Heavenly Home: Resurrection of the Body
The First United Presbyterian Church
“Heavenly
Home: Resurrection of the Body”
Rev.
Amy Morgan
May
19, 2019
John
20:19-20
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the
doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the
Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
20 After he said this, he showed
them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the
Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:1-8, 12-26, 35-55
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I
proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand,
2 through which also you are
being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--
unless you have come to believe in vain.
3 For I handed on to you as of
first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scriptures,
4 and that he was buried, and
that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
5 and that he appeared to Cephas,
then to the twelve.
6 Then he appeared to more than
five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive,
though some have died.
7 Then he appeared to James, then
to all the apostles.
8 Last of all, as to one untimely
born, he appeared also to me.
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.
20 But in fact Christ has been
raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.
21 For since death came through a
human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;
22 for as all die in Adam, so all
will be made alive in Christ.
23 But each in his own order:
Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
24 Then comes the end, when he
hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler
and every authority and power.
25 For he must reign until he has
put all his enemies under his feet.
26 The last enemy to be destroyed
is death.
But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of
body do they come?"
36 Fool! What you sow does not
come to life unless it dies.
37 And as for what you sow, you
do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some
other grain.
38 But God gives it a body as he
has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
39 Not all flesh is alike, but
there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds,
and another for fish.
40 There are both heavenly bodies
and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the
earthly is another.
41 There is one glory of the sun,
and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star
differs from star in glory.
42 So it is with the resurrection
of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
43 It is sown in dishonor, it is
raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
44 It is sown a physical body, it
is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a
spiritual body.
45 Thus it is written, "The
first man, Adam, became a living being"; the last Adam became a
life-giving spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual
that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.
47 The first man was from the
earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
48 As was the man of dust, so are
those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of
heaven.
49 Just as we have borne the
image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
50 What I am saying, brothers and
sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does
the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51 Listen, I will tell you a
mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed,
52 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.
53 For this perishable body must
put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
54 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."
55 "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.
57 But thanks be to God, who
gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 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.
“If you’re ever tempted to judge
someone’s religious beliefs as crazy, just remember that you’re the one who
worships a zombie.” This was one of the first pieces of instruction we were
given in Clinical Pastoral Education, a residency in hospital chaplaincy. Our
mentor challenged us to see how strange our beliefs might seem to other people
who don’t share them.
In the atmosphere of cultural Christianity we experience in our society,
we don’t often get to examine how our faith looks from the outside. The resurrection
of Jesus Christ is not something we often have to explain to other people.
Resurrection is taken for granted in Christianity. So much so, that we often
forget that it is the central hope upon which our faith is based.
The Corinthian church did not have this problem. Corinth was a major
crossroads in the Roman Empire, a city populated with merchants and slaves and
immigrants from all over the known world. At the time of Paul’s first letter to
the church there, Christianity was a small, persecuted sect of Judaism. They
were very much in the minority, and they had a lot of explaining to do.
Because Corinth had such a diverse population, folks were open-minded,
interested in new ideas. The fledgling Christian church would have attracted
pagans, Jews, and all sorts of others to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
But they were also skeptical. They brought with them all the philosophies and
theologies of the wider culture and refused to accept the Jesus story at face
value.
And perhaps the most challenging part of the Jesus story for the
Corinthians was resurrection.
Jews hearing about the resurrection of Jesus would have been familiar
with the idea of resurrection. Some of them bought into the idea, and some of
them didn’t. But even the ones who did believe in resurrection would have been
bothered by Jesus’ resurrection. For Jews, the resurrection is something that
happens to everybody, all at once, when the Messiah comes in judgment. A single
person being resurrected would have been a new and strange idea. Jews would
also never have expected the Messiah to die and therefore need resurrecting.
The Greek and Roman pagans in Corinth would have been offended at the
whole idea of resurrection. Dead was dead. Some might have wished it to be
otherwise, but this was an indisputable fact in the first century. The
Platonists would have been glad to be rid of their earthly bodies, to shed
corruptible flesh and free their disembodied souls. To be asked to return to a
physical body would have been repulsive.
And so it is little wonder that some folks in the Corinthian church say
there is no resurrection of the dead. The idea is absurd and embarrassing.
Almost as absurd and embarrassing as worshipping a zombie.
Of course, there are numerous differences between the resurrected body
of Jesus and a zombie. But have you ever tried to explain it? Both die and are
re-animated. Both sound a little science-fiction-y. Zombies eat brains and
Jesus eats fish, but they both get hungry. Zombie bust through locked doors and
Jesus somehow miraculously walks through them, but they can both break into
your hideout.
Zombie Jesus is one problem in talking about the resurrection, but then
when we get into the resurrection of all the dead, it gets even worse. It
raises all kinds of uncomfortable questions. What if I don’t like the body I
have right now? Do I have to keep it? Can I trade it in for one that is
younger, thinner, taller, blonder? Can I get a new nose or different color
eyes?
Christians would frankly much rather talk about heaven and hell,
mansions with many rooms, metaphorical resurrection, or even halos and harps
than talk about bodily resurrection. The idea is still absurd and embarrassing.
And that’s a REALLY big problem for the church. Because it is, as I
said, the central hope upon which our
faith is based. N.T. Wright, the bishop and theologian whom I mentioned
last week, writes that “Bodily resurrection…is the element that gives shape and
meaning to the rest of the story we tell about God’s ultimate purposes.” Paul
says that If Christ has not been raised,
your faith is futile. And the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of
all the dead are directly linked, such that if
the dead are not raised, Paul says, then
Christ has not been raised. We can’t just accept the bodily resurrection of
Jesus and place our hope in a disembodied heavenly afterlife, ignoring any
future hope of our own bodily resurrection.
Embarrassing and absurd as it may
be, we, as Christians, are stuck with resurrection. And we, in our culture,
have some explaining to do.
The first thing we need to explain about the resurrection is that it is
our final destination. In the next couple of weeks, we will talk about what
happens when we die and before the resurrection, but that is not the central
concern for Christians. We spend a lot of time and energy musing on heaven and who
gets to go there, but heaven is not our final destination. Heaven on earth, the
new creation, is our final home, in resurrected bodies. N.T. Wright calls this
the “life after life after death.”
Second, we need to be clear about what resurrection means. In the first
century, in both paganism and Judaism, it clearly meant the physical
resurrection of bodies. There was no spiritual or metaphorical meaning attached
to resurrection. The idea was repugnant to pagans and accepted by some Jews.
But it was uniformly understood to refer to tangible, actual bodily
resurrection.
This is an important point to understand because so many people are so
uncomfortable with this idea. Because of the strong influence of Platonism on
Western Christianity, and because of problematic translations and
interpretations of some key biblical texts, the idea of bodily resurrection has
been all but abandoned by contemporary Western Christianity. Again, we’d rather
argue about heaven and salvation and pre- and post-tribulation than really get
into the center of the Christian gospel – the bodily resurrection of the dead.
The Platonic notion that all things material are lesser or even evil has led us
to prefer the idea of permanently shuffling off this mortal coil to resuming
bodily existence at some point down the road.
When Paul talks about our present and future bodies in terms of physical
and spiritual bodies, saying that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God, he is not advancing Platonism. The Greek terms translated here as
“physical” and “spiritual” are not words that refer to the material something
is made out of. Psyche is the word
translated as physical. In Greek, it means something like natural,
worldly-minded, ordinary. Paul is saying that the bodies we currently inhabit
are animated by ordinary, human, worldly powers. Therefore, they are subject to
illness and injury, death and decay. But our resurrection bodies will be
animated by “pneuma” – which in the New Testament, and throughout the letters
of Paul especially, almost always refers to the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit.
These Holy Spirit-powered bodies will be imperishable, not subject to injury,
illness, death, or decay. So the distinction between our current bodies and our
resurrection bodies is not a matter of matter. It is a matter of operating power.
The crucial importance of understanding this distinction between
material and operating power is that it affirms that our physical bodies, and
indeed the whole physical creation, is not lesser or evil or unimportant. We
are not waiting to get rid of them so that we can live forever. We are waiting
for our bodies, and the whole creation, to be re-created and redeemed. Paul
refers to the first creation – where the first human was created from dust –
and looks forward to the new creation – where we will bear the image of Jesus,
the “man of heaven.” This is not an either/or statement. We don’t stop being
people of dust to become people of heaven. We will also bear the image of the man of heaven, our dusty bodies will be
overlaid with the portrait of heavenly bodies.
And scripture paints a pretty clear picture of these resurrection
bodies. Paul says that Jesus is the first
fruits of those who have died. Our resurrection will look like his
resurrection.
Now, the resurrection event was surprising and emotional, like seeing a
UFO or spotting bigfoot. And so the reports of the resurrection we have in
scripture reflect the way people remember unexpected and somewhat terrifying
things. There are a lot of discrepancies in the stories, but they do agree on
several points. First, the body of Jesus was a physical, tangible body. He ate.
He breathed. You could touch him and hear him. I don’t know about the smell.
There might be good reasons that sense was left out of the descriptions.
Second, his body retained the signs of his earthly vocation. His calling
was to the cross. To die in defeating death. And so the marks of that calling,
the wounds in his hands and feet and side, remained in his resurrected body.
But they didn’t seem to hurt or bother him.
Third, the resurrected body of Jesus, while tangible and physical, also
transcended the physical world. He could enter locked rooms. He could travel
great distances in a short time. He was sometimes recognizable and sometimes
not. All the new features of resurrected bodies are not described in great
detail in scripture, but we are given enough hints to know there is something
exciting and different about them.
Jesus is the model for our resurrection, but he is also the means of our
resurrection. Paul says that all will be
made alive in Christ. What Christ accomplished on the cross is not a symbol
or a metaphor. It is a method. It gave us a way through death to a new,
resurrected life. Christians will argue forever about the requirements being in Christ, but I tend to think that it
doesn’t have much to do with our
choices or behavior. To say we are in
Christ is to be in a particular location. Some folks would say we have to
choose to enter that location, or that we can choose to run away from it. Other
folks would say that there are things we can do that would get us kicked out or
permanently banned from that location. But Paul, in this passage at least, is
speaking in rather universal terms. For
as all die in Adam, Paul writes, so
all will be made alive in Christ. God has a clear and consistent plan for
the renewal of the whole creation. The resurrection of Jesus is step one. Then
the resurrection of those who belong to Christ. But, in the end, the plan is
the destruction of death itself. And if death itself is destroyed, it cannot
keep a hold on anybody.
The final thing we have to be clear about is God’s purpose for our
resurrection. Scripture is abundantly clear that resurrection life is a gift of
God’s grace. It is not something we can earn. It’s not something we deserve. It
is part of God’s loving plan for the redemption of the creation. The
resurrection of Jesus, and the subsequent resurrection of humanity, is purely
God’s loving intention.
But that doesn’t mean that we can just say “thanks” and hit the golf
course in the new creation. No hanging out on clouds and playing harps for the
people of God. God has work for us to do in the resurrection. Paul’s treatise
on the resurrection concludes: 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. Our labor is
not in vain because our labor will continue in the kingdom of God. We will be
stewards of the new heaven and new earth. So what we are doing for God right
now on this earth is practice, it is on-the-job training for our resurrection
life. We may get to rest in between this life and more life, but the eternal
plan is all about getting down to the business of God in the new creation.
Ultimately, bodily resurrection affirms the goodness and importance of
our life now and our vocation now. How we live and what we do for the kingdom
of God now will be picked up again in the life to come. The central hope of the
Christian gospel is not that we will get to rest with God in heaven forever.
Our hope is that the life we live now, the bodies we live in now, have sacred
and eternal meaning and purpose. Our hope is that in the resurrection, we can
continue to love and serve God in ways that resonate with our love and service
to God now. Our hope is for bodies that are imperishable and whole, immortal
and free from sin and death. I can’t tell you with any proof or certainty
everything about the afterlife. But I can tell you with great certainty that
this is what scripture promises us.
I don’t know how old we’ll be in the resurrection. Or if we can change
our height and hair color. I don’t know if we’ll recognize our loved ones, but
I know that, at times, lots of people recognized Jesus, and he certainly
recognized them. I would venture to guess that the bonds of love formed in this
life are strong enough to carry over into the resurrection. The truth is,
there’s much we know, and much we don’t know.
But if we hold close to the hope of the resurrection, if we speak of it
with clarity and without embarrassment, I trust that we will live differently
now than people who do not have that hope. We will honor our embodied existence
differently, recognizing the sacredness and goodness of our bodies. We will practice
stewarding this creation in anticipation of stewarding God’s new creation. We
will serve God with joy and gratitude now, recognizing that the vocation given
to us in our baptism is work for now and eternity.
This may all sound like a crazy idea. But it’s ours. And it means that
our faith, and our labor, is not in vain.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment