The text this morning is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the 15th chapter:
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.Thus far the text.
Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame. But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.
My dear friends in Christ,
We’re going to talk about death, and we’re going to talk about resurrection. It doesn’t seem fair, does it, that because one man sinned, we should all have to die. If your brother committed murder, does that give the police the right to come into your house and kill everyone there? Yet, we are all held responsible for the sins of Adam, and that’s actually a good thing. If through the sins of one man we are all damned, then through the righteousness of the One Man, Jesus, we are all saved. If you are not condemned through Adam, you cannot be saved in Christ. Death comes through a man at the start, life comes through a man at the end.
And this is an amazing thing, one that we should rightly dwell on, for in the resurrection of the dead, we are made perfect. This doesn’t just mean how we often take the word. In grammar, a word that is perfect is in a tense that indicates a completed action. “I am baptized.” “Am baptized” is perfect in that it indicates I have been in the past and currently am and continue to be baptized. In the resurrection, it is the same, in that we will be made perfect, in that we will be risen from the grave and never shall we die again. The glory of this can’t really be comprehended yet, though it can be hoped for. What we will be is a picture we’ve been teased with, but we can’t fully imagine. Try describing the color red to a blind person, this is like talking about the fullness of the resurrection today.
Like we said last week, the resurrection of Christ is everything. Without it, all hope, all doctrine, all life is lost. There’s no point. There’s nothing left for us. And how awful is that? It’s why it’s central to our teaching, why we always make mention of it, why we’re strengthened through Word and Sacrament for the day in which it will come. Without the resurrection, what’s the point? Might as well just go home. But with the resurrection, we have hope. We have life. We have something to which we are looking forward. What a beautiful thing!
The hard part is that it takes time to get to that day. We have to make it all through this life. First, Christ had to be raised. Now, for us, that might seem like a no-brainer. But there was at least 4000 years of history before the Son of God took on flesh, died, and rose again. For the saints who waited for that day, it took a long time. So, first, Christ had to be raised from the dead. Then we get to be raised from the dead. But, you have to remember, that means we all have to die. We all are subject to this life. And that means the enemies of Christ will be coming against us. Everything that has hated God from the beginning, sin, death, and the devil are all coming after us. And while they have been conquered by Christ, the effects of their actions can still be felt by us even today. Finally, death itself will come to an end when we are all made alive forever, but death still will take us.
We’ll still with the cancers, the hardships, the money issues, the bad news, the children falling from faith, the betrayal by friends. We’ll have to deal with people leaving us, coming to us, needing us. We’ll have to deal with being forgotten, being marginalized, being hated and despised. Life comes at you fast and then you die. But, when our Jesus comes back, all of us who are found in Him, all of us who trust in Him for the salvation He won for all mankind, shall be raised to everlasting life.
Yes, we’re going to always be in danger. Whether that comes from outside of us, whether it’s the beasts Paul fights in Ephesus, whether it’s the drunk driver on 43, whether it’s the government forcing you to recant your beliefs, or your embarrassment at a party for standing up for Christians morality, danger comes for us all the time. So what? Who cares? Danger comes for us, and that’s a good thing.
When we die, when we’re planted, when we’re buried in the ground, there is a promise that we shall spring forth one day. There are some plants, when you put them in the ground, take years before they ever show up above it. Now, they’re building elaborate root systems, but when they’re ready, they spring up, stronger than plants that have been around for an even longer time, growing taller, faster thicker than anything else. When we die, it may be some time before we are brought up from our graves, but that’s fine. As we wait, we are in the courtroom of God, worshipping Him, learning what He would have us know, hearing the worship of the angels, watching the elders around the throne. Thus, when we wake, we will be perfect in the Lord, as will all those who are in Christ.
When we wake, we’ll be given a body different than what we have but the same; the same body, just perfected, made whole, made right, made to be like Christ. We will be made to shine even brighter than the stars, for the righteousness of Christ will be sown into our garments and into our skin. And there, we will see the amazing glory of all the bodies of the creation, whether beast or plant, star or planet. We will glory in the creation, we will be the crowning achievement of creation, second only to Christ Himself. We will shine with His light, for His light will be our life. We will be raised perfect.
It’s true that now, in this life, we should work to bring a little heaven to earth. We should love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, pray for our abusers, give ourselves over in the body to those who would strike us, give our possessions to the one who would take them. We should give all of ourselves to everyone, as much as we can. We should make this world a better place, and we should make ourselves be better people, as much as we can. This isn’t to save ourselves, but that it’s showing a foretaste of the goodness which is to come.
And on top of that, and this isn’t something we often talk about in the Church, what we do in this life does serve as our glory in the next. It’s not a quid pro quo kind of thing, where if we’re karmically good in this life God will have to reward us in this life, but it is that when we do good works in the name of Christ, for His sake, these will serve as our rewards in heaven, where we will receive in good measure all that He would give us. We don’t do good in this life to get more rewards, but we are rewarded because, as Christians, as those redeemed by Christ, we do good works now. We do good works now because, in the resurrection, that’s all that we will be doing. It’s like practice for something that will just come naturally. But it’s good practice, nonetheless.
The resurrection is critical. We all want it in our heart of hearts, we all need it. We all think it’s coming. But, even as difficult as it is to imagine, if we don’t make it central, if we don’t see it as THE event that define the world, then we lose the plot. We go off course. We get stuck in our own thoughts, our own desires. But, when we see it as Jesus saw it, as Paul sees it, then we understand, the resurrection is beyond our thoughts, our desires. It is the desire of God, as He wants it, which is for you to live forever, and to live forever with His Son, dwelling in His presence, secure in His peace. And, as our Lord wants, so it shall be done, that all His enemies shall be put under His feet, and He shall reign unto all eternity, and we shall live by His side, our graves empty, never to be filled again. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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