Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Because He Lives

by Dave Wilkinson

1 Corinthians 15:1-22

April 23. 2000

A few years ago the "L. A. Times" profiled a woman who was celebrating her 106th birthday. The reporter asked the inevitable question, "To what do you attribute your long life?" The woman connected her long life with belief in Christ and Bible study, and allowed as it might also have something to do with two teaspoons of whiskey in a glass of water everyday. I could just imagine scores of people rushing out to try her formula. Some people will try just about anything to defer aging and postpone dying.

American folk wisdom has lots of ideas: don't ever give a person a peony blossom, try not to imagine it's Saturday night when it's not, don't walk backwards, don't skip a row when planting corn or beans, and whatever you do, don't let a lizard count your teeth.

So, if we keep our mouths shut around lizards and keep our peonies to ourselves, we can live longer and look younger. But who said that either one is necessarily a purpose fit enough to make life worthwhile?

In fact, both may simply be hedges against the underlying fear that prompted a concern about them in the first place -- I mean, of course, the fear of death! Someone rightly observed that "all human anxiety is at base anxiety over death."

For some people the anxiety becomes irrational terror. Howard Hughes became obsessed with his mortality, and tried to insulate himself from perceived threats and dangers to his health and life. Our whole culture tries to disguise the inevitability of death, not only through our efforts to hide growing old, but also in our euphemisms of denial and in our social and medical strategies that treat death as an enemy, as a disruption, as a failure or defeat.

Easter is God's answer to the anxiety we feel about death. For in the resurrection of Jesus Christ we discover that while there are forces in this world that have the power to do us to death, God reserves to himself what death does to us. Death doesn’t have the last word. God does.

It is strange in a way that Easter has become such a popular day for church attendance because Easter, of all the days of the church year, makes the most shocking claims. In our text for this morning, the Apostle Paul outlines the core of the gospel for his readers in the city of Corinth. In verse three he writes: "for I delivered unto you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to scripture."

Jesus died -- not just as a martyr or as a demonstration of God's love -- but as a savior. He died for our sins. In some way He took our guilt upon himself. The death of Jesus was "according to the scriptures." It wasn't an after thought or an attempt to patch up a bad situation but part of a long-developed plan of salvation.

The second thing that Paul writes is that Jesus was buried -- that He was stone cold dead as a doornail complete with brain death and irreversible deterioration of the cell structure. He wasn't in suspended animation.

The third thing that Paul writes is that Jesus was raised from the dead on "the third day (according to the Jewish way of figuring "the third day.")

And now some more statements:

Because Jesus of Nazareth rose from the grave, so will millions of others.

Because Jesus is no longer in the tomb, a new day has dawned, a day that will never set -- a day when the whole creation will be purged of evil, disease and death.

Because Jesus broke the chains of death, His cross is indeed what He said it would be -- the reconciliation of the world to God; the satisfaction of God's justice; the final ransom paid to free hostage humanity from the powers of sin, evil, and death.

Because Jesus is now alive, He is exalted to the highest status imaginable -- Lord of the Universe, King above All Kings, the Alpha and Omega, the First and Last Word.

Frederick Beuchner writes: "Some claim that "to believe in the immortality of the soul is to believe that though John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in his grave, his soul goes marching on" simply because marching on is that nature of souls just the way producing apples is the nature of apple trees, bodies die, but souls don't. Those who believe in the immortality of the soul believe that life after death is as natural a function of humanity as digestion after a meal. But this is not the biblical view. The Bible instead speaks of resurrection. People don't go on living beyond the grave because that's how they're made. Rather, they go to the grave stone dead and are given life back again by God, just as they were given life by God in the first place.

"All the major Christian creeds affirm belief in resurrection of the body. In other words they affirm the belief that what God in spite of everything prizes enough to bring back to life is not just some disembodied echo of a human being; but a revised edition of all the things which made him the particular human being he was: his personality, the way he looked, the sound of his voice, his peculiar capacity for caring and loving."

That is what happened to Jesus at the resurrection. What this has to do with us is that Jesus says in John 14:19, "because I live, you shall also live." Paul puts it this way in Romans 6:4 "Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."

The word that is used to describe this newness is metamorphosis which is the word used to describe the transformation of a crawling caterpillar first into a chrysalis with all the appearance of death and then into a beautiful winged butterfly. That is why the butterfly is such a fitting symbol of Easter. The egg, without the Easter bunny, is also a fitting symbol because it speaks of new life coming from something that is apparently lifeless.

We need to recognize that the resurrection of Jesus, when it happened, was a unique event. As C. S. Lewis points out in his essay What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?: "Some people say that the importance of the resurrection is that it gives evidence of survival, evidence that the human personality survives death. On that view," Lewis continues, "what happened to Christ would be what happens to all people, the difference being that in Christ's case we were privileged to see it happening."

"That is certainly not what the earliest Christian writers believed. Something perfectly new in the history of the universe had happened. Christ had defeated death. The door that had always been locked had for the very first time been forced open. This is something quite distinct from mere "ghost-survival." I don't mean that the disciples disbelieved in ghost-survival. On the contrary, they believed in it so firmly that, on more than on occasion, Christ had to assure them that he was not a ghost. The point is that while believing in ghost survival, they yet regarded the resurrection as something totally different and new. This new man, after death, does not get divided into "ghost" and "corpse." A new way of being has arisen — a new way of being which we can share.

The Bible makes it clear that eternal life is not normal for humanity. 1 Timothy 6:16 states that "immortality belongs only to God." 2 Timothy 1:10 states that immortality comes to people only as a gift from God."

And we We know that that gift will be give to us because the resurrection is the proof of our saving relationship with God. Romans 4:25 states that Jesus "went to the cross because of our transgression and was raised because of our justification." We, as Romans 5:9 declares, are set right with God because of Jesus' blood and therefore God raised him from the dead as a demonstration of that fact.

Let me get technical for a moment. In Greek, which is the language in which the New Testament was written, there are three little prepositions which become very important at this point. The three prepositions are "eis" which means "with a view to, "pros" which means "for", and "dia" which means "on account of." Some commentators translate the "dia" in Romans 4:25 as if it were "eis" or "pros" -- to give the idea that Jesus was raised from the dead so that we would be set right in our relationship with God. But the word is "dia".

I other words, the Bible says that Jesus was raised from the dead because we had already been set free. Jesus went to the cross to pay the penalty of your and my sin -- He "became sin for our sakes,' Paul writes. The resurrection is the demonstration of the fact that Christ's sacrifice was accepted. If it were not accepted, Jesus would still be in the grave. The resurrection is our peace with God made flesh.

Do you remember when the Berlin wall came down? We had heard rumors that the Russian grip on Eastern Europe was being relaxed. We had heard that Communism was collapsing in East Germany. But the proof was when people began to dance on the Berlin Wall without being shot. The proof was when the points of pick axes aimed from the east began to poke through the concrete. The proof was when even the former border guards were helping tear the accursed thing down. That is when a rumor became visible fact.

That is what the resurrection is for us . It is the visible breaking of the ancient wall. This summer on our Reformation tour we’ll be going to what used to be East Germany. What was off limits isn’t off limits any more. Everything has changed.

Before the glorious fact of the resurrection finally made itself felt in the face of the disciple's disbelief, they were very troubled. They had no way of knowing that anything had been accomplished until they met the risen Christ. They wee right to feel defeated.

If Jesus is not alive, the cross would stand as a great symbol of futile sacrifice, but it would not be the ground of our forgiveness and wholeness. As Paul soberly notes in verse 17, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless and you are still in your sins -- That we are of all persons most to be pitied because we have relied on something having been accomplished which has not been accomplished -- our forgiveness and peace with God.

Furthermore, if the resurrection is not fact, the hope Christianity holds out to the world for a new creation free from evil, decay, and death is only a nice dream. So is eternal life. Again Paul observes. "If Christ is not risen, then those who have died in Christ have perished. If the one who claimed "I am the resurrection and the life" still lays in the grave, then death does have the last word and we may as well learn to cope with that dark reality. Christianity believed only because it is good is pointless. We do not believe in Christianity because it is good. We believe in Christianity because it is true and that makes it good!

For as Paul declares: "In fact Christ has been raised from the dead -- not as a spiritual event but as a physical and historical reality. An empty tomb, says the cynic, is a poor foundation on which to establish a world religion. The Christian faith, however, is based not on an empty tomb, which is incidental, but on a risen Lord -- the Lord who appeared first to the women, then to Peter, then to the twelve including incredulous Thomas in the Upper Room. And then as Paul says to the Corinthians, "to more than five hundred faithful brethren at one time most of whom," he wrote then, "are still alive -- go ask them yourself." "Last of all," Paul concludes, "I saw Him myself on the Damascus road."

Finally, in verse 20, Paul begins to talk about the meaning of the resurrection in positive rather than negative language. "But now," he writes, "Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those

Who have fallen asleep." There is a rich image here formed from Leviticus 23 where God instructs the Israelites to bring the first fruits of the harvest. The promise is that by God's acceptance of the first fruits, the whole harvest is made acceptable. Jesus is our first fruits. By His acceptance, we are accepted.

A woman became very ill. After a time of hospitalization she returned home, but was confined to bed. Her eight-year-old daughter was not aware of the terminal nature of the illness.

This little girl stood outside the bedroom door one afternoon as the doctor, along with her father and her pastor, visited her mother. She heard the doctor say, "I will be honest with you. The time is not too far off. Before the last leaves have gone from the trees you will die." The little girl's presence was not detected.

Sometime later the father came to the lunch table to find that his little girl was not there. After searching he saw her out in the front yard. His heart was broken as he watched her picking up leaves that had begun to fall. She was using thread to tie them back onto the limbs of the tree.

Jesus has some very good news for this little girl and for her father and for her mother -- even in their pain. The good news is that death is no longer a wall for those who believe in Him. It is, instead, a door to a glorious future.

The Apostle Paul sums up the resurrection for us in this way at the end of the fifteenth chapter:

"Now I say this, brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep but we shall 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 shall be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written: ‘death is swallowed up in victory.’ O death, where is your victory? Of death, where 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."

Happy Easter!