Defying Death

We are a couple months away from Easter, at least, but it is always the season, on any Sunday, to know the resurrection of Jesus. This is a central concept in the faith we celebrate here. There is life that is bigger than this simple life we live. We get to be part of something more, something longer lasting, something connecting. God shows us this - and makes it happen - with Jesus, in history. Death does not have the last word. There is a resurrection. 

1 Corinthians 15 is, if not The Resurrection Chapter, a great resurrection chapter, in the Bible. Paul is getting near the end of this epistle to the congregation in Corinth, Greece. Here, he speaks of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and links it to the future death and resurrection of all the people who get this letter. He gives a bit of teaching about bodies now, and after death and resurrection - not quite the same human body, he says, for Jesus or for us. There are a few famous phrases in these 58 verses, still known today, by some. 

for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

the sting of death is sin.

the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable.

Today, we just heard the first part of this chapter, with a reminder of some basics of Christian faith, the basics of the story. The author even started with, “Now I would remind you of the good news…”

They needed to be reminded, apparently. So do we today. No wonder we are here together! 

I forgot, last Sunday, to put in the recitation of the third and final part of the Nicene Creed. So we will finish it today. A statement of some of the basics, including Jesus' death and coming back to life. Though what we say today is about God the Holy Spirit.

In today’s 1 Corinthians chapter, Paul goes over again the Good News they all share. What are his reminders about the Gospel?

Christ died for our sins, he says. I’d say sins is whatever is broken in us, and messes up our relationships with God, with earth, with people, even with ourselves. Jesus of Nazareth got killed and deals with this problem. 

Jesus was buried. He truly died. 

He was raised, back to life, on the third day. This, and other things, Paul says, concur with the First Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, which was the only Bible Paul and those first Christians had, the Jewish Bible. 

And then Jesus the Christ, alive again, was seen by some people. More than five hundred people, according to this. Then the author speaks of meeting this same Jesus, but in a rather untimely way. Just barely he met Christ. And barely deserving. Yet that meeting transformed Paul. 

This is all Good News. And he mentions all this at the start of this essay of sorts about the resurrection. The life after death of Jesus and of the rest of them. And of us, we say today. 

This is a death defying chapter. It is a story - of Jesus - that defies death. With the rest of the Bible, especially the New Testament, we have lots of language and stories to explain and understand this. There is life that is bigger than death, which could seem so final. Our own experience of meeting Jesus, or God, or the Spirit, or however this has been personal, is what makes us believers. People who are confident in the One who gives us life. 

It has its mystery, this life-after-death bit. Even the Bible teachings come at us from a few different angles, to fill out the picture. Not to explain it all, but to convince us and give us some confidence, some hope, some path we trust we can follow. 

For instance, I find two main ways life-after-death is talked about here. One way is the ‘we die and then wait for the resurrection to happen to us some time later.’ Paul in these letters in the Bible says a lot of that, such as here in 1 Corinthians. 

The other angle on this is the ‘we die and are instantly in paradise with God and those people who got there first.’ In one of the tellings of Jesus’ execution, he talks with the other fellows being crucified, that day. ‘Remember me when you come into Your kingdom,’ said one victim. Jesus tells him, ‘Today, you will be with Me in paradise.’ 

So, what happens when we die? Hmm… it is a bit mysterious. May we find, from Christ Himself, a way to be confident in it being good and real. There are so many traditions and legends, even in Christianity, about how it happens. How we defy death itself - or should I say, how God defies death for us. Think of all the St. Peter at the gates of heaven jokes. Here’s a timely one:

A woman arrives at the Pearly Gates. St. Peters asks her, “How did you get here?”  She says, “Flu.”

We know there are many ideas in the world and history about what happens next. How death is defied. World Interfaith Harmony Week has just ended. When we look into what other religions teach, we find so many pictures of the afterlife. Even within Churches there are many ideas among the believers. I have met people in Baptist Churches who believed in reincarnation. Others said that hell is in this life and heaven in the next.

Once, about five years ago, I was at a musical, Sunday afternoon event in a Church hall. It seemed such a beautiful, perfect, poignant moment. I felt such gratitude for my life, and that time in our lives. In the course of the afternoon, some dear, musical friends sang this at the coffeehouse: (You probably know the song.)

[That] as sure as the sunrise

As sure as the sea

As sure as the wind in the trees

We rise again in the faces

of our children

We rise again in the voices of our song

We rise again in the waves out on the ocean

And then we rise again

When they got to the second verse, they changed (as they always did) the word reincarnation into the resurrection. 

When the light goes dark with the forces of creation

Across a stormy sky

We look to the resurrection to explain our lives

As if a child could tell us why

I so appreciated the simple beauty of how my friends sang the song, I told them that if I happened to die, I wanted them to sing this at my funeral. They did not like that idea! Too upsetting. 

Anyway, perhaps we could say the basic Christian doctrine of resurrection is just reincarnation, but only once. One life after this one. Some Churches, certainly some Baptist congregations, would be rather strict about what you all have to believe about life-after-death, but I think our gentle approach is good. 

I have probably mentioned an old friend from Windsor, who was also my neighbour for seven years. She was a wise, stylish, retired women, always active in the local Church. As her neighbour and friend, she did confide in me that she did not like funerals, because she did not like all the talk of the deceased person being alive forevermore. She did not really believe in that. I was glad she still felt she could belong in a Church, and belong with Jesus, known for saying, “I am the resurrection and the life.” My friend is now long dead, so she may know far more about the afterlife than we now do!

We won’t spend a lot of time in 1 Corinthians 15 this month. We are at Trinity-St. Stephen’s next Sunday, and the Epistle I will read from is 1st John. The next week, Rev. Marlene is preaching from ___ I do plan to revisit this resurrection chapter on March 2nd, even though it is not one of the prescribed Bible readings for that day. 

And I have not even touched that amazing chapter, Isaiah 6, one of my favourites. At least, at the end of the dire message of ignorance and disaster that Isaiah is told to proclaim is a word of hope, dare I say, of resurrection? When the nation is destroyed like a chopped down, burned down tree, there, in the stump, is a holy seed.