Bible Text: 1 Corinthians 15:50-58 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: The Apostles’ Creed | I am wearing my butterfly stole today. It was a gift from my first congregation, Harriman United Methodist Church in Bristol. I began my ministry career at that church on July 1, 2006. Within two weeks, I had my first funeral. I ended up doing sixty funerals for them in five years. It just so happened that I was appointed pastor there at a time when many of the people who were part of the church in its hey-dey during the 60’s and 70’s were dying. When I got ordained, they gave me this stole as a gift, because butterflies are a symbol of resurrection. The earthly caterpillar buries itself in a chrysalis, and later emerges as a heavenly butterfly.
I like to think that, doing all those funerals at Harriman, I got pretty good at it. At least I assume I was good at them, since I also got asked by several local funeral directors to handle funerals for people not in my church. I loved doing that, because I got to share the good news about resurrection with people I might not otherwise have met. But funerals are tiring, and one day, as a joke, I told a funeral director from Levittown, you want me to come do a funeral for you? Well, my church is raising money for a significant building project. You make a $1,000 contribution to that fund, I’ll do the funeral for you. Believe it or not he said, no problem! I met him at the funeral home, and he handed me a check made out to Harriman UMC for a thousand bucks. I should have asked for two thousand!
But I have to say, for as many funerals as I have done, for all the Easter services I have preached, it’s still not easy to start a sermon on resurrection. Because as wonderful as resurrection is–we don’t get to resurrection without first going through death. And death is a very painful subject. There are some in this room today for whom death is a very raw subject, indeed. At every burial I do, I always read some verses from the 1 Corinthians 15 passages we just read. I never set out to make them my memory verses, but I don’t even need to look at my United Methodist Book of Worship for them anymore. “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. Then the saying that is written will be fulfilled. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This perishable body must put on imperishability. This mortal body must put on immortality. When we proclaim our belief in the resurrection of the body, we are proclaiming our belief that death is not the last chapter of our lives. We know the best is actually yet to come! Notice this line isn’t in the creed in the Jesus section. It’s in the Holy Spirit section. It’s our resurrection we are professing belief in. The idea of heaven is one of the most universally accepted and comforting beliefs we Christians have.
But this belief in the resurrection of the body was at one time very controversial. Paul was writing his letter to the Corinth, a city known for its wild and crazy lifestyle. It was the Las Vegas of his day. It was also known for its devotion to many different gods, and these different religions had influenced people’s beliefs about what happens after you die. The church at Corinth was made up of people from many backgrounds. Some were Jews who held to the traditional Old Testament belief that after death, you go to Sheol, which is not hell, there’s no torment there, but there’s no light, no joy, no nothing. It’s like a shadowy underworld of nothingness. Others were Jews who had embraced the belief that started emerging a few hundred years before Jesus that there will be a resurrection, a time in the future when the world is perfect and we enjoy the life God intended for us from the very start. The church was also heavily influenced by Greek thought, which denied the physical resurrection but said our souls are divine, and thus will live forever–but not as unique individual souls like we think of today. The Greeks thought all souls will get reabsorbed into the great divine and live on in that way.
Paul spends a lot of time trying to convince the people of Corinth that there will indeed be a bodily resurrection. We will be raised, just as Christ was raised. Without that belief, we set ourselves up for an identity crisis! Eternal life is our birthright as members of the family of God. But not all the church members at Corinth understood themselves to be resurrection people. I think Christians today struggle with that as well. We’ve got Jesus’ resurrection figured out. We worship on Sundays instead of the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday as a way to celebrate the resurrection. We place empty crosses at the front of our sanctuaries. The risen Christ is central to our worship.
But I’m not sure we have fully connected to the truth that it’s not just Christ who gets resurrected—it’s all of us! And it’s not just at death that we will experience resurrection. Paul begins this section of scripture by talking about “flesh and blood”, which we know has two meanings. It means our bodies in general—this earthly life will one day become a heavenly life for each of us. But flesh and blood can also refer to that which is sinful in each of us. We have to gradually get rid of all those sinful desires, sinful habits, sinful thoughts—anything in us that does not lead to the life God desires. John Wesley called this “going on to perfection”. The Christian life actually involves a series of deaths and resurrections.
It starts with baptism. We don’t generally dunk people in the United Methodist Church, but the small amount of water we use is meant as a symbol of dying to the old way of living, drowning our sin, and rising to a new life in Christ. When we take communion, we take the bread remembering that this is Jesus’ body, given for us, and the cup is Jesus’ blood, shed for us. Jesus’ death allows us to have new life. Death and resurrection are at the heart of both sacraments in the United Methodist Church. Death and resurrection are to be our spiritual pattern in this life, all of which prepares us for resurrection in the next life.
I wish I could give you all the details about how this resurrection will work, but we don’t know for sure. But we do know that our individual personhood matters and will be retained in some way. Earlier in this chapter, Paul uses a sermon illustration, and I thought, if it’s good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me. No seed produces fruit unless it dies, right? And there is no way to tell, from looking at the seed, what the fruit will eventually look like. Apple seeds look nothing like apple trees. Pepper seeds look nothing like pepper plants. We put these seeds in the ground, and God does something amazing, and in time, something completely new emerges. That is all we really need to know about resurrection. We have these bodies that will eventually die and go in the ground. But from our bodies, from these seeds, will emerge a new creature, a new kind of body, one that is built to last forever.
But this new body, even though we have no way of predicting what it will look like, it will be unique. Just as the apple seed contains DNA so that it can only produce an apple tree and apples, and not peppers or cherries or bananas, when I die and am resurrected, I will be made alive as only I can be. I will be made alive as Dorry, you will be made alive as someone who is uniquely you.
Maybe that is why I always feel close to God when I do funerals. A lot of what pastors do all week long isn’t terribly spiritual. We do a lot of odd jobs: unlock the door for the piano tuner, figure out how to troubleshoot the alarm system, learn about the new water leak detector our conference insurance is requiring us to install. I try to go through my day with an awareness of God’s presence, that even “administration” has the word ministry right in it. But it can be hard to stay connected to God, even working in a church!
When I do funerals, though, it’s easy. I can feel the spirit of God in the room. I can feel the spirit of the deceased person in the room. All that is good and noble and true and pure about them is in that room, and all that was not good about them has passed away. The funeral service marks an end to a lifetime of them dying and rising. It is sacred ground for sure.
The idea of the Christian life being a series of deaths and resurrections might be new to you, but you have actually already been living out this pattern. For instance, dying to a sin we discover in ourselves, rising to live differently. I have witnessed you dying to resentment and anger when someone hurts us, and rising to forgiveness and freedom. We are trying to die to prejudice and hatred, and rise to justice. We’re dying to selfishness, and rising to generosity; we’re dying to shame and rising in belovedness. Paul said earlier in chapter 15, I die every day! All that is flesh and blood in us, all that is earthly and time bound and not heavenly, all that must pass away in order for us to experience the abundant and eternal life Jesus offers.
If you get a lot of practice dying and rising, all these experiences of God’s grace over many years in our lives add up to a lot of faith. All that experience with God’s grace can help us, as one of our funeral prayers says, face the future unafraid. We can face death with less anxiety, with confidence even, if we have been practicing dying all along. Not that it will be easy or pain-free. But when we willingly die to a sinful mindset or habit, and feel the power of being raised to righteousness, that bolsters our trust so that when our lives are taken from us unwillingly, God’s power to raise us will be made all the more evident. We are resurrection people, not just in death, but in life. And when you know that you are unique, and what is unique about you will be preserved for all eternity, not just in the memories of your loved ones or the legacy you left behind, but preserved by God for all time? That is some really good news.
About ten years ago my dad suffered some health problems, was given a terminal diagnosis, sent home and put on hospice. I went up to Towanda and spent a week with my mom and dad. He was in great transition, and sometimes it wasn’t clear if his mind was with us or somewhere else. I said to him one night, Dad, you know you are dying, right? He said yes, I know. I asked him, are you sad? He said, why would I be sad? I had a great life. I was surprised, because I just assumed someone who loved life as much as my dad would be sad to leave it, but he was okay with it. Then I said, are you scared? He thought about that a second and said, no, I’m not scared. I figure, this world has been pretty good, what’s next is going to be at least as good if not better! My dad was facing death with confidence, because he had experienced dying and rising lots of times before.
This perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. All that is not eternal in us must pass away, not just once at the end, but throughout our lives. We love the new life part, but the dying to the old, that is rough. Paul had his own experiences with this as well. And so he closes this section of his letter to the church at Corinth by encouraging them. “Stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Jesus said those who die, will be raised! “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.