2010.04.04: Dr. George A. Purnell

			Dr. George A. Purnell April 4, 2010 “What’s The Wait” 1 Corinthians 15:19-26, 51-57 Like many of you growing up, I went through phases of accepting, doubting, and acquiescing to the resurrection of Christ on Easter. In my earliest recollections, I remember getting excited about Easter for the same reasons many kids did. There was an Easter egg hunt in the park and Easter baskets filled with all sorts of goodies at home. My grade school would go over to a nearby church to worship at noon on Friday, and then we had the afternoon off school. Mom took us to get new clothes for Easter church. My sisters would get new dresses. My brother and I would get a new shirt and pair of slacks. This shopping was a big deal, because the only other time we got new clothes was just before school started in the fall. Then on Sunday the church was completely full and everyone seemed happy. The choir sounded great, the congregation sang the Easter hymns with enthusiasm, and there was a sense of excitement and drama to the whole morning. After church, we had a special mid day meal at home. Mom fixed things for Easter that she did not fix at any other time of the year. Easter was a big deal! But even early on I did not really understand why. Christmas made sense to me. I understood how Jesus was born as a baby and people from all over celebrated. But the celebration of the resurrection at Easter? I was unsure about this claim. My father had died when I was in the third grade. I knew that dead people did not reappear on earth to walk with us and talk with us. I questioned this Easter claim, but kept my doubts to myself because when I did offer my opinions in Sunday school, or in youth group, they were met with silence. I did not feel heard or encouraged, so over time I drifted away from church, rarely attending during the years I was in college, graduate school, and beginning my career. When I began having children, however, I read them the Easter stories, had Easter egg hunts for them, made up Easter baskets for them, and bought them new clothes for Easter church. I acquiesced to Easter, and the way I justified this to myself was to conclude that the resurrection of Jesus might very well be true. Hundreds in his day reported having seen Jesus in his resurrected body, and hundreds of millions of people have worshipped him over the now 2,000 years since. I came to believe that Jesus was resurrected in the first century. To ignore evidence to this affect would be like deciding against all evidence that the July 1969 moon landing was staged on a Hollywood set and did not really happen. I believed that God could act in any way God chose, because God is the author of time and the creator of life. Still, as unprecedented as the resurrection was, and as much as it awed those who saw the Risen Jesus in the first century, it did not seem to have a lasting impact on the world: The Roman occupation of Israel did not end. People have continued to be enslaved, violently abused, and murdered by brutal regimes and tyrants in the centuries since the resurrection. Wars continue unabated, and weapons capable of destroying life on earth are in place today. Millions die of malnutrition yearly. A 42 year old father who helped with our youth group, and worshipped with his wife and two daughters here weekly, is killed in a light plane crash; ironically after having served as a helicopter pilot in two war zones – Operation Desert Storm in the 1990’s and in the war with Iraq that is still being fought. A 27 year old mother and school teacher, also a member of this congregation, dies from pulmonary hypertension during childbirth. Even if we agree that the resurrection of Christ happened, why are we still waiting to see it change the world? And, more personally, why is a young boy’s father not resurrected? Why are we to anticipate a bodily resurrection when it hasn’t happened in 2000 years? We aren’t alone with our questions today. A bodily resurrection of the dead was not easy for the Corinthians to accept then either. Otherwise, Paul would not have spent so much of this chapter 15 attempting to describe what happens to us when we die. In verses 13 and following, Paul says: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then…we are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ…if Christ has not been raised…then those also who have died in Christ have perished.” If the dead are not raised, he adds, “why are we putting ourselves in danger every hour? … If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” (verses30, 32) “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,” Paul insists, “the first fruits of those who have died.” This is the heart of his apologetic, and it is directed toward “some” who questioned the resurrection. Earlier in this chapter Paul writes that the risen Jesus “appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time...Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” (vs 5-7) So, Paul is saying that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is indisputable, because he appeared to people in a recognizable physical form. Corinth was a cosmopolitan seaport city that was influenced by Greek culture. The Greek view was that human nature included body and soul, and at death these two split, with the body decaying and the soul living on eternally. Indeed, for the Greek philosopher Socrates, death brought freedom from the prison of the body. Jewish and Christian understanding is fundamentally different from the Greek dualism of body and soul. The body and the soul are both made by God, so neither is inherently bad. The body is not the soul’s prison, but is a “temple,” Paul writes (1 Corinthians 6:19), and he adds: “He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit, which “dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11) Genesis teaches us that death came into the world by Adam’s disobedience; the so-called fall of man. Through sin the whole creation has become involved in death, Genesis tells us, and Paul affirms this when he writes: “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves…groan inwardly while we wait for the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:22-23) This is not as God willed it, but is the consequence of our disobedience. Death is the enemy of God, Paul states, because God is the creator of life. Death can only be conquered if sin is removed, Paul wrote, “For the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) In our lesson today Paul explains the order of things: “For as all of us die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” Or, when Christ returns to earth, there will be a general resurrection of believers, Paul writes. (Pharisaic Judaism believed in a bodily resurrection of the just on the last day too.) Many of us here today have adopted the Greek idea of a body/soul dualism, where the body is left to decay and the soul is released to live in eternity, but this not the picture presented in the Bible. Isaiah writes “your dead will live; their corpses will rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy…the earth will give birth to those long dead.” (26:19) Both Jesus and Paul indicate that some believers who will be taken on this day, at the Lord’s return, will be dead and some will still be living: When Jesus and Martha were talking following the death of her brother Lazarus: “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.’” (John 11:23-26) And Paul explained similarly, in 1 Thessalonians 4, that at the time of the resurrection of believers, some would still be alive when he wrote: “According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself…will descend from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.” (verses 15-17) In the ancient creed of the church, the Apostles Creed, we affirm: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” The body we resurrect with is not the body we live with here. It is transformed into something new, just as the gospel writers record that Jesus’ resurrection body was recognizable as him, yet was a body able to dematerialize and pass through walls, appear in rooms, and just as suddenly be gone. The chapter we are in today, 1Corinthians 15, and chapter 4 from 1Thessalonians just quoted, are the only places in the New Testament that try to describe what happens to us after death; the resurrection of the last day. 1Corinthians chapter 15 is the fuller treatment of this matter, as its verses 12-34 discuss the resurrection of believers when Christ comes again, and verses 35-58 discuss the form of our resurrection body. Our lesson today attempts to answer the questions that followers of Christ had in the first century, and that we have continued to have over the centuries: What does Jesus’ resurrection mean for us? If we are resurrected, when and in what form will this happen? The answers offered by scripture are partially satisfactory. Many of us can embrace the idea of resurrection in a bodily form that is different from our earthly body, but waiting until the resurrection of the last day is troublesome to some Christians. Why the wait? Easter won’t answer that question, but what we can claim as articles of faith are these. Jesus was resurrected on this day and appeared to many in the days following. Our resurrection is as certain as the resurrection of Christ, as Paul wrote: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:3,4,5) This will happen in God’s time and in God’s form. In our wait, we remember the words of Jesus when he was asked by his disciples when these things would happen (the end time), Jesus said: “about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36) But the word of our faith is that it will happen. Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! And we will rise too! Amen.