(NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.12-34 – 12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. 21For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 23But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For ‘God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’ But when it says, ‘All things are put in subjection’, it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. 28When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all. 29 Otherwise, what will those people do who receive baptism on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? 30 And why are we putting ourselves in danger every hour? 31I die every day! That is as certain, brothers and sisters, as my boasting of you—a boast that I make in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32If with merely human hopes I fought with wild animals at Ephesus, what would I have gained by it? If the dead are not raised,‘Let us eat and drink,   for tomorrow we die.’

33Do not be deceived:‘Bad company ruins good morals.’ 34Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more; for some people have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

1 Corinthians 15.12-34

Surprised by Hope #2

of Resurrection[ 5 May 2023 10:06 PM ]

03.06.2014– First UMC St. Cloud

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Introduction: Invasion1. Can people come back to life? The idea of resurrection seems so foreign

to our modern sensibilities. For Christians, our unwillingness to grasp the true nature of resurrection as spoken about in the Bible leads us to see this world and humanity as expendable, especially the weak and vulnerable and those we do not particularly like. Because, if Gd is just going to throw the earth away, who cares, right?

2. As Christians If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. I believe the Scriptures and the historical evidence that Jesus the Christ, God the Son, died on a cross and returned to life. Our text this morning looks back and ahead, from the cross to the end of history, yet, the main concern is our here and now lives as Christians.

The “Big Idea” – Resurrection invades our public life.

A. Never Occur and Never Before In the time of Jesus, people either understood resurrection could never occur or never before the end of history.1. The idea of resurrection is not a wide spread notion to the primarily Greek

and Roman culture in the city of Corinth to which Paul writes this letter. So, it is not a surprise that people in this church community struggle to understand and live by the resurrection of Jesus the Christ and to understand and live in light of their own resurrection at the end of time. So, Paul argues,

(NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.12-19 – 12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.2. The resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection in the future are central not

just to right believing but to how we live here and now – resurrection is central to the Christian faith. The argument here works from the future to the past: if you and I are not to experience resurrection then Christ has

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not been raised. This assumes that the opposite is also true: because Christ has been raised you and I look forward to our own resurrection!

3. Now, as we mentioned, in this ancient pagan world, one can neither escape death nor break its power once in death’s grip. The idea of resurrection never contained the idea of simply a spiritual life after death. To speak about resurrection, which for most is not even a hope, is a two step process involving an intermediate period in some state after death and then a new life in a body. Resurrection is, at this moment in history, not some coded way of speaking about a spiritual life after death but a life after death with a new body! To the pagan world this will never occur. Death is too powerful.

4. Jewish faith, on the other hand, though some hold to the impossibility of resurrection, held that God would bring about a resurrection of God’s people or of all people at the end of our time. But never before the end of history.

B. Redefining Resurrection So, what happens when we redefine resurrection from the Biblical understanding, of new bodies in a new creation, to instead mean going off to heaven to have some glorious disembodies (no body) experience? 1. To begin with, we have to somehow explain or outright ignore the

writers of the Gospel (the accounts of Jesus) and the rest of the New Testament who go to great lengths to convey that Jesus is really, really dead and then three days later, really alive. Not as a ghost or vivid memory or even as a moving spiritual power but instead as a person with a physical body. a. These writers are very specific that after the resurrection, Jesus

appears to them in a body which occupies time and space. The empty tomb is so significant because the resurrected body of Jesus, the transformed body, uses up the mater, if you will, of Christ’s crucified body. If resurrection meant simply becoming spirits then the tomb would still have a “no vacancy” sign.

2. Then, we also have no real sense of the new creation God is bringing into this world. Really, the connection between this life and God’s new heaven and new earth. We fail to live in light of our good creator God remaking this good, though marred by sin and in the grip of death, creation and not merely abandoning it. This is what we see in the resurrection of Jesus.

3. Finally, we miss the hope of resurrection. This is how Jesus followers and even his culture understood resurrection. Not even the Jews, who looked forward to an end of history resurrection of God’s people or all

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people, anticipated one human experiencing resurrection right in the middle of history. What meaning did this have for them?

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a. To begin, Jesus claims to be the Messiah or the Christ, that is, the one God would has sent to defeat Israel’s enemies once and for all, bringing God’s justice from heaven to earth. No one expects the Messiah to die. In fact, the crucifixion of Jesus signals, not a great hope, but instead the loss of all hope. Death, especially crucifixion at the hands of the enemy shuts the door, and shuts the door tight on Jesus bringing God’s Kingdom to earth.

b. Then three days later, early in the morning, the women, who followed and loved Jesus so much, discover the empty tomb and meet the resurrected Jesus! Jesus is returned to this life! Not as a ghost or personal vision but as a human! He has fought the battle against the greatest enemy, death. Jesus is the Messiah or the Christ precisely because of the resurrection. Though they did not expect this, the first of the final resurrection of the dead occurs in history not at the end of history. So, in Jesus, the future, God’s future, takes hold of our here and now life and world. Through resurrection!

C. Middle of History The resurrection of Jesus brings God’s future into the middle of history.1. To be clear, based on the evidence of those whose witness is conveyed in

the Bible (the Scriptures) and on the understandings of the general Jewish and pagan (non-Jewish) culture, we must remind ourselves that resurrection did not mean going to heaven when died, escaping death or having some glorious out of body experience. Resurrection in the Bible means nothing less than coming to life in a bodily existence after a bodily death. a. So we read on in (NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.20 – 20 But in fact Christ has

been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

2. When Paul points to Adam it is as if he is saying, rebellion against God, sin and then death have come into the human condition because of humans; Adam representing all of us. So if death comes from in large part from human action then in (NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.21 –21For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;

3. So, the Bible, and the early Christian church, saw in the resurrection of Jesus, not some isolated event of resurrection which then meant all believers would “fly away to heaven,” but instead resurrection itself happening in one person in the middle of history in advance of the great, final occurrence. The resurrection of Jesus the Christ or Messiah Jesus,

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God with us, anticipates and guarantees the final resurrection of all God’s people at the end of time.

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4. The resurrection of Jesus is not an abnormal event but the transformative event marking the turn of history from death to life; linked with, connected to, a part of, God’s completed yet not fully accepted and visible purpose for all creation. (NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.22 – 22for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

5. Paul makes clarifies this for us in (NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.23-25 – 23But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, [the first and best of the crop] then at his coming [the return of Jesus] those who belong to Christ. 24Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. All this has credibility because every bit of it rests on the life and death and resurrection of Christ and on the purposes of God the Father and on the power of God the Holy Spirit.

6. You and I, all believers, have this awesome hope of resurrection because of Jesus the Christ whose life and death and resurrection, securing that (NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.26 – 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

D. To Fall In Love To fall in love with God and to fall in love with others is how we live out this hope of resurrection.1. The disciples and friends of Jesus, when they see him again, the one who

has been crucified standing in front of them, eating with them, inviting them to touch his pierced hands and feet and side, did not say, “Now we all get to go to heaven when we die.” Instead, they understood that the final resurrection, the new creation, had somehow begun in the midst of this life and that meant that God had called them to work in the power of the Holy Spirit to implement, to reveal to the world, what Jesus accomplished on the cross and what will come to pass at the close of history.

2. Believers work to see the present transformed in ways that show what the future will bring. Paul, points to his own life which he sees as meaningless if Christ has not been raised. He says in (NRSV) 1 Corinthians 15.30-32 – 30 And why are we putting ourselves in danger every hour? 31I die every day! That is as certain, brothers and sisters, as my boasting of you—a boast that I make in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32If with merely human hopes I fought with wild animals at Ephesus, what would I have gained by it? If the dead are not raised,

‘Let us eat and drink,   for tomorrow we die.’

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3. The world seems able to cope with Jesus as a wonderful idea inside the disciples mind. Yet, the world cannot cope with Jesus crucified, dead and buried and on the third day risen again. So, what we have is a clash of world views; ones that have no place for God’s new creation leading to justice and life with the resurrection of Jesus, signaling that God’s new creation is begun.

4. So, I believe, to be once again surprised by hope, to be surprised by resurrection, we need to be open to reading the Scriptures, to the God of whom the Scriptures speak, who is the creator of the world and not simply a spiritual presence in it. Here, in the Scriptures, through prayer, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the windows of our hearts and minds are opened to the possibilities in God’s world, the world of creation around us, and also the new creation that God is already bringing.

5. In reading the Bible alone and definitely together as a community, we fall in love with God and are empowered to fall in love with humanity and our world. Then we participate, even if it seems only in small steps, in living out the hope of resurrection where there is the possibility of new creation – of healing, of peace, of justice, of caring. This is a shift for us, to act as if the social and political and intellectual tyrants and bullies do not in the end win; theirs is not the last word.

6. Resurrection is bound to get you in trouble, it always does. We saw this last week in the life of catholic Bishop Oscar Romero, who stood up against the Salvadorian military and the powerful land owners who abused the peasants for their labor and terrorized and tortured them as they sought better treatment.

7. Max Lucado writes in his book Out Live Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference (p13-15): “Does he still use simple folks like us to change the world? We suffer from such ordinariness. The fellow to my right snoozes with his mouth open. The gray-haired woman next to him wears earphones and bobs her head from side to side. (I think I hear Frank Sinatra.) They don't wear halos or wings. And excluding the reflection off the man's bald spot, they don't emit any light.

Most of us don't. We are Joe Pot Roast. Common folk. We sit in the bleachers, eat at diners, change diapers, and wear our favorite team's ball cap. Fans don't wave when we pass. Servants don't scurry when we come home. Chauffeurs don't drive our cars; butlers don't open our doors or draw our baths. Doormen don't greet us, and security doesn't protect us. We, like the Jerusalem disciples, are regular folk.Does God use the common Joe? Edith would say yes.

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Edith Hayes was a spry eighty-year-old with thinning white hair, a wiry five-foot frame, and an unquenchable compassion for South Florida's cancer patients. I was fresh out of seminary in 1979 and sitting in an office of unpacked books when she walked in and introduced herself: "My name is Edith, and I help cancer patients." She extended her hand. I offered a chair. She politely declined. "Too busy. You'll see my team here at the church building every Tuesday morning. You're welcome to come, but if you come, we'll put you to work."Her team, I came to learn, included a hundred or so silver-haired women who occupied themselves with the unglamorous concern of sore seepage. They made cancer wounds their mission, stitching together truckloads of disposable pads each Tuesday, then delivering them to patients throughout the week.Edith rented an alley apartment, lived on her late husband's pension, wore glasses that magnified her pupils, and ducked applause like artillery fire. She would have fit in well with Peter and the gang.So would Joe and Liz Page. Their battalion has a different objective—clothing for premature infants. They turn one of our church classrooms into a factory of volunteer seamstresses. The need for doll-sized wardrobes had never occurred to me. But then again, my children weren't born weighing only three pounds. Joe and Liz make sure such kids have something to wear, even if they wear it to their own funerals.Joe retired from military service. Liz once taught school. He has heart problems. She has foot deformities. But both have a fire in their hearts for the neediest of children.As does Caleb. He's nine years old. He plays basketball, avoids girls, and wants the kids of El Salvador to have clean drinking water.During a Sunday school class, his teacher shared the reality of life in poverty-stricken Central America. For lack of clean drinking water, children die of preventable diseases every day. Caleb was stunned at the thought and stepped into action. He took the twenty dollars he had been saving for a new video game, gave it to the cause, and asked his father to match it. He then challenged the entire staff of the children's ministry at his church to follow his example. The result? Enough money to dig two wells in El Salvador.Edith, Joe, Liz, and Caleb are regular folks. They don't levitate when they walk or see angels when they pray. They don't have a seat at the United Nations or a solution for the suffering in Darfur. But they do embrace this conviction: God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called.”

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8. Our church lives by resurrection when we:a. Care for our youth so they come know all they have in Jesus Christ;

when we help them learn to serve Jesus on a summer mission trio to Tennessee or participating in the 30 Hour Famine

b. Give and be a part of the Crop Walk for Church World Service or to send our young adults as our representatives to serve in Haiti (April 26th – May 4th)

c. Support the boys and girls living at our Florida United Methodist Children’s Home.

d. Host Vacation Bible School for our children and for the children in or community.

e. Serve meals to those struggling with hunger at Elmer’s Kitchen.f. Offer our building and our resources to Covenant House as they help

young adults trying to take charge of their lives.

“Action Point” – Imagine (Holy Imagination) how we could (how you and yur family could) offer the hope of resurrection to a dying world?

Message based in part on:

J. Paul Sampley, “New Interpreter's Bible; a Commentary in Twelve Volumes,” The First Letter to the Corinthians, edited by Leander E. Keck (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995).

N. T. Wright, “Puzzled About Paradise” and “Early Christian Hope in Its Historical Setting” in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008).