A Resurrection:“There Is Doubt About it!”
Assurance brings hope
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Text: 1 Corinthians 15:12-34
“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? …But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Cor. 5:12, 20).”
I watched her life just slip away. Lydia was a part of an extended family that attended the church I was serving. She was a vibrant, energetic, tremendously happy person. She was 26 years old when I met her. She had come to this country from the Philippines about nine years earlier, and just prior to that she had married the young man she loved in a civil ceremony. They had two children.
It was the month of April when she came with a request for what she called, and I quote, “a real wedding,” in the church, in the sight of God. I indicated that I would be glad to officiate and as the weeks passed, we met together with her husband, John, to plan the event. Lydia was thrilled. Even after nine years of marriage, she loved John deeply. The bright smile on her face was infectious. Then in June, with the wedding six weeks away, I got a call from John. “Pastor,” he said, “Lydia is in hospital. She's having headaches, the doctors can't figure out what's wrong.” The next day, I visited Lydia at Grace Hospital. We prayed together and continued to talk of the wedding and what was to come with no idea of what was really to come.
A week later, I had another call from another family member, Lydia was now unconscious, I returned to her hospital room. Her family was growing more and more concerned. We gathered around her bedside to pray for healing … but it was not to be. A few days later she was in ICU. Later yet, she was placed in isolation and then came the need for life support. I was with the family as they struggled with the decision to withdraw life-support. I was with them again as the tubes and plugs were pulled and any signs of life just slipped away. It was absolutely surreal. In one corner of the hospital room hung the wedding gown that John had brought in to remind Lydia of what was to come to encourage her should she open her eyes. Around her bed, however, were her loved ones. They were stunned, shocked, the strain of it all visible on their faces. John kneeled at the bedside weeping and there I was, perhaps as stunned as they, wondering how I could bring the presence and peace of God into that situation. I remember thinking, “What can I say? What hope can I offer them?”
Moments like that may not be the best times for theological discussions. They are more times for a pastor's listening ear and quiet words of assurance but over the next few days as I readied for the funeral, I struggled to make sense of what appeared so unjust. I found that I could not do it apart from the Christian concept of resurrection. Resurrection, you see, is the greatest note of victory and hope that the church has to offer those in “the valley of the shadow of death,” or those who live in the midst of injustice. Why then, over the last few generations has this very concept and even the resurrection of Jesus himself become sources of embarrassment to some modern theologians, clergy and church-goers.
Noted author and preacher, Fleming Rutledge says that she keeps a file of newspaper clippings about Easter preaching. Upon going through them all one day, she says that she began to wonder if she should give her Easter preaching file a new name. “It should really be called,” she said, “One Hundred Ways to Avoid Saying That Jesus Christ Is Risen from the Dead.” Over and over, she says, the same words appear in Easter sermons in mainline churches. Year after year there are notes of renewal, revival, rebirth. There are plenty of references to a new season, new growth, new life. We hear of sap rising in the trees, the singing of birds, the warmth of the lengthening days. We hear of “a new season in the earth and in the heart of humanity.” We hear that “the early Christians came to understand that love is stronger than death.” “We seem to find amazing ways in main line churches,” she concludes, “to avoid using the word, resurrection.”
I am afraid that we have a tidal wave of doubt around us. Quite a number, even in the church, think like theologian, Marcus Borg, for instance, who posits that while something may have happened to encourage the disciples, it was more likely something in their minds, or something of a spiritual nature; nothing happened that would have left an image on a videotape if a camera had been there. The church and its beliefs, as traditionally understood, are under attack. There are many who would re-envision what the church is and do away with things that it has held from the beginning.
One of the most enlightening professors I came across while doing Ph.D. work was Dr. Ben Meyer. Ben was a NT scholar par excellence. I remember being on a search committee with him to fill a teaching position in biblical studies. One of the candidates had spectacular credentials, interviewed very well, and came to give a wonderfully erudite, if not radical, academic paper positing that some archaeological material from a Jewish community in Egypt revealed the possibility that God, like other near Eastern deities, had a consort or spouse in Asherah. In the midst of feedback from other members of the teaching staff, Ben Meyer summarized what the candidate had said and asked him quite simply, “Is it true? It may be possible but in the grand scheme of things, is it true?” The candidate muttered a few things about being a textual scholar rather than a philosopher or theologian as he refused to really deal with the question. I knew right there that he had lost the position for which he was applying.
As we think this morning about what the church has to offer the world and the waves of doubt lapping at the shores of the church that would deny, for instance, the resurrection; Ben Meyer's question is a good question to ask. Is it true? Are these “new theories” that we encounter true? Or did Jesus really rise in bodily form?
Interestingly, doubt and questioning are not some new diseases discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, part of the reason behind the letter was to deal with those in the middle of the first century who denied the resurrection. “How can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” he asks. “If there is no resurrection,” he continues, “then Christ has not been raised (15:12).” As we encounter the text, we should remember that whenever Paul went into a new place to preach, the first place he went was to the Jewish community and to the synagogue. In the early years, the church was primarily Jewish and there was a whole segment of Judaism which held that there was no such thing as a resurrection. Two parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees disagreed on this point. The predominant Sadducees and those who followed them held that She'ol was indeed “the land of no return,” there was no coming back from the place of the dead. Paul expounds logically saying, “If there is no such thing as coming back, then Christ did not come back either.” He goes on, “if that's the case, if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain….your faith is futile (15:14, 17).” It is useless and our preaching it is useless (15:14). Our preaching not only misrepresents God (15:15), but those who die in Christ just perish (15:18). They are no better off with this gospel, they are a people to be most pitied (15:19), they have fallen for a delusion, they have followed Christ for nothing! It would be better we would all just “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die (15:32).” In other words, there is a logical fallout to not believing that a resurrection is possible, something that some modern theologians fail to grasp as they attempt to deny the resurrection but keep the church. It's like throwing out the baby and keeping the bath-water. What's left has no raison d'etre, it's useless.
But Paul goes on here and with complete assurance says, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died (15:20).” We spoke last week of how Paul had the assurance of many eyewitness testimonies; of how no one, even in ancient times, thought that a person could return to life from the dead; and of how even the disciples did not believe at first but, eventually, had to speak of what they had experienced. Something had rocked their worlds. Jesus had appeared to them, not as a phantom, but as flesh and blood. They kept talking now of what they had seen with their eyes, heard with their ears, and touched with their hands; the risen Christ (1Jn.1:1 cf. Luke 24:39) and Paul knew these people. Paul knew them as people of character.
But Paul had his own experience of the risen Christ (15:8). He hadn't been with Jesus initially but he could look back to an event that had completely altered his own life. He didn't believe such things could happen and at the behest of the high priest in Jerusalem, he went out, rounded up, and persecuted those who were talking about a resurrection. Paul thought it was foolishness until he was confronted himself by the risen Christ. It was outside of everything he believed but there was Christ before him and from that moment on he too could do nothing but speak of the one he had experienced.
The veracity of their reports is supported heavily by the fact that Paul and the other apostles sacrificed much for this unusual thing that they had encountered. In our passage today we learn that they faced great opposition (15:30ff.). There was opposition from Jews who viewed them as sectarian, from Gentiles who viewed them as interfering with local religious practice, and from Roman authorities who persecuted them for failing to worship Caesar as Lord among other things. In this very passage Paul speaks of dying every day for Christ (15:31) and reminiscent of things that went on in Roman arenas, of having to fight wild animals at Ephesus (15:32). Why did Paul and the others face these things? Why did they keep on going in spite of it? Was it for some vague hope that they had? Was it because of some dream, a vision? Or was it something so unique and so incredible that they could do nothing else but speak of their good news. As Philip Yancey says, “The early Christians staked everything on the resurrection. ”
When one delves into the lives of Paul and the other apostles, when one understands their characters and the change that they went through, when one finds them willing to stick their necks out and risk even death for what they had experienced and held to be true, there's a ring of authenticity to this idea of a resurrection. When one considers also that they taught about truth and honesty, grace and love, purity and virtue, it just does not seem possible that they would found it all on a lie. Fleming Rutledge states that she has read and re-read Paul's letters for over 50 years and she has never got the feeling that Paul would deliberately lie to her. Against those who would rewrite church theology, noted New Testament scholar, C. H. Dodd says, “This is not a belief that grew up within the church; it is the belief around which the church itself grew up, and it is the 'given' upon which its faith was based.”
So Paul asks the believers at Corinth to come to a sober mind on this issue (15:34), come to the truth that Christ has risen and that he is the first-fruits of a general resurrection that is to come (15:20). Here we have the real hope of Christianity.
A few weeks ago, I was reading a Greek text, one of the writings of Justin Martyr who is considered one of the apostolic, or earliest, church fathers. Justin writes of a woman whose husband was a known philanderer. After she received the teaching about Christ, she tried many times to persuade him and encourage him to turn from his ways. Her attempts were futile and while he was away on business to Alexandria, word came back to her yet again of his promiscuity. Justin says that such was the extent of his actions that he sinned against heaven and his own soul. The woman was trying very hard to follow Christ and live righteously but she could take it no more and wishing to divorce him, she spoke with the Christians around her. Those in leadership let her know that if she did divorce him, she would be doing no wrong, but suggested that she wait while they prayed for him. So she waited another year and she too prayed earnestly that he would turn away from his promiscuity. But after word came back to her again of his ongoing evils, she went ahead and divorced him.
When the man heard of what she had done, he enquired after her and learned that she was meeting with other Christians regularly and learning of Christ. He enquired after the teacher and when he learned his name, he had the authorities in the town arrest him and throw him in prison. Some 12 days later, he was brought before the prince of that region and the prince asked him, “Are you one of these Christians, do you believe in Christ? ” And the teacher answered, “I am and I do.” Immediately, the prince had the soldiers take him and put him to death. Justin writes of this early Christian teacher, “And he, while being faithful unto death, received the promise of life with Christ forever.”
The early Christians indeed staked their all on the resurrection. The assurance that they had was so incredible and vital that the church and the good news of eternal life spread vigorously around the world. What they based it on was neither a dream, nor a vision, nor a feeling in their hearts. It was not that the disciples sensed renewal in spring weather, or that they felt that love had triumphed over death. None of these things would have driven them the way they were driven. It was the risen Christ that drove them. It was the risen Christ and the promise of life that drove them to take no worry for their own lives. The assurance of these things changes everything and it is that assurance that brings hope. It is that assurance that still gives the church something to say in the midst of despair and injustice. It is that which gave me something to say a few days after precious Lydia's death. They were the same words the minister said at the funeral of my good friend Jim when I was 13 years old, “In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, we entrust Lydia into the loving arms of God.” If we can just gain a sense of that assurance within our own lives, it will change everything.