Raised in Glory
Janice, check me on this – journalists are well versed in the questions who, what, where, when, why and how, right?
And kids. Kids are so good at who, what, where, when, why and how questions! Who hasn’t gotten lost in conversation with a kid who keeps circling back … but why? But how? But when? I distinctly remember my mother’s frustration mounting until her inevitable answer to why was “because I said so.”
I hated that answer. And I swore I would never say that to my own kids. But I confess, there were moments.
Today, I can hear Paul’s frustration with the community in Corinth. Maybe you can too?
…someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
Paul finally boils over.
“Fool.”
So much for lovingly fielding questions, eh? Patience has its limits.
To Paul’s credit, he is now many scroll inches of correspondence into answering the questions and responding to the squabbles of the Corinthian church. He’s had it with all of the doubts and the questions. Here he takes on what is probably a composite character – referencing a “someone” who will ask …but how? In what form?
I feel for Paul here.
And I also feel for the anxious community clamoring for understanding. They want to know how it all works. Presumably so that they can do the right things. Check the right boxes. Or, drawing from some of the other disagreements Paul seems to be counseling, they want to be sure they can strike out at others who don’t or won’t do or believe the right things.
Paul is responding to complicated questions of meaning and value, questions rooted in dualistic thinking like:
your flesh is either dead and decomposing or it isn’t
you are either a fleshy body that contains a soul or an ephemeral spirit
if I am going to be resurrected into something good, what I do with my body and my soul now doesn’t matter
I feel Paul grasping for the very best way to say – folks, this isn’t that easy. There aren’t really great words or ideas to describe it. Because it is complicated.
I also hear him saying… hang with me here. Let’s try to understand this somehow.
Because resurrection is real and true. Resurrection happens. It happened to Jesus. AND it happens to each of us because of Jesus.
One of my father’s great struggles with organized religion was a failure to accept the mystery of God – he saw that as arrogance, to somehow think that we could wrap our human minds around something as complex as bodily resurrection.
He was a big believer in the Hebrews 11 definition of faith –
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
He would hang with Paul well, I think. Human words cannot fully describe God’s work. Neither can human minds fully comprehend God’s work. And so, this is where faith activates.
Paul wants the Corinthians to trust that they will experience resurrection. He is speaking into ancient philosophies somewhat different from today. The Greeks tended to think that human bodies were containers for a “soul” and that in death, one became “spirit,” something different and apart from body and soul.
Paul has experienced the risen Christ, and he wants the early church to understand that the risen Christ was more than just spirit.
So Paul is calling the early church to understand that resurrection is for all of Christ’s followers. And it won’t just be a resurrection in spirit (whatever that means), but it will be a resurrection of bodies (too) into GLORY.
Now, I think we set the stage early on in this series that Corinth was something of a sin-driven city. These people are surrounded by temptations, strange cult practices, bodily temptation. They are also living in an ancient city that was filthy, full of disease, surrounded by poverty that would have contributed further to poor health.
Bodies were risky, both spiritually and physically for this community. Somewhere along the line, they misunderstood a lot of things… and they questioned whether they really wanted their rotting corpses rising from the grave.
So Paul is being confronted by both deep spiritual questions and some basic primal fears about bodies and death.
And…Paul wants the Corinthians to live without fear of death. Paul wants them to know that the limitations of their bodies on this side of life will not translate in the resurrection. He doesn’t quite have the words, but he wants them to understand that they will be bodies DIFFERENTLY than they are in mortal life.
In the portion of the text you heard today, Paul uses the image of a seed, a seed which must be planted in the ground, a seed which appears one way, and when planted in the ground begins a process of transformation. Eventually it emerges as something wildly different visually and physically from the seed that was planted – and yet there is an essence that is still consistent. In the example of a grain of wheat, the DNA of the wheat stalk includes some of the same elements of the DNA of the seed from which it grew. (I wish you could see the text exchange between my science teacher daughter and I about this as I wrote this week….geeky both biologically and theologically.)
Or we could turn to our hymnal…
In the bulb there is a flower,
In the seed, an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise:
Butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter
There’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.[1]
Something God alone can see…
I struggle, with the portion of the text that is before us today, to wrap up a sermon with a tidy bow and a one sentence (or even one paragraph) life application lesson. I cower a bit under Paul’s use of the word “fool,” and I feel my dad at my elbow as I write – it isn’t that easy. But it is ok to dwell in the complicated parts, it is ok to be open to the mystery. Because this is of God.
The hope in this text is complicated and yet vital:
These frail human bodies, bodies that succumb to joint pain, to disease, to cell mutations and organ failure - - these frail human bodies are not all there is. These bodies are not the last word.
And similarly, our struggling humanity, our tendency to self-protect at the cost of others, our tendency to store up treasure, our tendency to be self-serving – our frail human condition is not all there is. Our sin is not the last word.
And so, our call is to live out of that hope. And living out of that hope means that we share that hope with others. We share glimpses of the Kingdom of God by loving others well, and loving others well means loving bodies so that they are fed and housed and safe and protected. And loving others well means loving their human condition, meeting them where they are, without judgement and with abundant grace. Because that is how God meets us in the risen Christ. In our life and in our death.
The text you heard today goes on this way, and it seems unfair to leave us hanging, because it is in the rest of the text that Paul frames the promise and the hope:
Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
In our death is our beginning,
In our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing,
In our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection;
At the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.[2]
May it be so.
Amen.
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