Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
1st Corinthians 15:14-26
This church is different from some churches. We don’t have many people here who come just on Easter and Christmas. Our additional numbers come from people returning here, on this most important Sunday, some from great distances, to remember their roots, and those whom they have loved and temporarily lost. So, too, we have many parents of children here today, and children of parents.
Some people have suggested that people who don’t ordinarily go to church go to church on Easter because they want to be seen and remember by the community of faith that once nurtured them. Some have lost the faith, but they want to keep the community of faith, or, in a sense, they want to be kept by it.
I believe differently. I believe the most skeptical and hardened cynics among us are here this morning for precisely the same reason as the most devout and sorted saint. I believe we are all here because in a world filled with so much loss, and grief, and sorrow, and DEATH, we want to hear a word of LIFE.
We have heard it this morning, in liturgy and song, and we will hear it again. In just a few minutes I will step out on the little balcony at the front of the church and say, “The Lord is risen!” And all of you will respond, “The Lord is risen, indeed!” And then we will sing that marvelous hymn of resurrection:
Hail, all hail, victorious Lord and Savior,
Thou hast burst the bonds of death,
Grant us as to Mary the great Favor,
To embrace Thy feet in faith.
Thou hast for us the curse endured,
And for us eternal life procured,
Joyful we with one accord,
Hail thee as our Risen Lord.
Do you truly accept and believe those words? Some people would think them the height of foolishness. Karl Marx said that religion, including and especially the Christian religion, is “an opiate for the masses.” Others have said that we cling to belief in resurrection and eternal life because we are afraid of admitting our own limited significance. We are fearful to think that we are dead a lot longer than we are alive. What if the critics are right? What if Easter is a lie, a grand delusion?
In 1st Corinthians 15, St. Paul considers the consequences of such a delusion. He numbers at least five horrible possibilities.
First, in verse 14 the apostle says, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. “
When my daughter was little she used to sit with her mother and brother in the balcony. Yes, all the members of my family are balcony people! Anyway, Edyth always listened to my sermons, but one Sunday I told a story that really got her attention. When I had finished she looked over at her mother, and said in a voice that all the other balcony people could hear, “Ma’ ma, is daddy telling the truth, or is he just preaching!” When I heard about it, I told her that the two were not mutually exclusive.
I doubt anyone every accused Paul of just preaching. He was absolutely consumed with the necessity of preaching the Cross of the Risen Christ. In 1st Corinthians 1:17 he wrote, “God did not send me to baptize, but to preach the good news, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ (of the Risen Christ) be emptied of its power. “ In 1st Corinthians 1:21 he adds, “it pleased God by the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” And in 1st Corinthians 9:16 he said, “Woe to me if I do not preach the good news.”
And what is the good news that Paul preached and that we have believed? He tells us in this same chapter.
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared —
And then Paul lists some of those to whom he appeared, and concludes with his personal experience of the risen Christ, saying, “Last of all he appeared also unto me.” “So we preached and so you believed.”
Without the resurrection of Jesus there is no good news. Without out his resurrection there is no Christian Religion. Without his resurrection, Jesus is just a good man who met a bad end.
In verse 15 the apostle continues. He says, that if Christ has not been raised, “we are found to be misrepresenting God because we testified of God that he raised Christ.”
Let me put Paul’s fear of misrepresenting God into a human scale. When I was with the 8th Marine Regiment way back in 1974 I was the OIC of FSTU (a regimental version of Advanced Infantry Training). We picked up the marines as they came into the battalions from Paris Island, and trained them for deployment a battalion at a time. This means that I was constantly writing orders to battalion commanders who were Lt. Colonels, whereas I was only a 1st Lieutenant. I signed those orders “by direction” of the Regimental Commander, Colonel Kent. When writing those orders, I worked very hard not to misrepresent him. I knew there would be consequences if I did! How much more do we wish to avoid misrepresenting God? Paul said that he was an apostle of God—a sent one. He said he was an ambassador, “God making his appeal through (him).” Paul did not want to misrepresent the Lord God of Israel whom he never doubted.
In verse 17 the apostle says, “If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. “
Again, Paul speaks as a Jew. Paul never, ever doubted God. Paul never, ever doubted the Law as being God’s Law. But he regarded the time of the Law as fulfilled in Christ. In Galatians he says that the Law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and that our righteousness now depends upon faith in him. We no longer work for it. We receive it as a gift. In Philippians 3 Paul writes about his personal relationship with the Law, and with Christ. He writes:
6b as to righteous under the law (I was) blameless 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
In verse 17 Paul says, if Christ has not been raised then our faith is futile and we are still in our sins. And the whole foundation of the Protestant church, salvation through faith in Christ, is buried in the cul de sac of a Garden Tomb. If Christ has not been raised then we are still in our sins, and we are still fearful of God’s judgment.
There is more. In verse 18 he writes, “If Christ has not been raised, then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. “
Just last week I made an amazing discovery. I have 2100 names and addresses on my Blackberry. I have the names cataloged according to membership. I have a category called WC, which stands for Watch Care or children who have yet to be baptized. I have a category called NC, which stands for baptized but Non-Communicant children. I have a category called CC, for Communing Children. I have a category called COM for Communicants, and a category called FRND, for Friends of the Congregation. Finally, I have a category called DIS, which stands for Dismissed. Some names on my list have been dismissed to other congregations; but some have been DIS missed to the higher service of the Lord. They have joined the Church triumphant, and entered into the Joy of their God. I searched on DIS and found more than 500 people listed, at least half who have joined the Church triumphant. Those people are your grandparents, and parents, and brothers, and sisters, and, children. They were friends to all of us.
If Christ has been not raised, then those who have fallen asleep have perished. There is no higher service. There is no Church Triumphant. There is no heavenly Glory. There is only the dust of death.
In Verse 19 the Apostle sums up all that has gone before. He says, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.”
Who would not pity people who live a lie? If Christ has not been raised then all of our churches, and seminaries, and colleges, and hospitals, are built on a lie. Worse, our lives are built on a lie. If Christ is not been raised then the bleached bones of Jesus are still buried in a garden tomb, or, worse yet, long ago discarded upon the Jerusalem city dump, a dump named “Gehenna.” If Christ has not been raised, “If for this life only we have a hope in Christ,” says Paul in agreement with the Pagans, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” (1st Cor. 15:32)
Bishop Kenneth Goodson, at one time a bishop in the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, used to tell the story of a paperboy and a businessman pausing on the way to work, to look at a picture of the crucified Christ that had been placed in the window of the old Frank A. Stith Company on 4th Street. After surveying his crown of thorns, and wounds, the businessman shook his head and said, “Isn’t it a pity.” And he went on to work. The paperboy looked at the painting a moment longer, then the man’s words sank in. When they did, the little paperboy took off after the businessman, yelling, “Hey, Mister, that is not all!”
And that is precisely what St. Paul tells us. In verse 20 he writes:
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection (of the dead). 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
Death is the Last Enemy. Men have battled with the last Enemy from the very advent of our race. Most lived in fear of the Enemy, but some overcame that fear by trust in God, and God’s faithfulness.
Job said:
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; 26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then (apart) from my flesh I shall see God. Job 19:25-26
And the Psalmist spoke of God faithfulness in life, and extended that to faithfulness in death and said:
Thou will not allow thy Holy one to see corruption.
And one of the prophets spoke of dry bones living again. (Ezekiel 37)
And another prophesied of a time when those who sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt. (Daniel 12:2)
And another spoke of a time when the glory of the Lord revealed, and all flesh would see it together. (Isaiah 40) “All flesh?” Even those who are on my DIS list?
Trust in God is a powerful thing. In his book This Is My God, the Jewish novelist Herman Wouk tells the story of his own grandfather. Wouk says that when his grandfather sat to a meal, and there was not enough of some delicacy to go around, he would say, “Give it to someone else. My portion up there (in heaven) is growing.” Wouk said that his Grandfather believed that when he got to heaven he would feast on the flesh of Leviathan, the giant fish, and upon the meat of the great ox of the wilderness, and that he would drink wine pressed from the grapes of Eden. And someone asked Wouk, “Do you believe that your grandfather is really in heaven” And Herman Wouk responded, “I believe it is more likely that my grandfather is is in heaven feasting on Leviathan, and upon the ox of the wilderness, and drinking wine pressed from the grapes of Eden than it is that God should forget him.”
As Christians we know that God did not forget Jesus of Nazareth. He trusted in God and God delivered him. The cross was not the bad end of a good man. It was a road traveled once, for all, by our now victorious Lord and Savior. The tomb was not the final resting place of Jesus; it was just a room for a transient. On the third day, God reached down into the tomb and touched a body of rotting flesh, a body of humiliation. That body was not just resuscitated; it was transformed. It is no longer a body of humiliation, but a body of glory. Take heart! The Resurrection of Jesus Christ stands as the massive sign that God has not abandoned us in our little world of time and space, but penetrated it, shattered it, and begun its transformation. Jesus is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep in death; but Jesus of Nazareth is not the total harvest. The harvest will follow. Remember that as we go from the sanctuary to the graveyard and you walk among the graves of those whom you love. Remember that as you contemplate that time when you too shall sleep the last sleep, a sleep from which you will, someday, awake. “The Lord Is Risen!” “The Lord Is Risen, Indeed!”
Finis