Back to the Basics - This We Believe!
I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting. Amen.
October 26, 2008
1 Corinthians 15:12-19
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.
1 Corinthians 15:12-19
Methodist minister, James Howell, shared in his book about the Apostle's Creed about an encounter he had while preaching at a college. The service was attended by some of the brightest young people in the college. One student in particular was known as a cynic. He asked hard, barbed questions about the faith and appeared to believe he was too smart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. But on that particular Sunday, Rev. Howell gave an old-fashioned altar call at the end of the service. Only a handful of people came forward but one of them was the cynical young man. The young man was so caught up in his prayer that he stayed at the altar praying through three extra verses of the final hymn and the benediction. So Rev. Howell sat in the front pew and waited. When the young man finally finished his prayer, he stood and turned toward the pastor and said, "I want to be a Christian . . . but I have a question. Can you be a Christian and not believe in eternal life?" Rev. Howell admitted he had never considered this possibility and he wanted to in his words, "keep this fish on the hook," so he said, "I think so-but why?" The young man then began to explain that what had kept him from becoming a Christian was the idea that Christianity was somehow self-indulgent and greedy. He didn't want to become a Christian to get brownie points for the next life or to avoid the bus to hell. He said, "If I become a Christian, I want to do it because it is true, good, beautiful and right, not because of what I would selfishly get out of it." Rev. Howell was astounded, but he said that luckily the Holy Spirit came to his aid and he replied, "Then yes, you can certainly become a Christian, and I applaud your wise approach. But I have a question for you: when you die, if God should surprise you with the gift of eternal life in which you haven't believed, will that be okay with you?" The young man nodded. 1
As we reach the end of the creed, I think it is important to remember that being a Christian does not mean that we have all the answers. Being a Christian doesn't mean that we completely understand every aspect of the Bible or of the creed or the teachings of the church. Nor does being a Christian mean that we won't disagree with other Christians on the meaning and importance of different aspects of the faith. Rather being a Christian is about entering into a relationship with the God who was most fully revealed in Jesus Christ. So Rev. Howell was correct when he told the young man that he didn't have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian. All the young man needed was a desire to be in relationship with God.
Yet at the center of our faith stands the resurrection. As surely as Christians are defined by the cross, we are defined by resurrection of Jesus Christ and the future hope not only of our own resurrection but of an eternity with God. In fact, in our Scripture today, Paul asserts that if in this life only we have hope, then we are most to be pitied because we have believed a lie. But was that young man correct? Is our belief in the resurrection and eternal life a greedy, selfish thing?
Quite honestly, the way we Christians approach this subject would give that impression. We use the idea of resurrection and eternal life to "sell" people on the church or to frighten them with the alternative. "Eternity? Smoking or Not Smoking?" "If you die tonight, where will you be?" We stand at funerals and say things like, "Isn't it wonderful to know that Aunt Sophie is in heaven now. And you know that the most important thing to her was that you all come to know Jesus so you can be in heaven with her someday too!" Not that there isn't truth in all of those things, but what if that isn't the main point of resurrection?!
Our Bible has a marvelous story to tell. The Bible tells the story of the God, Father Almighty, who created all that there is from nothing. A loving God who created humankind to be in a special relationship with him. A promise-keeping God who made multiple covenantal agreements with us-which we routinely broke. And every time, you'd think God would give up on us, he had another plan to woo us into a relationship. No matter, how many times we complained and turned away from God, God never gave up on us-God never let go. In fact, God so wants a relationship with us that he wants nothing-nothing-not even death-to end that relationship. So God willingly breaks his own natural laws and does a true, good, beautiful, and right thing and grants us a new life beyond this one.
You see, it isn't about reward-unless the reward you are talking about is God and a never-ending relationship with the one who created us and who loves us best!
I suspect some of you came today expecting an explanation of what the next life will be like. And we grappled with some of those questions last Wednesday night in Bible study. But truthfully, I don't know exactly what the next life will be like or exactly what we will look like or do. The Bible is full of images and metaphors of what the next life will be "like," but it doesn't say much about what it actually will be. Actually, the Bible gets much more concrete when it talks about what the next life will not be like: no tears, no death, no mourning, no pain, no thirst, and no hunger. And what that says to me is that the next life will be nothing like the life we are living now where tears, death, pain, hunger and thirst define all too much of our world! And that is enough for me to bank eternity on!
So I don't believe that belief in resurrection and eternal life is greedy or self-serving, I believe that is truly the belief in something good, true, beautiful, and right. Good because I hope for a time when evil is no more. True because the resurrection of Jesus gave us a foretaste of the truth that is to come for all us. Beautiful because an eternity in the presence of God and God's people is beautiful and the hope of reuniting with those we love is beautiful. And right because there are far too many good people whose lives have been torn apart by sin, sickness, death and evil for them not to have a chance for happiness and joy; far too many whose lives have been defined by physical hunger and thirst who deserve a chance to live a life not defined by an empty stomach and a parched mouth; and far too many people whose lives have been defined by crippled and enslaved bodies who should have a chance to run and to dance. To say that we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting is to say that we believe in something that is good, true, beautiful and right!
What's more-our belief in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting is more than just a beautiful hope for the future. The belief in both bodily resurrection and life everlasting should make a difference in how we live our lives each and every day.
So let's start with what is in many ways the more difficult concept of the two-resurrection of the body. Now this is the point in which my preaching professor would point out that many of you hit a road block. Some of your brains are already compiling a long list of questions for me: What will this body look like? When will this resurrection occur? What happens to our souls in the meantime? How will God put us back together when we like Humpty Dumpty have fallen completely apart?
Did I even begin to list the questions? Probably not.
Truthfully, as I said earlier, what we don't know about all that far outweighs what we do know. A bit later in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians Paul will say that the resurrection will occur when Jesus returns and that our new bodies will be spiritual bodies. The new bodies will be as much like our current bodies as a plant is to the seed from which it grew. As for when our souls go to be with God, Jesus told the thief next to him on the cross that "Today you will be with me in paradise." And Paul reminds us that NOTHING-not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ. It seems to me the most important thing here is not that we know the exact answers-truthfully they are probably beyond our comprehension anyway. The most important thing to know is that our future is in the hands of the God who will go to great lengths-even overturning the laws of nature as we know it-to have an eternal relationship with us.
However, to say we believe in the resurrection of the body is not simply a logic puzzle to unravel, because to believe in the resurrection of the body is to believe that bodies are important! These frail, weak, physical bodies of ours are not something to be used and thrown away! They are part of God's good creation and God has a plan for them. That means how we treat our bodies and the bodies of others has eternal significance.
Let's start with our bodies. Listen to the words of Paul from chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians:
12 "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be dominated by anything. 13 "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." 17 But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Our bodies were created for God. They are not ours to use and misuse as we wish. And that means not only should we care for our bodies, but we should use them in ways that please God! We may have the right to do something. We may even have the freedom to do it. But as Paul reminds us that is not the issue. The issue is this: does our use of our body glorify God?
Sex outside of marriage is wrong-not because it breaks a rule but because it does not glorify God, who created marriage as a gift for us and as a symbol of our relationship with God. Abuse of drugs and alcohol is wrong because it destroys the body God has given us. Eating too much or simply too much of the wrong things (obviously one of my areas of struggle) is harmful to our bodies and, therefore, does not glorify God. Purposely starving yourself to look good for others is not glorifying. Using steroids to enhance your athletic ability is not only unethical; it destroys your body and, therefore, does not glorify God.
God created us as embodied souls and that means that what happens to our souls impacts our bodies and what happens to our bodies impacts our souls. In fact, I would go so far and say that our character makes a mark on our physical bodies. Now I am one who thinks that newborn babies are beautiful! But they are also a bit blank. They look in some ways different but in many ways very much alike. But the more we live the more our faces and our bodies show how we've lived our lives. Lines form from our laughter and our frowns. We bear the scars of our battles-figurative and literal. Some are stooped and bent over from a life of service. Others stand tall and proud. Some bend over as if to somehow vanish and avoid notice.
And that also means that how we treat the bodies of others matter. That's another reason for all the concern about sexual matters. Sex isn't just about what is good for us individually. The other person's embodied soul is just as important as our own. It too is the temple of the Holy Spirit and should be treated with the same respect and dignity as our own! To say that we believe in the resurrection of the body is to say that for Christians physical abuse, bullying, torture and even simply ignoring the physical needs of others is a violation of a sacred trust-a sin-and it dishonors God!
Finally, we believe in life everlasting-or to use a more accurate term-eternal life. Jesus said, he came we may have abundant life and the life he came to give us is much more than a never-ending life after our death. The life in Christ we have to offer others is so much more than where they will go if they were to die tonight! To speak of eternal life is not to speak of a quantity of life so much as of a quality of life.
Some folks really worry about how we will spend our time in the life to come. But I think God has already given us a taste of what that time will be like. I imagine you have all experienced it. You are with someone-a love interest, a friend, a sister or a brother-and you sit down to talk, or play, or simply to be with each other and suddenly one of you looks at the clock and says, "Oh my goodness, where has the time gone?!" I think when we are in the presence of God we will be unaware of the clock, we won't even wonder where the time has gone-after all time does fly when you are having fun, doesn't it? And even when we've been there 10,000 years we'll have no less time to sing God's praise than when we'd just begun!
And we don't have to wait for the life to come to experience that joy. From the moment, we come face to face with Christ and give our lives to him; we begin to experience life-eternal and abundant. From the moment we accept Christ, we are given tastes of heaven in the midst of this life. We experience resurrection-new life-in the midst of this life. We begin to see God in the faces around us and to hear God in the most unexpected places. We get a glimpse of a time when there will be no tears, no death, no sickness, and no mourning when we feel peace in the midst of the storm, when we find hope in the midst of despair, and when we discover the presence of God in what should by all accounts be a God forsaken moment or place in our lives.
That's why people need Jesus now! This faith we proclaim is not simply a promissory note to be cashed in sometime in the far distant future, but an active and living faith now. I believe we need to share the gospel of Jesus Christ not because it impacts whether people go to heaven or hell when they die but because the presence or absence of Jesus in their lives makes a difference between heaven and hell in this life as well as the next!
Ultimately, this thing some call Christian religion and others call faith in Christ is all about relationship-our relationship with God and with the world that God so loves. And this is a relationship that impacts our lives today as well as the life to come. Granted what we experience now is just a foretaste of what is to come and the life we live now is not a test to determine our worthiness-but practice for the life to come. So we pray may God's will be done on earth as in heaven! May what we believe is true of the life to come be expressed in our lives now!
And so the creed ends with the simple word, Amen. Amen-this does not mean "The End" but which means, "So be it!" So be it! May the claims of the creed be true! Where we have doubts may we find assurance! May our lives reflect that truth in this life as well as the next! And may God be faithful to God's holy word!
So let us stand and join our voices with Christians throughout the ages and the nations as we affirm our faith and ask God to make it be so!
1 (Howell, 2005) pp 154-155.
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