Raised Up
1 Corinthians 15:35 – 38, 42 – 50
As we heard last week, Paul writes to the Corinthians to tell them that belief in the resurrection is not optional, because if there is no resurrection, then there is no hope for eternal life, and His sacrifice, and our faith, are meaningless and pointless because there is finality, a certain end in death. If there, then, is no resurrection, then everything we thought we knew about God is untrue. If there is no resurrection, then all we have is this life and nothing beyond it. And the Gospel is not really “good news” at all. (UMC Discipleship)
Paul did not simply suggest that a person’s spirit alone is resurrected, or that the soul will go on by itself and be with Jesus. Rather his focus is on bodies, new and perfected bodies, much like the one in which Jesus walks, talks, eats and touches with after His resurrection. The resurrection is not a collection of ethereal spirits floating around but rather new bodies, like our old bodies but perfected.
Paul tells us that for believers Christ’s resurrection is required theology. It is what makes the Gospel work, it is the powerful, penultimate work of salvation and redemption and the Good News. Because if God did not actually Raise Up Jesus from the dead, then God is not stronger than death which is inconceivable since God created life and death in the first place. God rules over everything, light and dark, good and evil, and life and death.
God’s resurrection of Jesus is the promise and the guarantee that God did defeat the powers of death and sin for all of creation. It is the decisive act that has determined God’s ultimate victory over those twin powers that terrorize mankind sin and death. Paul finishes his admonition about the certainty of the resurrection with “so indeed Christ has been raised from the dead, He is the first fruits of those who have died and we as Christians are the Fruits of the Spiritual Harvest
So that is where we left Paul last week, there at verse 20 of First Corinthians 15 when he had put what seemed like a nice little bow on the package of Resurrection of the Dead, reaffirming that Jesus Christ was in fact resurrected by God, proving the victory over both sin and its sidekick death and guaranteeing the fact that Father was able and willing to regenerate man if they have believed in Jesus.
But as we come to our lesson today, Paul reacts to either a specific question that he has heard or maybe he anticipates a reaction to what he has written in this letter to the Corinthians. In any case he starts off our lesson today with “But someone will ask How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
Now we could see that question as a setback, as a lack understanding of what Paul talked to us about last week but rather, I believe that Paul sees the question as necessary continuation of the lesson that he had begun, a continuation of the affirmation of the goodness of this life, the grace of God found in future, perfected bodies, and in the eternal continuation of humanity and the world in which we live. But beyond a sense of continuation, there seems to be a important additional point, a further truth to be learned as Paul continues his admonition to the church in Corinth, now he is switching from proof of life after death and focusing on transformation of the body and soul of man.
He writes, how foolish are you for wondering about the kind of body that you would receive! Maybe he was asking them if they wanted to choose what body they would receive. If you could select your own body, what kind would you choose, tall, lean, strong, smart, healthy and beautiful? We won’t have to choose, an body fir for eternity already awaits.
Paul makes several points in this discussion about the transformation found in the resurrection. First off, he reminds them that Resurrection is faithful and unimaginable action of God, it is not a preordained natural occurrence of the human condition and certainly well beyond our power to control. Rather as with so many parables that Jesus tells, we have to see with the eyes of faith at the work of God in the world around us. Paul tells us that God has given signs in the world around us to give us spiritual insight. Paul uses the metaphor of a seed to give us some insight into what is going on in Resurrection.
When a seed is planted; it “dies” and what reappears is something different, something transformationally different that was there to begin with. What has been sown “dies” yet is transformed. The seed doesn’t simply wake up or reanimate as what it was but rather it is transformed by the process of recreation. The body is changed, and what appears is different from what died. That is what Paul tells us, will happen to our bodies when we die in Christ, the new recreation has been made not for continuation of living in the world that we know but instead, it has been transformed and Raised Up, made new for a life of eternity!
Do you believe that? Do you accept that? If you confessed the Apostle creed earlier today and do every week, you claim to believe it. The creed says “I believe in the Resurrection of the body AND the life everlasting.” “They go hand in hand, of course, but they also share the truth that they straddle that line between the world we know and the world we are heading toward.” (“Discipleship Ministries | Seventh Sunday after the …”) They both speak to us of life that is bigger than death, life for which death is simply a moment, a momentary pause before its’ continuation
Yes, in that moment our life transitions from mortal to immortal, from finite to infinite, from worldly to heavenly, from limited to unlimited, from transient to eternal. Our life continues, but it is also about change, about transformation. Not just a transformation that occurs at death, however. This is a transformation that is at work in us from the moment we accept the gift of life that comes from the one who came that we might have life and have it abundantly.
The seeds of that final transformation are at work in us from the moment we claim the salvation that Christ offers. We can claim the power of Christ’s resurrection today, even while we wait for our own Resurrection when our transformation makes us like Christ. “We can show glimpses of that life in our flesh, Paul argues, but we are still mortal – still subject to death.” (“Discipleship Ministries | Seventh Sunday after the …”) Until this final transformation, this new creation that God works in us as we are Raised Up to him!
So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, is raised imperishable; what is sown in dishonor, is raised in glory; what is sown in weakness, is raised in power; what is sown a natural body, is raised a spiritual body. (“1 Corinthians 15:42-44 NIV – So will it be with the …”) Raised Up for an eternal life!
We are sown into a physical body yet we are raised as a spiritual body. Paul tells us that If there is a physical body, there must also be a spiritual body”. If we retranslate that first sentence to read: “What is sown embodies the soul; what is raised embodies the spirit.” Now, we usually use soul and spirit interchangeably. But in Greek “Soul” translates as “creatureliness,” that life force that makes us human, that makes us a part of creation, of earth, mortal. “Spirit” translates as the divine spark, the image of God in which we were created, the holy energy that lives in our temporal vessel. (“Discipleship Ministries | Seventh Sunday after the …”)
So you see, we are, in this life, embodied souls, subject to the needs and desires of the flesh, fragile, worldly, focused on survival and enamored with self. Because of that, we are only dim reflections of the Christ who lives in us. We are imperfect examples of a life of the spirit. But resurrected, we will be embodied spirits, living not for ourselves, not subject to the needs of the flesh, but able to mirror the God who gives us life. (“Discipleship Ministries | Seventh Sunday after the …”)
Hear the Good News my Friends
Paul is working to help us understand that the Resurrection is real, not some ethereal, ghostly, undead zombie kind of life. We are Raised Up in that moment away from this challenging life, as rich, as real, as wonderful as it may be, the Resurrection is even more so. “Even though words fail to grasp the realities beyond our experience, faith tells us that God has treasures in store for us.” (“Discipleship Ministries | Seventh Sunday after the …”)
Paul explains that we will be recognized in our resurrected bodies, just as Jesus was recognized by the Disciples, to Mary as well as to Paul, yet are new bodies will be better than we can ever imagine, for they will be made to live forever. We will still have our own personalities and individualities, but these will be perfected through Christ’s work, they will be without the sickness, disease or brokenness that bedevils us in this world. Paul tells us in Philippians 3:21: the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body
Since we are done with our lessons in 1 Corinthians I will borrow these words from the scripture the follows ours today, it is a scripture that I always use when celebrating the life of one that has passed, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead will be Raised Up imperishable, we will all be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.”
Hear these words from the song we are about to sing “In our end 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.”
As comforting as those words for the future are the real joy is that we don’t have to wait to see the transformation in ourselves or in our future eternity. We are being Raised Up presently, we have this gift now, as Believers we can see the process of the resurrection in the transformed lives of ourselves and others around us.
Friends in our justification the spiritual seed of eternity has been planted within the soil of our soul awaiting the spiritual spark from God to transform our worldly bodies into new ones fit for an eternity and Raised Up to live forever with our God our Father, Jesus our brother, and with the saints that gone ahead and with our friends and family that are Raised Up after. Amen.