I Corinthians 15: 12 – 20 / Psalm 1 / Luke 6:17 – 26
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene
Tucker on Sunday, February 13, 2022.
“THIS ISN’T ALL THERE IS”
(Homily
text: I Corinthians 15: 12 – 20)
Our
appointed Epistle reading from St. Paul’s first letter to the early Church in
Corinth places before us the central and important question of the Lord’s
resurrection and the blessings and benefits that we, as people of faith,
receive from the Lord’s coming to life again on Easter Sunday morning.
The
question of the resurrection of our Lord figured prominently in my own path
toward ordination as a priest. As part of the preparation for ordination, proof
of competency in a number of areas is required by the Canons of the Episcopal
Church. In general, this testing means that most people take an exam which is
known as the General Ordination Exam (GOE). The GOE was, in the time that I
took it, a three-and-a-half day affair, an open book exam, which posed questions
in the required seven areas to be tested, questions which were answered online.
When
the results of my answers to the exam were received, it turned out that hadn’t
done well on the first question, which had to do with the resurrection.
Once
the results of the exam were made known to the Bishop and to the Standing
Committee of the Diocese, I had to have a final interview with the Standing
Committee (as everyone in the process does). The matter of my unsatisfactory
answer to that first question, the one having to do with the resurrection, came
up. I was asked about my answer. I said that I believed that my answer was
unsatisfactory because I believe that the Lord was actually raised from the
dead again on Easter Sunday morning, and that the Scriptures faithfully relate
that event to us. I added that I believed that many people within our own
Church, and in many other parts of the Church beyond our own, for that matter, don’t
believe the Lord’s resurrection to be an actual event. That is why, I believed,
that my answer was unsatisfactory. (I can’t prove that, it’s my guess.)
(Just
for the record, I continue to stand by my answer.)
The
matter of the resurrection must’ve been a critical one for the early Christians
in Corinth. As evidence of that importance, consider the fact that Paul devotes
all of chapter fifteen of his first letter to the matter of the resurrection.
(Chapter fifteen is a long one, Paul has lots to say about the subject.)
The
question of the resurrection is also a critical one for us today, as
twenty-first century believers.
We
might begin our consideration of the importance of the resurrection by
examining some of the attitudes and beliefs of people in the first century to
the question.
Among
the Jews, the Sadducees, the priestly caste, didn’t accept the idea of the
resurrection from the dead. The Pharisees, however, did accept and believe in
it.
In
the Greco-Roman world, many believed that there was no such thing as life after
death, while others accepted the idea that some people, in extraordinary and
unique circumstances, might come back to life again. The Christians in Corinth
might have accepted the idea that Jesus was raised from the dead, which would
reflect some of the commonly-held ideas that circulated among the secular society
of the time. But it’s likely that at least some of them didn’t really think
that any of them would also be resurrected after their own deaths.
Paul
meets this challenge head on, saying that, if there is no resurrection in a way
that will also apply to each one of us, then we are, of all people, the “most
to be pitied”. The reason, he says, is that we’ve been putting our faith and
our hopes into what amounts to a lie or a fable.
Is
God’s power to create and to re-create limited? To deny the idea that God’s
saving act in raising Jesus from the dead was a reality that also applied to
each and every Christian believer is to say that God had limited His power to
create and to recreate to Jesus alone, and not to all who are in Christ. I
think that’s one reason that Paul uses the word “first fruits” (verse 20). In
the Bible’s understanding, “first fruits” signify that the first fruits of the
harvest are important not only for the first part of the harvest, but that the
first part of the harvest, which is presented to God in thanksgiving for the
harvest, also applies to the rest of the harvest, all of it. In the same way,
the Passover event at the time of the Exodus from Egypt preserved not only the
lives of the first born among God’s people, but it pre-signified the saving of
the lives of all of the people.
Perhaps,
for those early believers in Corinth, the problem was one of proof. There may
have been questions about being able to prove that Jesus actually rose from the
dead. After all, none of those Corinthian Christians (most likely) had actually
encountered the risen Lord Himself. It’s possible that some of the other
Apostles had been in Corinth, those who had actually seen and touched the risen
Lord. We don’t know that for sure. But it is possible that they had heard about
those other original Apostles and the testimony that they offered. Certainly,
Paul would have told them about his own resurrection encounter with the risen
Lord on the road to Damascus. But those Corinthians hadn’t seen the risen Lord
for themselves. They had, however, seen the faithfulness and tenacity with
which Paul had proclaimed the Lord’s resurrection, even in the face of
resistance, hardship, and suffering. It’s also possible that they’d heard about
some of the work of the other Apostles elsewhere. Perhaps that should have
provided proof enough.
If
the resurrection isn’t a central reality of the faith, then what we believe is
reduced to a set of ethical principles. If the resurrection isn’t a central
reality of the faith, then it’s possible that, in our own estimation and
belief, the Lord is reduced to being a great and heroic figure in history, a
gifted teacher and role model for life.
But
believing in the Scriptures means much more than simply accepting as an idea,
as a mental exercise, certain propositions of faith. Faith in the Bible is much
more than that: Faith equals power, power to change, power to see that God has
and will have the final word in all things. In all of this, we are in need of
the Holy Spirit’s power to help us to see with the eyes of faith the reality of
the resurrection, not only the Lord’s but ours as well.
For
if we come to the place of believing that God has the power to create and the
power to re-create, then we can also know that everything in this present life
takes on a different perspective, for God is making all things new in the
here-and-the-now, even as He will make all things new in the fulness of time.
Thanks
be to God!
AMEN.
