What we do best is proclaim Easter.
1 Corinthians 15:12-22
April 4, 2010 – Easter Sunday
25 years ago
Do you remember 1984?
Ma Bell broke up that year. The Apple MacIntosh computer debuted, as did Crack cocaine and Transformer toys. The Winter Olympics were held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Michael Jackson won eight Grammys. The U. S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon was car-bombed, killing 22 Americans. Ronald Reagan won a landslide second term as President, losing only Walter Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
If you are older than 40, probably at least one of those 1984 events is burned deep into your memory. You know where you were when it happened and can remember details, faces, conversations. Especially if that event changed your life.
I remember 1984 because my life changed June 8, early in the morning. That was the day our middle child, Cara, was born. She is now 25 years old. We were living in a condo, 1301 Dugan Court in West Columbia, South Carolina. I was in seminary. We were poor as dirt. I worked nights at a gas station to put food on the table.
The delivery was to be with a nurse midwife – mostly because we our health insurance was meager and we couldn’t afford a doctor and a hospital. Linda woke up at 2 AM with contractions that started out 2 minutes apart and lasted 1 ½ minutes.
I called the birthing center only to find out that the phones were out of order. So I called Lexington Memorial Hospital, next door to the birthing center, and told them what was happening. They said they would try to reach the physician who owned and supervised the birthing center.
Afraid Linda might deliver en route, we went straight to the birthing center where the doctor met us. He had called the midwife, but she lived 45 minutes away. So he examined Linda and pronounced, “We’re going to have a baby.”
The problem was, he had never delivered a baby in the clinic. So he was opening drawers and making comments like, “I wonder where they keep….” He delivered Cara about a half hour after we got there, about the time the midwife showed up. That was kind of awkward. Linda was her patient, but her boss had just delivered the baby.
Birthing centers don’t keep you very long, so six hours later we strapped our newborn into a car seat and took her home. Cara has been operating on her own timetable ever since, and hasn’t slowed down the pace much either.
That was more than 25 years ago, but that night is still burned into my memory.
Why? Because when it comes to life-changing events, 25 years is not a very long time to remember the story. I may not be able to recall every word that was spoken, but you would have a very hard time changing the basic elements of that dramatic night without my correcting you.
So why am I talking about what happened a quarter century ago? Because that is approximately the time lapse between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the first written records of Jesus’ life – including the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.
At the beginning of the fifteenth chapter, Paul writes,
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also. (15:3-8).
Twenty-five years after the fact, with all of those people involved in the story, most of them still alive, you can’t invent fiction and get by with it. You can’t enhance a legend and blow it all out of proportion without someone contradicting you. Not enough time has passed to tell lies and half-truths because eyewitnesses will refute you.
The first reason Easter matters is because it’s true
Paul was one of those who had seen the risen Christ. He says in verse 15, “We have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.” If this isn’t true, he insists, we are “false witnesses.”
For Paul, nothing else matters if this isn’t true. “Our preaching is useless and so is your faith,” he says in verse 14. “You are still in your sins” (17).
If this whole idea of Jesus rising from the dead seems far-fetched to you to the point of silliness, I encourage you to do a little research. There is no shortage of individuals who have set out to disprove what they thought was a superstition and a myth, only to be convinced by the evidence.
One of them is a man named Lee Strobel, a Yale-educated atheist and prize-winning journalist who spent two years carefully investigating the Christian story before giving his life to Christ. He has written several best-selling books including The Case for Christ, which examines in detail the objections to everything Jesus, including the resurrection.
Another is William Lane Craig, raised in a non-religious home. Craig became a Christian at age 16, and has spent his life researching the evidence for the Christian faith, especially the resurrection of Jesus. He has debated leading atheists in a variety of settings – it’s not hard to find him on YouTube or amazon.com.
When it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, we don’t speak of “proof,” since you can’t really prove anything that happened 2,000 years ago. But there is plenty of credible evidence from eyewitnesses who circulated their stories within only a few years of the events themselves.
The evidence includes an empty tomb on that Sunday morning. The Jewish religious leaders and the Roman authorities both had strong motive and the resources to protect the tomb prior to Sunday morning – as well as to produce a corpse once the claim began to circulate that Jesus had risen.
The evidence also includes witnesses who saw Jesus alive after he had been dead. Their stories circulate early and the essential details agree – yet the accounts are still sufficiently varied to preclude collaboration. The stories are told in a way that no one would invent them, such as the fact that women were the first to see Jesus. In Jesus’ time, if you wanted to make a story credible, you wouldn’t use women as witnesses.
But the most important evidence for the resurrection of Jesus comes in the form of the lives that were changed. There is no other explanation for Peter, who was everything from a braggart to a coward to a dejected and confused recluse before seeing Jesus turned him into a proclaimer and a leader and a martyr. The stained glass window behind me pictures the shields of the apostles, and most of them portray how they died. They were beheaded, crucified, cut in two by a saw, skinned alive for preaching that Jesus had risen. Would they have done so for a lie or a hoax?
Lives are still being changed. How many people in this congregation today were NOT raised in a Christian home but have come to trust Christ, OR have spent a significant part of your life away from the faith in which you were raised only to have Christ reclaim you? Would you stand?
Those who are still seated are certainly witnesses to God’s grace. But those who are standing offer evidence that refutes the skeptics’ claim that we only believe because we were “raised that way.” The power of the resurrection is still changing lives.
Finally, the spread and durability of the church is witness to the resurrection. I realize there are many blots on the church’s record, but don’t be fooled by the exceptions to the rule. The good the church of Jesus Christ has accomplished far outweighs its transgressions. For every priest or pastor guilty of sexual misconduct, there are a thousand humble servants of God, clergy and lay, with a Mother Teresa-like heart to tell the truth, live the Word, and love people. They bear witness to the risen Lord.
Easter matters because it’s true.
Easter matters because this life ends
I love the way The Message paraphrase renders verse 19: “If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot.”
On Friday I stood at the front of this sanctuary to lead a funeral service for a dear saint, Hazel Shores, and listened as her four sons bore witness to her faith and courage as a single Mom. Then we went to the graveside and noted that she was being buried on Good Friday, just like Jesus. Jesus was buried to confirm that he really died, and to give hope to all who believe in him that they will rise again as he did.
Yesterday this Christian hope became even more real and personal to me when my mother e-mailed me to pass on the sad news that her dear sister, my Aunt Leny who has been like a second mother to me and my siblings, apparently has terminal cancer and pneumonia. Her time is short. But as Christians we have so much more than “a little inspiration for a few short years.”
The Christian message about what happens after this life is different, if not unique. All of Jesus was with us in life. All of Jesus was with us in death and burial. All of Jesus was with us in resurrection.
Paul had established the church at Corinth by preaching Christ crucified and risen from the dead several years before he wrote this letter. Now there were people saying that the idea of resurrection was offensive to their culture. It was more difficult to win converts from the Greek world if you preached that bodies would come out of the grave.
Belief in immortality is almost universal. (Some, but very few, human beings believe that when we die that’s the end.) Whether it’s reincarnation or Nirvana or becoming an angel or a spirit – most people believe that there is life after death.
But as N. T. Wright says (Simply Christian, 115), the Christian proclamation is that there is “life after ‘life after death.’” We believe in the resurrection of the body. We believe corpses rise, bones live, and decayed dust or cremated ashes are reconstituted as whole persons.
That brought skepticism from the Greeks, and some Christians were openly saying the concept undermined the effort to spread the gospel. But Paul will not water down the offense of the message. “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost” (v. 18).
Hazel Shores is not lost. My Aunt Leny will not be lost. The same is true for you and me when our time comes.
I know that my time is short. When I gave my driver’s license Friday at the pharmacy so I could buy some sinus medication, the computer looked at my date of birth and spit out coupon for free membership in the AARP. I am well aware I have fewer years ahead than behind. But I believe in the resurrection of the body.
Easter matters because this life end.
Easter matters because power is powerless
As I read through the Bible this year, I’m creating a MS Word document for each book of the Bible with “great quotes.” I don’t know what I’m going to do when I come to the New Testament, where there are so many. 1 Corinthians 15 alone, Paul’s resurrection chapter, has one great quote after another. How about this one, at the end of the chapter: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting.”
George Frideric Handel, chose verses 21-22 of this chapter as part of his 18th century choral masterpiece, The Messiah. “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
In an individualistic society, we have a hard time grasping this. We think we make personal choices that affect only ourselves. Paul’s readers would have understood much better that we’re all connected in this human family. We are not like professional golfers, where each player’s fate rests on individual effort and results. We are instead like a Final Four basketball team, where the successes and failures of each are interrelated.
The First Man extended his legacy of death to all of us, and the Perfect Man, Jesus, extended the gift of life to all.
Paul moves quickly from there to the effects of the universal effects of the final resurrection. “Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15:24).
We live our lives in awe of dominion, authority, and power – seeking more for ourselves and revering those who have more than we do – the President, the CEO, the news broadcaster, the star athlete. We admire people who have influence, who get things done, who make decisions that matter, who exercise control.
Paul says we need to keep in mind that this Risen Jesus does and will hold the world in his power. The powers of this world will become powerless. All that we think we need to find happiness – pleasure, money, sex, knowledge – it will all fade away.
Investing our lives in striving for this world’s power or version of happiness is sort of like going back to 1984 and giving to Walter Mondale’s campaign or returning to 2008 and putting all your money in Wachovia stock.
What we do best
This sermon helps me. Quite honestly, the today’s church does a lot. We try to help families begin well and stay together. We try to prevent violence in the community. We feed hungry people at home and elsewhere. We help people find jobs. We teach our young and anyone else who will listen. We provide counseling. We provide fun for kids and families – as we did yesterday at the children’s Easter event.
But what we do best is proclaim Easter. What we – and I mean in partnership with, not competition against other churches – what we do best is fill the God-shaped vacuum in every human soul with the good news that is as fresh as today’s newspaper and as tested as the Bible itself – Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and on the third day he rose again.
That message gives hope to the despairing, comfort to the grieving, strength to the fainting, and meaning to all who otherwise would be lost in the mazes of life and on the dead ends of worthless pursuits. That is why this matters. Amen.