim period spent in a paradise-type of state, we can only imagine what that will be like.

We get glimpses in the gospels.  The risen Jesus sat with the disciples at a campfire and ate fish.  He took bread in his hands and broke.  His was a tangible body that occupied real space.  Some of the women took hold of his feet and he invited the disbelieving Thomas to touch him.  At the same time, he passed through closed, locked doors.  He suddenly appeared amidst a crowd.  To Paul on the road to Damascus and to John on the Island of Patmos, his appearance was spectacular and otherworldly. 

These 2 dimensional photos help as we picture resurrection in our minds, but photos, while they whetted my appetite for Montana, did not enable to taste the mountain air.  I had to go there.  I had stand under the big sky to be overwhelmed by it.  Prior to being resurrected, we have to live imaginatively.

Someone who lived several hundred years before Jesus can help us.  The prophet Isaiah was given by God a vision.  He was shown God’s angry judgment against sinful humanity, but then he saw how God would restore the world after judgment.  Isaiah did not know judgment would reach its fulfillment on the cross.  But his picture of the restored world after the judgment was completed adds depth and color to our imagined mosaic of the world resurrected.

Isaiah writes God’s words, words God also gave to John, the author of Revelation.  “I am about to create new Heavens and a new Earth” (Is. 65:17a).  Think in terms not of a new Heaven and Earth replacing what currently exists, but think instead of this earth made new just as you and I are made new when we are in Christ.  It is a renewal, a return to the perfect goodness that was the earth when God created it, before Adam and Eve first sinned.

Remembering how conquered nations are plundered by invaders, Isaiah says in his vision of the new Heaven and Earth, “They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat” (v.20a).  In other words, there is no need to fear invasion or war.  In God’s new world, we can concentrate on building things and growing things without fear of war.  It is a world of production and peace, growth and new life. 

“Be glad and rejoice forever in I am creating,” God says, “For I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight” (v.18).  The ultimate expression of the peace and serenity comes at the end of Isaiah’s vision.  “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like an ox; but the serpent – its food shall be dust!  They shall not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain” (v.25).    If I was walking in nature and a lion came walking toward me, I would be stricken with fear and would frantically seek some place I could go to be safe from the powerful predator.  What kind of world is it where the fiercest of animals quietly grazes alongside harmless, domesticated beasts?

We can’t really see it, but we can imagine.  We can imagine complete freedom from fear.  We can hope for a world where there is no need for any envy or jealousy.  Happiness and joy never get old and never run out.  We can’t know it now, but we can imagine and imagine does not mean pretend or fantasize.  Imagining is the act of anticipating what we know will one day be reality.  Imagining gives hope.

Imagining also directs our approach to life as we anticipate resurrected, eternal life.  Because we know we will live in the world Isaiah described, we work toward that world in our everyday relationships.  We are peacemakers.  We seek the good of others.  We are driven by love and we long to love our neighbors even in the most difficult of circumstances. We forgive, we do not seek revenge, and we go the extra mile to help others in need.  All of this is an outpouring of the resurrection of Jesus and an imaginative expression of our own resurrections which are coming on the Day of the Lord.

Today is our biggest day.  Nothing matters more for Christ followers than Easter.  Douglas Groothius writes, “Without there is no Christianity.”[ii]  For the rest of the world, the 4 billion or so people who do not believe Jesus rose from the dead, today is not a big deal.  More cards are sent at Christmas and on Valentine’s Day.  A bigger deal is made of anniversaries and of New Year’s Eve.  Easter passes almost unnoticed.  Our job is not to prove that Jesus really rose.  The argument can certainly be made, but it is a fact of history whether people believe it or not.

Our job as His followers is to live the reality of resurrection every day.  In this way, we show who Jesus is – the savior, the forgiver, the Lord.  We point the way, and He draws the world to himself.  And regardless of how others feel and regardless of whatever temporary setbacks we suffer, we know resurrection is our permanent condition.  So we live imaginatively and we live in unending joy.

AMEN

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[i] Focus is on Isaiah 65:17-18, 20, 25 and 1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 20, 25-26

[ii] Christian Apologetics (2011), p.528.

Easter Sunday Sermon

“Resurrection is …” (1 Corinthians 15:3-10, 20-26, 54-57), Rob Tennant, Sunday, April 24, 2011, Easter Sunday

On April Fool’s Day 1975, in his home on West 7 Mile Road in Detroit, James Milford Biscomb had an aneurism. He died before the ambulance even reached the hospital. I grew up going to that house for Christmas, special events, vacations back to Michigan, after we moved to Virginia. My Grandma Biscomb’s home is a part of me, and Pum is part of me too, but in a less familiar way. I was five when he died, and my brother not yet two. My mom was 8½ pregnant with my sister when she buried her father.

I believe one day, I will again get to spend time with the grandmother I loved so much and knew so well. And, I believe I’ll get to know Pum, the grandfather I don’t even really remember. Why do I believe this? I believe it because I believe Jesus rose from the grave and because He lives, I believe I too will rise.

Paul, an apostle, wrote much of the New Testament, but he did not write a gospel, not in the form of the four gospels, anyway. He wrote letters to specific churches usually to address specific problems in those churches. Though he did not write a narrative as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did, his letters enhance our understanding of the stories in the gospels.

This is especially true when we think of Easter morning. In Matthew, the risen Christ gives the great commission. In Mark, he does not appear; rather, a mysterious young man meets the grieving women at Jesus’ grave and tells them he is alive. In Luke, the resurrected Jesus eats fish, walks to Emmaus with a couple of disciples who are not part of the 12, and then with the 12 (minus Judas) looking on, ascends to Heaven. In John, he tells Thomas to stop doubting and believe, and he reinstates Peter who denied knowing him.

Jesus was quite busy after he was resurrected; but he did more than the Gospels report. Thanks to Paul, we know that Jesus appeared to 500 who were gathered, and also individually to James. James was Jesus’ half brother, the son of Mary and Joseph. He rejected Jesus until the resurrection. After the resurrection, he became one of the primary leaders of the very first church. Paul also reports that Jesus visited several people he calls apostles but are different the 12.

In writing of these post-resurrection accounts of Jesus, Paul declares that he is stating the essence of faith for people who follow Jesus.

“I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, ²through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. ³For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, ⁴and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (v.1-4).

Paul Beasely-Murray, a British Baptist pastor found a most unlikely source of validation for the resurrection as he was researching for his book on the topic. He studies the work of Pinchas Lapide an Orthodox Jew from Germany and a New Testament scholar. Lapide does not accept Jesus as the Messiah or as Son of God. However, looking at the story as a scholar, Lapide sees evidence for a literal, bodily resurrection. Some Christian scholars surrender knowledge to a humanistic worldview and thus spiritualize the resurrection. It could not happen. The laws of reason and science don’t make space for a dead man to come to life in a transformed body. So, a literal resurrection isn’t possible no matter what the Bible says.

Jesus didn’t really rise, they say. He is resurrected when His church lives out the values he modeled. Lapide, who is not a believer, is appalled as such talk. As an expert on the New Testament, he sees the resurrection as the very core of Christianity.

Beasely-Murray and Anglican Priest N.T. Wright are both very much believer and pastors and scholars with expertise in New Testament and first century Judaism. Both assess the story and the evidence and affirm along with Lapide that this is central to our faith: a literal, bodily resurrection that includes an empty tomb and Jesus appearing to his followers in a transformed body. No other scenario makes any sense. Many have tried to explain the story away because it does in deed exceed our grasp of knowledge. Dead is dead. But no explanation makes sense either in assessing the evidence available or in understanding the faith of the first Christians. Only a resurrected Jesus fits the testimony of the witnesses as well as the testimony of our experience.

We are today’s witnesses who testify to the truth. Jesus died for the sins of the world and then rose from the grave. He is alive and all who put their trust in Him will also be resurrected. I heard a sermon from an extremely popular local pastor. He said essentially all he ever preaches is Christ crucified. I understand that he was trying to accent the need people have for Jesus. He was crucified because we sin and our sins separate from God. Christ crucified is everything, but that cannot be all we preach or share or believe. Christ crucified is only half the story and without the rest, it isn’t good news. Today’s sermon and every day’s testimony is Christ crucified, Christ Resurrected. Everything I have read puts resurrection at the heart of our story as Jesus people.

Furthermore, in saying we are today’s witnesses we recognize the present vitality of this story. The risen Christ appeared to his followers 2000 years ago, but resurrection continues to be news as fresh as this morning’s sunrise because each time someone comes to faith in Jesus, that person is filled with resurrection hope. Each time we who are in Christ experience pain of any sort, we are sustained by resurrection hope.

Jesus is the “first fruits.” God did not resurrect him for the sake of showing how powerful he is. God wasn’t trying to impress anyone. The resurrection has real and immediate implications for anyone who calls Jesus Lord and follows him as a disciple. Paul writes “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (v.22). Because he rose, we will rise.

As I worked on this, and read page after page of theological reflection on resurrection and commentary on 1^st Corinthians, my mind began to run. I wanted to experience the reality I was studying. I wanted to die so I could know first-hand what resurrection is like.

It reminds of my days as an infantryman. Our platoon would do maneuvers in the woods against another platoon. We shot at each other with blanks and threw smoke grenades, not real ones. And we did those drills over and over and over. At some point, I wanted to put real bullets in the gun, go find an enemy who would shoot real bullets at me, and see how I would do. Reflecting back, the thought seems absurd because I’m talking about war, where people die. But, after the grueling rehearsals intended to develop combat skill, I wanted to be tested. Looking back with a more sober perspective, I am glad I never was.

But, looking back to this past week and all the reading on resurrection, a part of me wants it right now. I want to die so I can see what it is we’re talking about. Whereas my desire for combat solely for the reason of testing my soldier-skills was foolhardy, a disciple’s desire for resurrection makes perfect sense to Paul. He writes in Philippians, “²²If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. ²³I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1).

Because Jesus was resurrected, we will be. We will be in bodies that cannot die. I want that. But not yet. The reality of resurrection gives us something to say in the world today. Paul made that point in 1 Corinthians 15 and in his comments in Philippians. He continues, to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. ²⁵Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, ²⁶so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.” The story of salvation begun 2000 years ago in the death and resurrection of Jesus expands each time someone, for the first time, trusts in Him and is saved.

Resurrection is the center of our faith.

Resurrection is a story that continues to be told.

Finally, resurrection is eternal victory. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” Paul says (15:26). Resurrection assumes that death cuts a person off from God. No fate could be more terrible. God is life; God is beauty; God is peace. Without God, one plunges into violent, painful chaos. Imagine being consumed by a dark, oppressive, hideous nothingness. That’s the last great enemy, death. That’s where sin leads.

Christ followers, are pulled out of that nightmare by the loving hand of God who raised Jesus. Yes, our bodies die, but then our bodies rise. More accurately, God resurrects us. We are not souls floating some afterlife bliss, freed from the confines of physical bodies. The bodies we have right now are resurrected and transformed.

What if someone is eaten by a shark? What if someone throws his body on an exploding grenade? What if someone is consumed by flames? Paul would say to this macabre thinking, “Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (v.35). Apart from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein novel, we cannot take a dead body and restore life to it. It is equally impossible if the body is shredded or in tact and perfect, except for being dead. Only God can do that, and, says Paul, God can do it regardless of the shape of the dead body.

We will we recognize one another? I think, yes, because it will be me, resurrected. Our bodies will be transformed so that we will not feel physical pain and will not die. One resurrected cannot die. How old will we be in the resurrection? What will my relationship with my grandfather be? With my son? Will I still be bald? The answer to every question is we will be transformed. We will be, as Paul says, imperishable, and death’s day will be over.

From the final verses of 1^st Corinthians 15,

⁵¹Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, ⁵²in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” ⁵⁵“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” ⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The resurrection is what changes everything in the life of one who follows him. A couple of years ago, the 17-year-old son of singer Steven Curtis Chapman was driving home. The young man did not see his 6-year-old sister, playing. She darted into his car’s path as he came up the driveway. He hit and killed his sister.

What do you do?

After the tears and pain and horror, this family, Christ followers, entered a season of healing. How could they heal? Healing came because Jesus rose from the grave. The sting of death is a little girl’s life, cut short. But, the young man lives today and tours with father performing Gospel-based music because he knows he will see his sister again and he lives with the hope of resurrection. It doesn’t eliminate the pain. But Jesus provides a hope that outshines the darkness of loss. Steven Curtis Chapman put out a CD of songs filled with the ripping emotions he went through in the experience. His loss and sorrow are memorialized on that CD. But, grief, though present, is not the defining emotion. The CD is entitled Beauty will Rise. Why? Because Jesus is alive.

We have our sorrows – either we’ve already lived through them, or we’re in the middle of pain right now, or dark days will come in the future. Paul knew that. But no enemy of death, sin, loss, or grief that stand our path can match up with the hope we have. Because He lives, we can face today and tomorrow. The resurrection of Jesus is our hope, our testimony, and the power that keeps us going and puts music in our song.

There is joy-filled unending love in the eternal life we have because he rose.

AME