Resurrection Faith
Aaron Doll Third
Presbyterian Church February 15, 2004 I
Corinthians 15:12-20, Jeremiah 17:5-10
Let us pray: Oh God, participate in this moment with us. Open
our ears to your Word, illuminate your will in our hearts and
your message for our life today. Amen
1 Corinthians 15: 12 – 20
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how
can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not
been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our
proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.
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. 16 For if the dead are not
raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not
been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your
sins. 18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.
19 If 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.
So did Jesus rise from the grave? It is one of the theological
assertions that our Reformed Tradition upholds.
When we are at our faithful best, we are awed by the fact that
the Easter message is one of the Great Mysteries of our faith
– one that defies our attempts to systemize and explain
rationally. And yet because it goes beyond rational sense –
goes beyond our usual experience with life, it is something
that makes us question - even become apathetic to faith, in
our doubtful moments – ready to throw up our hands and
suspect the Bible’s relevance to modern life.
This passage in Corinthians confronts us in the Lectionary
this morning on the verge of Lent, suggesting that we consider
this central tenant of Christian faith as we approach the portal
of preparation.
There were times in my life when I would have taken this passage
at face value. As an idealistic college student I ran with a
pretty conservative campus ministry group at the University
of Buffalo, and this passage didn’t need to be opened
up much. Of course there is a resurrection for all believers,
of course the tomb was empty after Easter! Paul was defending
the truth of my faith against an idea and an individual that
didn’t need to be named or understood.
Since then I have decided that if something is true, it can
withstand a little scrutiny. I now find life to be more interesting
with a little diversity, and the added dimensions to faith that
good questions bring are not so scary to me any longer.
I’m saying all this, because this passage is an example
of a reading that rewards good Historical Critical study. There
is a lot going on here to understand behind the rhetoric of
the Apostle’s argument to the Corinthian people. It’s
a good healthy debate as first century people of moral conviction
and faith seek to interpret the death of Jesus and this persistent
experience of the presence of the Christ in their lives.
We also find a debate here - that we see before we even begin
to understand the context of what is actually being discussed.
This debate – I suspect - falls two ways.
Internally we may ask: “Will I experience life after
death and see my family again? The other question is not so
much my opening question “was Jesus raised?” but
rather more specifically, “was Christ bodily resuscitated.”
Life after Death:
For many modern Christians the lesser question is: “is
there life for me after death.” There are times of doubt
when we do ask this question – but when we really need
our faith – I haven’t seen it to be an obstacle.
At memorial services I count on it in fact - in the hope that
I seek to offer to families who are in sorrow.
It’s a truth that we hold on to almost uniquely as Christians.
Our Jewish friends that were with us last week would be amazed
at this conversation. During an Internship in my second year
of seminary I worked as a chaplain in the University of Louisville’s
Interfaith Center. The rabbi on staff there was great to talk
to. One day I discovered that she had no expectation of an afterlife
and wasn’t particularly troubled by it. She expected to
live on in the memories of her family and that was sufficient.
It made me realize how much I have at stake in my belief in
some form of a persistent individual identity of mine that will
continue after I die.
The other modern question: Bodily Resurrection
“Did Jesus really have a physical body again for Thomas
the doubter, for instance, to touch. And if so – how did
Jesus get through the locked door the disciples were hiding
behind like a ghost after the crucifixion?” Many are those
who stumble over the gospel message because of miracle stories
that bend the rules of life as we know it. Some individuals
do not consider faith in Jesus for these reasons.
There are those who come at this dilemma from a position of
faith however and continue this dialogue with the apostle Paul.
Episcopal Bishop John Shebly Spong and Scholar, Marcus Borg
are two critical thinkers who emphasize the spiritual truth
of the Resurrection Myth over the physical, and do it from a
position of faith in Christ as Lord of their lives. I am glad
for their conversation.
Like our first century forebears, we do have experiences of
a real and living Christ. A connection to an obviously active
and engaging divine presence. Occasionally, for me these profound
connections to Christ have come in times of prayer. Often they
have come in times of broken-ness when I find myself at wits
end. God breaks through in ways that I realize I can no longer
resist. Often times I see Jesus alive in the honest emotions
of a child. Occasionally I have unmistakably recognized Christ’s
hand in that of a friend or a stranger that helped me out. Occasionally
I have acted or spoken in helpful ways to others that I can’t
attribute to my own intellect or goodness.
In these moments I cannot deny that my Jesus lives –
that Death did not hold him down. With this in mind I am not
threatened by a de-emphasis or even a denial of a physically
resurrected Jesus. With this in mind I respectfully approach
the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians.
And I have said that there was good stuff to unpack in the
Epistle lesson today. I want to get back to it:
Our apostle Paul feels strongly about a position that “some”
(unnamed), obviously influential individual or individuals has
taken. He says that if the dead are not raised: then Christ
himself has not risen – and your faith and everything
I have taught and stand for is just stupid.
Paul knows his argument only works because the Corinthians
still believe Christ was raised from the dead. Otherwise it
loses all it force.
He is arguing: you believe in Christ's resurrection? Then you
should also believe in the resurrection of all believers. As
he indicates, these particular Corinthians did not believe in
a future resurrection of the dead.
There was disagreement within the various factions of Hebrew
religious authority of Jesus’ day over the idea of an
afterlife.
Pharisaic Judaism (whose most notable exemplar in the New Testament
in fact is Saul: the Apostle Paul in his former, pre-Damascus
road life) was unique in relation to the Saducees, also of Jesus’
day and our modern Rabbinical Judaism that I have described
already. Pharisaic Judaism, so often criticized in the Gospels
in fact promoted a teaching of resurrection and life with God
beyond an Earthly restoration of Judah. Certain Greco-Roman
resurrection traditions also existed. So it would likely not
have been that these Corinthians had no belief in an afterlife.
These “somebody’s” arguing against a resurrection
would probably have believed in life after death in the form
of the soul going on to be with God. They would however, have
seen the idea of a future, bodily, earthly resurrection as unnecessary
and irrelevant. As I believe, do we, 2000 years later.
So Paul is worried by what he has heard and brings out the
big guns, as it were. He assumes they will not dispute the resurrection
of Christ and so argues to believe that, one must also believe
in the resurrection of believers.
To understand what Paul is saying we need to understand the
world in which such belief in resurrection originated. It began
primarily as a hope for the future. For some, faced with the
inequities of this life, where the wicked go unpunished and
good things happen to bad people, it was difficult to believe
in a God of justice and fairness.
Surely one day the tables would be turned and the wicked would
be held accountable. Surely one day there would be some reward
and recognition of people who had done their best to be faithful
and good throughout their lives.
The logic of such expectation led to the belief that there
would indeed come a time of judgement. One could not expect
judgement to be meted out in the here and now of history, as
some ancient writers, including Deuteronomy and its associated
histories, had thought. The Book of Job exposes the flaws in
such reckoning as well – as Job, a good and righteous
man is reduced to poverty and mourning unfairly – by no
fault of his own.
So there developed the belief that people would one day have
to give account. For most Hebrews who understood themselves
as psychosomatic beings and not as souls inhabiting bodies,
this meant that people would have to be raised from the dead
for reward and punishment on a day of judgement. For others,
with a Greco-Roman influence the focus was less on injustices
and earthly reincarnation and more on hope and promise.
Both of these ideas however, fit together with the expectations
which Jesus raised: that one day God's reign would be fully
established on earth. That would be good news for the poor and
the hungry and many others. It is clear that Jesus saw this
as something already beginning to happen during his ministry.
Jesus always saw both a future hope and a present reality for
God’s Kingdom.
Within this bundle of ideas, which includes an image of a great
feast and an outpouring of God's Spirit, one feature would have
been resurrection, at least of the righteous. This makes sense
of the Apostle's explanation of what happened after Christ’s
death.
The intense expectation that the hope Jesus spoke about was
not far away but "at hand" – it was just around
the corner, - this led the disciples to interpret their experience
of the risen Jesus (the experiences listed by Paul earlier in
1 Corinthians ) as an indication that another element of the
final page of history was beginning. It was the resurrection.
They were filled with anticipation! They interpreted Jesus'
resurrection, not as an isolated event, but as the first of
many to follow very soon. A future hope that was soon to be
realized!
In other words, for Paul as for Christians before him, Jesus'
resurrection only made sense because they saw it as the first
of many more resurrections which were to come. This view becomes
more difficult to hold, the longer the delay between Christ’s
resurrection and the rest of God’s children - if we are
waiting for a physical experience of the dead being raised.
Paul is still imagining that he will be alive when the dead
are raised - and the event comes to its climax, as the rest
of this chapter shows. Later writings of Paul indicate some
contemplation that he, too, may die.
For us the delay has blown out to 2000 years, which makes it
almost impossible for us to think of resurrection in the way
that Paul did. But this is the background of his astonishment,
that some at Corinth can imagine a different fate for us than
what happened for Jesus. For Paul that simply could not make
sense. Jesus' resurrection and believers' resurrections stand
and fall together. If one collapses, both collapse. That is
Paul's view.
It may not be our view or, at least, we may have difficulty
thinking about it the way he doubtless did. Too much time has
passed. Yet he leaves us with important challenges for our day.
Does it make any sense at all to speak of future hope if it
is not embodied and social? Paul would be very uncomfortable
with the popular Christian tendency to reduce future hope to
the belief that our souls (whatever they are) go to heaven and
that is all there is to it. In some sense he would have more
sympathy for those who want to deny any such after-life.
Paul is not basing his faith on what are beliefs about natural
processes - that a soul leaves a body at death. For Paul hope
in the future is much more theological. It depends on God doing
something in the present. Like Jesus, Paul claims a present
reality that embodies this future hope.
Paul suggests that Christian faith cannot exist without belief
in the resurrection of Jesus. While that must be read in the
light of the historical context of thought about resurrection
and while we needn’t necessarily recognize Jesus' resurrection
as a kind of divine resuscitation of a corpse, nevertheless
Paul lays down the challenge that faith in Christ's resurrection
is fundamental for our faith.
At one level, leaving aside the many historical questions raised
by the accounts and by our different expectations of reality
and philosophical presuppositions, Paul sees Christian faith
as based in a defiant assertion that God is, and that in God
is hope, that Jesus' life was not hopeless, and nor need ours
be in the future or in the present.
The resurrection becomes a symbol of such defiance - which
dares to imagine ultimate goodness in the universe and so lives
accordingly. For some, this seems to entail massive self-deceit,
as though we must pretend life really is all positive. We are
however, challenged to believe - not because things go well,
but because the horror of the cross keeps repeating itself,
in the violence that fills our news and our lives. We fight
against the horror of the cross because it dares us to roll
over and give up.
Present Hope
Jesus used death as a metaphor for sin. Sin equals death. The
crisis of a soul’s history in our scriptures is not the
death of our bodies. It is the sin or separation from God within
our lives. I believe that resurrection then, is a greater symbol
of the change from sin to life.
Resurrection then metaphorically equals RESTORATION.
Restoration describes the experience of resurrection in the
present. Relationship with God in the present is assured in
love. God wants us to be restored to life from the cycle of
sin and guilt so that we can be truly free. Freedom to love
ourselves and others, freedom to discern our true callings This
freedom is what it means to be fully alive. Restored - to life
being lived.
Ann Weems says “ Lent is a time to take the time –
to let the power of our faith story take hold of us.
As people who claim identity in Christ – we approach
the season of lent to prepare for this restoration moment –
the crux of our faith that pits the forgiving love of God against
the Justice of God that convicts us of sin. The prophet Jeremiah
spoke of trusting in God’s restorative power in terms
of a tree planted by the water.
In high school I worked for my uncle in his greenhouse. He
grew much of his stock from seed that was rooted and transplanted
from trays to small plastic packs. Not being bale to hold much
moisture, they dry out quickly and needed to be constantly watered
under the hot glass of the houses. Finally however, some plants
which needed to be stronger or kept for an extended period would
be put into a clay pot which was pushed down into a bed of sandy
soil.
The bed could hold considerably more moisture than the pot
alone – and plants would send roots down through the hole
in the bottom of and thrive no matter the time between waterings
or the heat.
Our restoration in Christ is like climbing into a clay pot
and being sunk into a warm bed of moist soil. Life and Lent
will call upon us to reflect on our life and state of faith
– and their might be some heat.
You will not cease to bear fruit however because you are rooted
deep in Christ’s resurrection.
