A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
12 May 2024
1
Corinthians 15.1-26, 51-57
12 May 2024
Germain Pilon (French, d. 1590), Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Marble, before 1572.
Well
I wonder, what do you think the solution is,
to all the ills of our society?
Will
our newly elected mayor resolve our city’s problems?
Will the housing crisis end,
with people able to afford to
live in their own neighbourhood?
Will our manual workers and cleaners
and bar staff
earn enough to feed their families
and avoid poverty?
Will the refugees stranded at our
shores
find fulfilment of their
dreams for a better life?
Can
our mayor solve this?
Will he even keep the promises made in
the run up to the polls?
Would the other side have made any
better job of it?
What
about the General Election
that will descend upon us at some
point over the next year?
If
we see a change of Government,
will things really change?
And
then there’s America, with Donald Trump resurgent
and betting that fear and ignorance
will give him a platform
for widespread retrenchment and
nationalist xenophobia.
But
then there’s our churches, tearing themselves apart
over who’s right and who’s wrong on
issues like human sexuality,
with each side convinced that the
solution to church decline
lies in their interpretation
of scripture.
And
what, in all of this, is the solution?
Where
are we to go to find an answer to the many, many problems
that beset us locally, nationally, and
internationally.
How
are we to know what the right thing is to do?
The
world seems ruled by powers so much stronger than we are,
and our own choices in the middle of
it all
can seem utterly inconsequential and
futile.
Perhaps
it’s better not to vote, some people suggest…
better not to participate in the
dialogue
about key and contentious issues.
Maybe
quietism is the Christian answer,
withdrawal from society and its
structures
in favour of devotion to a life of
holiness and discipline.
Or
maybe revolution is a better solution,
devoting ourselves to the overthrow of
the oppressive powers
in favour of more benign regime made
by us, in our own image.
Or
maybe we just say to ourselves that this world is passing and corrupt,
and our stay here merely temporary,
and
so we resolve to do the best we can
with the hand that has been played to
us,
whilst holding out for a better
eternity.
Well,
what do you think the solution is, to all the ills of our society?
One
well-respected Christian position is to see resurrection
as the solution,
and this is something that Paul
addresses
in our reading this morning from his
first letter to the Corinthians.
Did
you know that Thursday just gone
was Ascension Day? (9 May 2024)
According
to Luke’s account,
Jesus appeared to his disciples
several times after his resurrection
and then, on the 40th day, he ascended
into heaven.
This
means that, just as Easter moves around quite a bit,
so also does Ascension Day.
And
today, just a few days after the day of ascension,
our reading from the Narrative
Lectionary
invites
us to turn our eyes once again
towards the resurrected Christ.
In
our reading for this morning,
we encounter Paul offering the most
extended theological exploration
of the significance of resurrection
that we find in the New Testament.[1]
In
this chapter, Paul was responding to those in Corinth
who simply didn’t believe in the
reality of resurrection.
We
know quite a bit about the early Corinthian church
– and they appear to have been what,
in ministerial terms,
is technically known as a ‘nightmare
congregation’.
They
were a multicultural, multi-ethnic, extremely diverse group
of recent converts to Christianity,
with
religious backgrounds ranging from Torah-observant Judiasm,
to Greek paganism, to Roman emperor
worship.
So
getting any kind of agreement on even key issues
was always going to be something of a stretch
for whoever aspired to offer this
group some sort of leadership;
and
we certainly see this in Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church,
where he has to address everything
from money, to sex, to theology
as he tries to help this
group of people work out
what it means to follow Jesus
in their context.
And
at the heart of all this, for Paul, is the issue of resurrection.
His
view is that the question of how one should be a Christian in the world
what it means to live a life of
discipleship,
is
a second-order question which follows directly on
from what one believes about
resurrection.
Or,
to put it the other way around:
if you haven’t got your belief in
resurrection sorted,
you’ll never work out the right
answers to any of the other questions
that those who would follow
Jesus are going to have to grapple with.
Part
of the problem was that the diversity of religious backgrounds
in those he was writing to
meant
that there was little common ground
on which to build an argument
for a Christ-centred understanding of
resurrection.
The
Jews had a variety of opinions about what happened when people died,
with the Hebrew Scriptures tending to
speak of death
as a place of rest, or void;
with just occasional glimpses of the
idea
that in some way the spirit
of a person might return to the God
who had given the gift of
life in the first place.
In
Jesus’ own time, and we see some evidence from this in the gospels,
there were debates between different
Jewish factions
on whether there was any kind of
existence
for the individual beyond the
grave,
and for them, any notion of
resurrection was tied up with the idea
of the resurrection of the
whole nation,
and its restoration to its
promised land.
For
the Jews, the body and the soul
were largely considered to be a united
entity,
and any resurrection involved the
entire person
– both their body and their
spirit.
But
then when we turn to the Greek and Roman context,
the situation is even more confusing,
with
an equally diverse set of opinions
about the relationship of a person’s
spirit to their body.
Probably
the dominant view was that which we call Platonic Dualism.
This is the idea, originating with
Plato the Greek Philosopher,
that the soul is imprisoned
in the body.
In other words, the body and the
spirit are not united,
but rather they are divided,
forced together in an uneasy alliance
for the duration of a person’s life.
Platonism
taught that the physical world is merely a shadow
of the true reality which lies beyond,
and
so the physical body of a person is a poor shadow of their true self,
which exists in its most real form as
perfected spirit.
By
this understanding, the corruptible body corrupts the soul,
but one day the soul will be freed
from its mortal shell:
when the body dies, the
spirit is freed
to become most fully real and
perfect.
So,
we’ve got multiple views on mortality and immortality,
and multiple views on the unity or
separation of the body and the soul,
and
all of these are in the background
to what Paul’s trying to say about the
resurrection of Jesus.
From
a Jewish perspective,
the resurrection of a person must
involve their body,
because the body and soul are a unity.
Whether
the person is resurrected
back into their old body to walk again
on this earth,
or into a new body walking on a
renewed earth,
the point is still the same.
However,
from a Platonic Greek view,
any ongoing life of the Spirit must be
about freeing the soul
from its corruptible and
corrupting body.
So,
for the Greeks any talk about resuscitating the corruptible body
was hardly an attractive idea.
So
Paul responds by inventing a concept
to help try and draw together these
two very different religious strands.
Listen
again to what he says in verses 50-54 (translated
by Nicholas King):
This is what I mean, brothers and sisters:
flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
corruption
does not inherit un-corruption.
Look! I am telling you a mystery.
We shall not all fall asleep;
but we
shall all be changed, in a nanosecond,
in the
blink of an eye – at the final trumpet.
For the trumpet will signal
– and then
the dead shall be raised undecayed.
And for ourselves, we shall be changed.
For this decaying part must put on un-decay,
and this mortal
part put on immortality.
This
is one of those passages that has been hijacked
by the kind of Christianity that looks
to a future moment of transformation,
when suddenly some heavenly
trumpet sounds from the sky
and all the believers are
caught up into the air…
It’s
one of the famous ‘rapture’ passages, as they’re known;
and if you don’t know what I’m talking
about, don’t worry about it!
I think
that when it’s heard in the context of those he was writing to,
Paul’s words make a lot of sense.
He’s
trying to draw together
the Jewish and Greek ideas about the
afterlife
and make sense of them in the light of
Jesus.
One
of the problems we can have,
encountering Paul’s thinking on
resurrection,
is
that as Western Christians,
we are the religious and philosophical
heirs to Platonic Dualism.
And
so we have a tendency to talk about body and soul
from a dualistic perspective,
as
if one glad day our Spirits will be freed from this mortal and corruptible
shell
to go and be with Jesus in heaven,
and
then we think that this is what Paul is talking about
when he speaks of resurrection.
A
great example of this is the gospel hymn "I'll Fly Away"
written in 1929 by Albert E. Brumley
and
sometimes claimed as the ‘most recorded’ gospel song of all time.
I
was torn as to which version to play today,
and nearly went with Alison Krauss,
but in the end Johnny Cash won.
Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away.
To that home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away.
I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.
Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away.
To that land where joy will never end,
I'll fly away.
I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.
Oh I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away in the morning
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.
Except,
I think St. Paul would want to say to us,
as he said to the Platonic Dualists of
Corinth,
that this isn’t what
resurrection is at all!
For
Paul, resurrection is absolutely NOT about escaping
from the problems, trials, and
tribulations of this present darkness
to fly away to a better place.
Rather,
resurrection, and specifically the resurrection of Jesus,
is the defining and decisive moment
where Christ destroys every ruler,
authority, and power
that has ever held dominion
over the lives of human
beings.
Listen
to verses 24-26 again:
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.
The
primary context that Paul has in mind here,
when he speaks of rulers, authorities,
and powers,
is of course the Imperial
rulers of the Roman Empire,
but he clearly also has in view
the spiritual forces that lie
behind them,
including, interestingly,
death itself!
To
understand what’s going on here,
we need to remember that Paul wasn’t
just
a Greek-educated
intellectual,
he was also a Jewish
apocalyptic mystic.
And that what he certainly wasn’t
was a Western scientific
rationalist.
For
Paul, the resurrection of the dead
wasn’t understood as a simple
restoration
of ‘those who have fallen
asleep’ (as he calls it)
to some kind of
walking-talking-living-and-loving
post mortem experience.
Neither,
for Paul, was the resurrection
the same thing as the zombie
apocalypse,
where
newly-undead corruptible and part-decayed bodies
are reanimated and re-inhabited by
their immortal souls
to lurch the earth for eternity.
Rather,
for Paul, the language of resurrection,
so central to his Christian faith,
needs
to be heard in the context of the historical problem
for which God’s deliverance and
resurrection was the solution.
In
other words, for Paul, resurrection is about the end of imperial rule.
Specifically,
it is about the end of Roman domination of the known world,
although it is also about the ending
of the underlying spiritual powers
that
gave the Roman empire its force and motivation
to distort, demean and destroy
humanity in its own service.
And
this is where and why, for Paul,
it all comes down to the resurrection of
Jesus,
rather than just to the concept of
resurrection more generally.
Resurrection
matters,
because Jesus was crucified.
For
a Jew like Paul, the crucifixion of the Jewish messiah
was a potent symbol
of the victory of the Roman
imperial domination system
over the Jewish God.
Crucifixion
was a Roman punishment,
and it is not lost on Paul that Jesus
died at the hands of Rome.
At
the crucifixion, all the signs
were that the Jewish messiah had lost
and the Roman emperor won.
So
to assert that Christ is risen
is to make a profound statement about
the power of the emperor.
The
resurrection of Jesus is a potent symbol
of the victory of God over the very
powers that had killed him.
As
Paul puts it, the resurrected Christ
‘has destroyed every ruler and every
authority and power’
including, specifically, the authority
and power of the Roman emperor.
It’s
almost as if, in Paul’s thought,
God makes Christ the counter-emperor,
who
will break the power of all earthly imperial rulers,
beginning with the defeat of their spiritual
power-base at the resurrection.
But
Paul doesn’t stop there.
This
isn’t just about first century Rome
and first century Israel.
Rome
and Israel are just the examples in his time and place
of a far deeper victory.
To
make this point, Paul borrows an image
from the Old Testament, the Hebrew
Bible,
and
he says that ‘Christ has been raised from the dead,
the first fruits of those who have
died.’
This
idea of the ‘first fruits’ comes from the book of Deuteronomy
(26.2)
and
it was the idea that when harvesting,
the
first fruit you gather, the first sheaf of wheat or whatever,
should
be presented as an offering to God,
as a
symbol of the fact that the whole harvest
that
is yet to come also belongs to God.
We have a similar practice here
when
we often pray that the gifts of money that we give to the church
are
symbolic of the fact that all we have belongs to God.
So if the resurrected Christ is the first fruit,
what is the full harvest?
If
Christ is the first fruit of resurrection, what is still to come?
Well, it seems that Paul has set his sights rather
high:
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.
The
resurrection of Christ
isn’t just about the defeat of
imperial rule in the first century,
it isn’t just about the overthrow of those
earthly powers (in any age)
that take the imperial spirit
and reinvent it in their own time and context.
Rather,
it is about the resurrection of all things.
It
is about the ultimate defeat of death itself,
as all of humanity, and indeed all of
creation,
is freed from the tyranny of
death and made alive once again.
This
is a view of resurrection which changes, literally, everything.
This
world is not something to be endured,
it is something to be redeemed.
It
is not somewhere to escape from,
it is somewhere to live in.
It
is a world that is crying out for the life-giving spirit of the resurrected
Christ
which comes to those who are oppressed
by the powers and empires of any day
and age.
It
is world that desperately needs the faithful witness and service
of those who have themselves already
received
the gift of life eternal in Christ
Jesus.
We
need to move way beyond a view of resurrection
that focusses on where we go when we
die.
This
passage from St Paul is not about that,
it is about life lived now,
as
the future breaks into the present
in ways that transform the lives
of all those of us who long
for restoration.
So,
to return to the question with which I started,
what is the solution to all the ills
of our society?
Paul’s
answer is quite simple: it is the resurrection of Christ.
Those
who embrace this truth are empowered and enabled
to do battle with the powers
that would keep us in fearful
subjugation.
Those
who no longer fear death
because they know death to be a
defeated enemy
are freed to live each moment of life
in the light of eternity,
and so to see life come in
all its fullness
to those who still labour
under the burden of guilt and sin.
We
are called, in the light of the resurrection of Christ,
to live into being the new world
where
oppressive powers are challenged
and people are brought to freedom.
So
the resurrection of Christ, by this understanding,
drives us to political action.
At
the very least we must engage the political processes of our world,
speaking out for truth and justice and
righteousness,
making the case for the widows and
orphans and refugees,
standing up against the corporate self
interest
that would pay the bare
minimum to maximise profit,
engaging in arguments about armament
sales
and nuclear deterrents and
drone warfare,
fearlessly standing up for the
marginalised and those discriminated against.
We
cannot sit tight and wait until out our few more weary days
until this life is over and we get to
fly away
from our corrupt mortal bodies.
That
is not resurrection.
Rather, resurrection challenges crucifixion;
resurrection challenges oppressive
powers;
resurrection challenges the narrative
of death itself.
Wherever
the empire seems to win,
wherever the dominant powers in this
world
kill the innocent and oppress
the vulnerable,
resurrection is at work to destroy its
power.
And
we are the people of resurrection.
So
do we want a world transformed?
Do we long for a world renewed?
If
so, then it begins with us, and our faith in the resurrection of Christ,
and it ends in eternity,
as
all things are redeemed in and through the love of God.
[1]
This sermon was based on reading the relevant section of ‘A Postcolonial
Commentary on the New Testament’ by Segovia and Surgitharajah (eds.)
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