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I Cor.15.19-26; Lk. 12.1-12
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I Cor.15.19-26; Lk. 12.1-12
Let me catch my breath… Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is
risen indeed!
There is a story told of a baptism on a hot summer day
somewhere in the
The little congregation had gathered by the
Once a year there is a gathering on the banks of the river
for the annual baptism. A little boy
happens to pass by and he notices that there is a line of people moving toward
the river…
Some young, some old. The boy’s curiosity gets the best of
him and he too gets in line.
By the time he realized that those in front of him are going
into the water, it is too late,
as he too is seized by the man in black and like those
before him, he goes under the water…
When he came up the booming voice asked “Do you believe?”
The boy had no idea what the man asked of him… so he is
silent and under he went again...
This went on for several more times until finally the boy
came up sputtering…
“Believe… I believe…”
And the booming voice said, “What do you believe?”
“I believe you want to drown me…!”
Col. 2.12., Rom.6.4, I Cor. 15.4.
When you were buried with him in baptism,
you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him
from the dead.
Therefore we have been buried with
him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, so
we too might walk in newness of life.
So the boy, whether he realized it or not, was not too far
off the mark. His “drowning was a sort of burial” and his gasping for air was
indeed life-giving...
Today we celebrate the third article of the Creed…
Those who say that all religions are pretty much the same…
that they teach the Golden Rule: “do unto
others as you would have them do unto you” or the other way around…
are wrong…
The core value of the Christian faith is found in:
We look for the resurrection of the
dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
Let me tell you what resurrection is not.
It is not immortality of the soul…
In Genesis we are told when God created our first parents he
breathed into them “Ruach” which can
mean breath, wind, or spirit…
The “wind of life” and they became living beings…
But their life was cut short when they ate of the forbidden
fruit and are told “from the earth you
were made and unto earth you will return…”
At the grave site of all funerals we say “Dust to dust,
ashes to ashes…”
These stories are ancient truths about the human condition.
Plato, the Gnostics, and their spiritual ancestors known
today in a resurgence of Eastern religions such as re-incarnation,
believe that we are immortal …
Not so says the Bible.
The truth that this day celebrates is not the immortality of the soul or re-incarnation or resuscitation
but resurrection.
It is God doing a new
thing.
Resurrection is the word… It does not exist in other
religions… Muslims have their Koran, the
Jews have their Torah, and philosophers have their wisdom.
Only Christians have the resurrection…
We believe that God brought forth the universe “Ex nihilo”
out of nothing.
Whether it is captured in the language of science with the
“big bang” or in the poetry of Genesis; it is God who speaks the creative word…
This word speaks with stentorian clarity.
Nine times the refrain is heard: “and
God said.”
Movingly, this chapter tells us that there is nothing that
exists apart from Him.
He is not a chef who works with ingredients; he is not a
craftsman who needs his tools, or a carpenter who labors with saw and hammer…
God needs no tool except his Word of command.
The Bible knows nothing of what we call mere words.
The Bible views words with radical realism. It is not in
Scripture that we read, “Sticks and
stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Blows that come from sticks and stones are in time
forgotten, but words may wound so deeply that a lifetime is not long enough to
recover.
Words are power.
A word gets its power from the authority of the speaker.
A Prussian composer speaks the word and the 88 tones of the
piano become beautiful sonatas.
A British poet speaks the word, and the 26 letters of the
English alphabet become moving poetry and gripping plays.
It is so because that composer is Beethoven and the poet is
Shakespeare.
In 1945 a man from
The word spoken by Harry S. Truman in 1945 and the word
spoken by John F. Kennedy in 1962 got their power because they were spoken by
presidents of the
When God speaks the creative word, this word does not return
to him empty, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. We live in a time when it is politically correct
to be gender sensitive – to not offend.
In the spirit of ecumenicity, to value the viewpoint of the
other, to have dialogue on what we have in common.
All well and good.
But as a Christian, I have a story in which I find my
identity.
In creation, in the broken cord of
In the voice of the prophets.
In the birth of
The same Lord that created this world Ex nihilo.
Whose vocal cords rasped raw with those agonizing words “it
is finished.”
And with those words, God dove into the primordial darkness
of hell…
Until the morning when again the Word spoke …
“Why do you look for
the living among the dead…he is not here, he is risen!”
Do you believe?
asked the old country preacher as the boy came up sputtering.
And again for a third time…
And the boy said “yes.”
And what do you believe? “I believe you’re trying to drown me…”
And that is the question and the answer, isn’t it? Amen.