Mystery Unfolding
A sermon about faith, doubt, and the unfolding of mystery
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you — unless you have come to believe in vain.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them — though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ — whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 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. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts 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?”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ~1 Corinthians 15:1–26, 51–57 NRSV
I don’t watch tv or movies at home very often. Pre-pandemic, I enjoyed going to the theater, but every time I try to watch movies at home, all I can think about is the million other things that I ought to be doing instead of sitting in front of a tv screen. During this time of quarantine, though, I’ve joined the family in watching some movies and binge watching a few television series together. One movie that we watched and everyone loved was Knives Out, which is a clever “whodunit”. It’s a great film, and it was fun watching everyone in our family try to figure out the mystery of who killed crime novelist and family heir Harlan Thrombey.
In Knives Out (Don’t worry. I won’t give away any spoilers.), Mr. Thrombey has a large, dysfunctional family, to say the least, and they all happen to be at this estate on the night that he meets his demise. Everyone, it seems, has a motive to kill him. Throughout the film, a master detective interviews each family member and estate employee. As in any classic whodunit, each suspect knows part of the story, bits and pieces of what happened. Not even the killer knows every encounter that every other character had with the victim or every motive each person had for wanting to see him gone. It’s the job of the detective to put all of the pieces together and uncover the great mystery of what happened and who, in fact, done it.
In the final chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he attempts to put it all together, to lay out as plainly as he can the mystery of resurrection. In doing so, Paul ends up creating a confessional statement, almost a creed, for the early church.
It seems that some in the Corinthian church are starting to doubt resurrection. It’s not clear if they doubt Jesus’ resurrection or just what the rest of us might experience when we die. They seem okay with the notion of spiritual resurrection, the belief that our spirits live on after we die, but some are growing suspicious of the idea of bodily resurrection. A theme that runs through scripture is that on the last day (for Christians, that’s when Jesus returns), all of the faithful who have died will have their bodies come back together and then will burst out of their graves alive Lazarus style. Imagine Return of the Living Dead but as more of a happy ending than a horror movie.
To Paul, Jesus’ resurrection and ours are so inextricably linked that you can’t believe that Jesus resurrected and not believe that we will, too. Paul goes as far as to write that if you don’t believe that we can be physically raised, then you can’t believe that Jesus was physically raised, and your faith is worthless. This seems harsh and rather dogmatic to us. After all, in this day and age many of us probably aren’t convinced that we’ll experience a bodily resurrection at the end. Add that to the fact that we’re Baptists. We believe that the Holy Spirit can speak to each us, so there’s some freedom in what we believe. That’s why we don’t like creeds. We don’t want anybody telling us what we have to believe.
To Paul this is all so important because he sees a deep connection between death and sin, evils that plague us all. Death is the enemy. The sting of death is sin, so the way to defeat sin is to defeat death. If we don’t defeat death, we can’t defeat sin. Ultimately what Paul is saying in all of this is that, in Jesus, God destroys both death and sin because God is the God of life. Now that’s something I believe.
In this passage, Paul does mostly expound upon bodily resurrection after death, but he also acknowledges that resurrection happens within us all of the time. He calls himself “one untimely born”. Carla Works, New Testament professor at Wesley Seminary, says that this translation is poor. “One untimely born” sounds like Paul thinks he was born in the wrong era. Dr. Works says the Greek word actually means “premature”, so perhaps Paul was literally a premature baby, one who, in the first century, had little to no chance of survival. He was given life when conventions of the day said he should have died. Paul goes on to point out that he was also given new life in that he was a persecutor of Jesus-followers who became a devout Jesus-follower and an apostle. Life overcomes death and sin within us all of the time.
Resurrection is the very heart of the Christian faith. Yet it’s also a mystery, isn’t it? Some aspects of it are easy to experience but hard to explain. Others are just completely mind-boggling altogether. Some dimensions of resurrection may be too much for many of us to believe or too mysterious for some to risk putting their hope in. It’s disheartening when Paul describes it as a zero sum game. Either you believe every bit of Paul’s creed or you believe none of it.
I love how at the beginning of this passage, Paul describes how the story of Jesus has been passed on. Paul has shared with the church of Corinth all that he knows, but much of that story was first told to Paul by others. He goes on to the name the many people whom Jesus appeared to after his resurrection and tells the church, “Many of the people who saw him are still alive. You can talk with them, and they’ll tell you about their experiences with Jesus.”
In the midst of Paul’s emphatic statement, this serves as a good reminder that none of us knows the whole story, and yet every Christian has our own story that has led us to Jesus. None of us lives without doubt. If so, what we profess is something other than faith. None of us has all of the answers, but each of us has experienced something that, as Rachel Held Evans once said, makes the story of Jesus the story we’re willing to risk being wrong about.
One year at the Wild Goose Festival, I watched Krista Tippett from NPR’s On Being interview author and Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz Weber. Towards the very end of the interview, Bolz Weber said something that I, a minister in a non-creedal tradition, found fascinating. Speaking about the Apostle’s Creed, she said that nobody today believes every line of it, but that in every faith community, for every line of the creed, there is somebody who believes it. She said that faith may not always be given in sufficient quantities to individuals, but it is to communities.
Don’t beat yourself up if you struggle to embrace all of the story. But don’t dismiss that you also embody an important part of it. What holds your faith together? Where do you wrestle the most? The part of the mystery that most keeps you going, may be the area that most challenges my faith. The parts that make the story the one I’m willing to risk being wrong about just may be the areas that most cause you to doubt. That’s why it’s so important that we tell the story and share with others how it has become our story. That’s why it’s important for us to pass it along, like Paul did. The more we each share our own experience with the Divine mystery, the closer we all get to knowing the fullness of it.
The thing about the mystery is that it’s always unfolding, always making us new, and we all see that more fully when we see it in you.
