We continue our exploration of 1 Corinthians 15 this week with verses 12-34
The Sermon title is Following the First Fruits
Early Thoughts: The resurrection is essential for Christian faith. So says Paul, and so say many other Christian thinkers over the years. Even if, as some do, one believes that the life and teaching of Jesus are the key to what it means to follow The Way of Christ it can not be denied that the story of resurrection is a defining piece of Christian identity.
But do we believe it?
The opening verses of this week's reading highlight that from the beginning (1 Corinthians is one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing that we have) there have been those who question, doubt, or openly deny the truth of resurrection. Paul addresses this doubt head on. For Paul, if the church is misleading itself or lying about the resurrection of the dead, and of Jesus in particular, then all of this is in vain. For Paul, the resurrection of the dead is of vital importance. To put it in language I often use, if life does not win in the end, what is the point?
In the first century CE there were a variety of understandings of what happens when you die. Within Judaism there was a group of people who believed in a general resurrection of the faithful that would happen when the eschaton came, when (to use more common language) the Reign of God would reach full bloom and the world would be changed. In part this was a reaction to the persecutions of earlier era when faithful Jewish folk were martyred because they remained faithful. What would their ultimate fate be? It is unclear what percentage of the general population would have held this belief or hope and I suspect that there were variations in how it was understood. After all, in 1st Century Judaism there was about as much uniformity of thought as there is in 21st Century Christianity (of Judaism or Islam for that matter). Our faith groups are very rarely totally united behind any one precept or understanding.
It is understood that the Pharisee party was a in the group that expected this general resurrection, and Paul self-describes as a member of the Pharisee party. So this helps to underlie Paul's understanding of what has happened in the Christ moment. Paul sees the Resurrection of Jesus as the sign that the general resurrection has begun. Paul, it seems, expects that the eschaton, the "2nd Coming of Jesus" is imminent and that the world is about to be totally transformed (as we read the Gospels it seems that this was a common belief in the early Christian community in general and that maybe even Jesus expected it to happen within a generation or so).
2000 years later we do not have that same sense of imminence. We do not expect that the world will be totally and dramatically transformed within our lifetimes in the same way that Paul did [though there are days where such a total dramatic transformation would seem really nice]. But we still proclaim resurrection. We still proclaim a hope that our last breath in this life is not the end of life. We still proclaim a hope that life will, somehow, win in the end. In some Christian circles this is seen as a "long sleep" until the end comes and the general resurrection happens. In many, possibly even most, Christian circles this hope takes the image of being taken up to heaven at the moment (or shortly thereafter) of death. Still our hope lies in resurrection.
We can preach that life wins because Jesus' resurrection shows us that life can break the bonds of death. We can hope that death and destruction and evil will not have the final say because Jesus' resurrection got the ball rolling. Are we all individually resurrected as we die or will we all sleep until the final trumpet sounds and we all rise together? None of us can say for certain. Personally I tend to believe the former. In any case, we proclaim that Jesus was raised from death and that this gives us hope. As Bill Gaither wrote 50 years ago:
Because He lives All fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living Just because He lives
--Gord
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