In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey recounts one of his early memoires of Easter. Surprisingly, he does not write about an Easter egg hunt, or a chocolate Easter bunny or even a pancake breakfast following an Easter Sunrise service. Instead, he recounts the death of his beloved kitten, Boots.
Boots is an adorable six-week-old, kitten that lives in a cardboard box on his family’s screened porch. On Easter, Boots is finally allowed to venture out into the yard for the first time. Her thorough exploration of the yard keeps all the neighborhood children entertained, until that terrible moment when the neighbor’s pet Boston terrier Pugs spots Boots. In a flash, Pugs is across the yard, clasping Boots in his mouth, shaking her like a sock, until Boots drops lifelessly to the ground.
Yancey prays for a miracle. He cannot believe that his kitten is gone, forever. Reflecting on this childhood experience, he says that although he could not have articulated it at the time, what he learned that day is how irreversible death is. Anyone who loses someone close to them understands how he feels. Death feels final, and absolute. But thankfully, through Christ, death lost its victory (1 Corinthians 15:55). While funerals and grave yards remind us that life is short, the resurrection assures us that death will also be brief. This lesson passage is about the resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning and the future resurrection of those who believe in Jesus. The lesson encourages adults to declare their belief in the resurrection.
In this passage, Paul writes to reiterate the centrality of Christ resurrection to the gospel message, to ensure believers that they too will someday be resurrected and to correct the mistaken view that only our souls are resurrected. 1 Corinthians 15:12 reveals the reason for Paul’s discussion of the resurrection. Some of the Corinthian’s doubt one aspect of the resurrection. They accept that Jesus is resurrected. After all, as the opening verses of chapter 15 indicate, any Corinthian who is skeptical can simply go and talk with the many eyewitnesses who saw Christ alive following the crucifixion. The problem is that some among them do not believe in the bodily resurrection of the dead.
The phrase translated here “resurrection of the dead” literally means “rising of the corpses.” So, when Paul talks about resurrection, he does not just mean life after death in heaven. He also means that those who die in Christ will be raised to new life, and given new bodies. And bodily resurrection is a problem for the Corinthians who think that the body is just an outer shell that needs to be shed. They believe that the body’s functions are embarrassing and lowly compared to those of the soul. But Paul ties the body and the soul together and says, “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44b). When we are resurrected we will have a new imperishable body. This is important to Paul, because as Richard Hayes points out, the gospels declaration of bodily resurrection means that what we do with our bodies in this life matters and it also holds the “promise that our bodily labor is significant rather than meaningless.”
In this passage, Paul also makes a direction connection between Christ’s resurrection and our own fate in the future. Paul writes, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised” (1 Corinthians 15:13). If Christ is not raised, we are all, the Corinthians included, in serious trouble, because the “wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The idea that sin brings forth death is more than a mere metaphor. If we look around us, we can see sin’s destructive power at work. The sin of adultery brings forth the death of marriages. Lust for more oil, despite the risk to ecosystems, is causing the death of birds, turtles and fish in the gulf coast. Sin brings about death, but if Jesus is resurrected then, death is defeated and so is the power of sin in believer’s lives. We have the opportunity to begin to live redeemed lives even now.
The truth that Christ came to earth, lived a holy and pure life, died for our sins, conquered death and rose victoriously on the third day is the bedrock of our faith. If Christ is not raised, we might as well be Buddhist or Muslim or Hindu. The resurrection of Christ is the crux of our faith. All of Christianity hangs in the balance. We can deny the resurrection and thus, lump Jesus in with all the other wise teachers who have ever lived and ultimately, died or we can accept that Christ is resurrected and therefore, totally Other. If Jesus is totally Other, completely unique, then, His resurrection requires a response from us. To ignore it, means to reject the gift of life and salivation that God offers. To accept it, means to believe that we are a redeemed people, freed from the power of sin and death. This is Paul’s message to the Corinthians and to us. Now, we must decide how to respond.
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