Rise

 

Rise

 

1 Corinthians 15:12-20
15:12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

15:13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;

15:14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.

15:15 We 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.

15:16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised.

15:17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

15:18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.

15:19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

15:20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

 

I believe…in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit; Born of the Virgin Mary; Suffered under Pontius Pilate; Was crucified, dead and buried; The third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven; And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

 

For those of us who were raised in churches that used more liturgy in worship, the reciting of the Apostles’ Creed was a staple. We said these words over and over: The third day He rose again from the dead. And then later in the creed, we proclaimed to believe in the “resurrection of the body,” meaning we believe that OUR bodies would be “resurrected” someday to “life everlasting.” This famous creed echoes the theology of what the Apostle Paul writes in today’s scripture text. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a BIG DEAL. Paul makes the progression from saying that if CHRIST was not raised, then our faith is futile, we are still in our sins, and have no hope ourselves for an afterlife. Paul says that we are “of all people most to be pitied,” if these things be true. Then he offers the good news: But in fact Christ HAS been raised from the dead!, thus leading the believer to rejoice in the corresponding truth that we are NOT still in our sins, and that our own ”resurrection” will assure us of eternal life. This is good Christian history. This is good Christian liturgy. This is good Christian theology. And for many, this is also vital Christian dogma. But for the purpose of this sermon, let’s assume we don’t get too excited about “resurrection” as an academic or doctrinal idea. What, then, does resurrection mean to us, and why is it important?

 

In Paul’s atonement model, and as adopted by the church early on, as we see from the Apostles’ Creed, there are three vital parts: Christ died; Christ was buried; Christ was raised from the dead. Paul and other biblical writers draw a parallel between sacrifices in the Jewish tradition for the forgiveness of the sins of the people and Christ being “sacrificed” to death on the cross, bearing our sins. The significance of Christ’s burial in the garden tomb seems to serve both as a “waiting time” for his followers to brood over his cryptic statements about “tearing this temple down and rebuilding it in three days,” and his other mysterious references to rising from the dead on the third day. Some will suggest that these three “parts” of the formula are important because the Bible SAYS they are important, and must be true to fulfill biblical prophecies. Others will simply quote Paul—and particularly the verses in today’s lectionary passage—and declare that this is the God-inspired truth, therefore we must just believe it. But let’s set these “because the Bible tells me so” reasons aside for a while so we may ponder the WHY of the resurrection.

 

As we begin this conversation, we must acknowledge that Paul’s parallelism (and that found in the Book of Hebrews) between the Temple sacrifices and Jesus as the supreme and forever sacrifice for the sins of the people breaks down when it comes to the resurrection. The animals sacrificed on the altar of the Temple did not have to be “raised from the dead” to be an efficacious propitiation for sin. So why might the resurrection of Jesus be important in an atonement model of his death? This question may help us get at some of the other, more esoteric ideas about the resurrection.

 

If we set aside the atonement aspect of the Christ Event, we are left with the extraordinary life of the man, Jesus Christ, who congealed many of the best teachings of Torah (welcome the stranger, love your neighbor, minister to the poor and infirmed, visit the widows, orphans, and the incarcerated) and coupled them with powerful parables people would forever remember, and displays or “signs” of God’s healing, liberating presence. What Jesus taught us and modeled for us would be plenty to rank him up there with other great religious and philosophical mystics, and even make him more beloved because he connected so lovingly with the downtrodden, the marginalized, and the children. This is a Jesus we could still fall in love with, worship, and follow, indeed. In fact, many from liberal scholars to persons of other faiths, and even persons who claim no faith in the Divine at all have gladly attached themselves to this Jesus and his story. Frankly, I don’t have a problem with that, and I don’t think Paul would, either. Paul would say that this part of the “story” doesn’t go far enough, and in truncating the good news of the Christ Event, it cheapens what God is up to in it. 

 

Today’s text was Paul operating out of his “doctrinal” mode, though, and he cannot leave the Jesus journey with the “Good Jesus” and his teachings, without the other elements he sees as being essential to the redemption of all of humanity, most especially the atoning work he sees in Jesus. Paul, and the church he writes for, believes that the death of Christ on the cross is necessary. There are those who believe that God’s pronouncement of forgiveness upon humanity actually occurred when the Christ was born into the world—In sending Jesus, God was demonstrating God’s desire to forgive our sins and establish a fail-safe and forever connection to humankind, one that could no longer be severed by sin. My brother, Jay, who is also a pastor and a good grassroots theologian, has done some interesting work around re-examining the “sacrifice” of Jesus. Citing other theologians work, and synthesizing some thoughts of his own, Jay points out that the church as often seen Jesus as the “Passover Lamb,” which may be defensible, given what Jesus does at the Last Supper. However, as Jay points out, the Passover lamb was not an ATONING sacrifice. The blood of the Passover lamb was God’s protection over Israel, and ultimately became the “lamb of freedom,” as Egypt’s Pharoah finally set God’s people free. Jay’s point is that the “blood of the lamb” was not for the forgiveness of sin, but the “lamb of liberation,” which goes far, far beyond atonement for sin. I like this idea, and it moves us a bit closer to the answer of “Why the resurrection?”

 

Before we look directly at why the resurrection is important, let’s take a moment to suggest why it is not. While a “parlor trick” like bringing a dead body back to life may have wowed them in Jesus’ day, it hardly stirs a yawn in our time. Every day people are brought back from the dead. Lifeless bodies are pulled from frigid lakes and streams, where the cold protected them from the rapid deterioration of death, and they are revived, many to a full recovery. Automatic Electronic Defibrillators (AEDs) are used in schools, concert halls, churches, and by EMS personnel to revive those whose hearts have stopped, rendering them dead. Why, with the advent of cloning, it may even be possible within our lifetime to “resurrect” a whole person from a sample of their DNA, so how excited should we get over a revived body? Even in Jesus’ day, there were countless shamans, seers, and sages whose claim to fame was that they, too, had come back from the dead. It was a common “endorsement” to their claim to a connection to the Divine. If this was all the church was claiming—that Jesus had been revived from the dead—its story was pretty “off the shelf” and underwhelming. So it is my belief, and the belief of many—including the biblical witness—that much more is going on in the “resurrection” than just that a dead body was revived. 

 

The one thing that probably approaches being a universal fear is the fear of death. Most of us fear at least something about death, whether it is just the unknown surrounding it, the anxiety over when it will overtake us, and, of course, the great mystery as to what happens “on the other side.” It is no wonder that some of the most popular tales told over the centuries were stories of those who flirted with death and yet lived. What—or WHO—did they see in their short-circuited dalliance with death? In fact, we are so fearful of death that we still stigmatize those who have made peace with it, particularly if they are “too young” or “have too much to live for.” What we do around those who die by suicide is even worse. In general, we have made arriving at a “comfort level” with our own death a kind of “sin.”

 

So, let’s put this together. God sends Jesus into the world to announce our forgiveness and teach us how to live as God’s loving community. And then God invokes the “lamb of liberation” to free us from the thing we fear the most—death! Jesus’ death and resurrection happens to remove—once and for all—the “sting” of death, and to institute the invitation to and invocation of eternal life beyond this great gift of earthly life. Paul himself declares Jesus as the “Second Adam,” telling us the “First Adam” fell prey to sin and death, but the “Second Adam” (Christ) brings life to all. In fact the very next verse after verse 20 is: ²¹ For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; ²² for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ institutes a whole new realm of eternal existence, ever present with God and those who are part of the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before. The resurrection is even more than just “victory” over death—it smashes any power death ever had, and puts in its place the power of perpetual, joyous life, NOW, and in the life to come! Again, see what Paul writes a few verses later in Chapter 15: ⁴² So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³ It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ⁴⁴ It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ Thus it is written, “The first human, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first human was from the earth, a being of dust; the second human is from heaven. ⁴⁸ As was the person of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the person of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹ Just as we have borne the image of the being of dust, we will also bear the image of the being of heaven.

 

Paul likes being cryptic, but I don’t think that is what he is doing here. I believe he is trying to describe in simple words and in linear fashion a profound principle of the liberating act of God in Jesus Christ. The resurrection is NOT a mere revival, but a true “rebirth” of those who experience it (including Jesus) as a “being of heaven.” Note that the resurrected person is NOT just physical or NOT just spiritual, but is raised up like a butterfly exits a cocoon—a transformed being. In the case of the “resurrected” person, this metamorphosis includes with it a timelessness we religiously call “eternal life.” That we believe Jesus Christ is alive and “seated at the right hand of God” is not liturgy, it is the central truth of our faith that brings with it the fact of our own resurrection, freeing us from the “law of sin and death.” 

 

Let me get a little “sciencey” for a moment. The best our greatest minds can tell us about matter is that it is made up of a collection of “energy events” at a subatomic level. Atoms are made up of what we once thought were “particles” (we still call them that because like Paul found out, words are inadequate) are bundles of energy interacting with other bundles of energy, and are all held together into what we call “matter” by incredibly strong nuclear forces, forces which we have learned to unleash, unfortunately, but which we do not understand. Physics talks of the “conservation of energy,” a proven theory that says that energy is never “destroyed.” The energy that makes us up may be that which RISES us up from this existence to that “human of heaven” in the model of the Second Adam, Jesus. Note that I am NOT saying that we are all to be “Jesuses,” but that the resurrection of Jesus was God’s “first act” making possible the ”second act” of allowing all of humanity passage into the same eternal “plane” as Jesus, or that which we call “heaven.” Classical theology calls the resurrected body of Jesus a “glorified” body. This “heaven body” was still a recognizable person, who could touch and be touched, could eat and drink, and yet also shared the transformed nature of now living on a timeless plane of existence. 

 

God has so written this idea of death and resurrection into the fabric of the creation that it is all around us, everywhere you look. The seasons of the year, the sequence from Fall to the new blooms of Spring, the seeds that get “buried” in the earth, seemingly dead, yet “rising up” to bring new life. The whole birthing process of creatures—the sperm “gives its life” to the ovum and a new life begins the process of gestation and birth. Even our best ideas often go through a cycle of birthing, dying, and then rising up. So many great visions have “died on the vine,” only to be resurrected when rebirthed by others when the time is right. The stories of the Bible are RIFE with deaths and resurrections, and it is not until the resurrection phase that life, vitality, and the beloved community of God is birthed and rebirthed. The Greek word for “resurrection” in the Bible is anastasis, which means “rising up.” When we help others “rise up” from whatever illness, crushing defeat or misfortune, or fallen state they may be in, we are living out the principle of resurrection. If we work backwards from the resurrection through all of the stories of Jesus, we will see the resurrection’s power visiting every phase of his life from the prophecies of his coming, to the annunciation of his birth, to has choosing of his disciples. In fact, his choice of disciples from the most common—and maybe vulgar—of humans itself speaks of “rising up!” I can say, as one who felt called of God into the ministry I was blessed to serve throughout my life, I have truly experienced “phase one” of this glorious “rising up.” How exciting it is for ALL of us, no matter WHAT our calling, to be part of the timeless “post-resurrection” community!

 

So, you may ask, if this is REALLY what is going on in the “resurrection,” why doesn’t God give us “proof” of eternal life. In fact, God HAS! The transforming love of Jesus Christ, who lives and continues changing lives and “rising up” people all throughout human history is proof. The church, which tries so hard to screw itself and even kill itself off with scandals, absurdities, schisms, and sometimes just stupidity, still abides because its “engine” is the resurrected Christ, visited to her through God’s Holy Spirit. As a pastor who has numerous times been “in the room where it happened” (a person died), I can say that there are consistent, compassionate, and hopeful evidences of the “crossing over” that have no explanation other than the love and power of God. When Paul says with confidence, “In fact Christ HAS been raised from the dead,” he is empowering us to believe with confidence that we, too, will rise up to the eternal life that God has not only promised, but demonstrated. 

 

So, Dear Ones, may you shed any fear of death you may harbor. May you get with the business of “rising up” (anastasis), and live your life according to the teachings of Jesus, who calls us to offer a loving hand to raise up others, too, on this magnificent journey of life. Grace and peace!