Sermons Online ...
Sermon - Resurrection and the Gospel- 11th February 2007
Saint Aidan’s West Epping 8:30am
Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26
I told you last week that I was to give a talk to a group of Jews and Christians about whether religion was good for your health. It was an interesting experience, particularly as a talk on the same subject was given also by a Jewish professor of medicine. As we answered questions afterwards it became clear that we have very different ideas as to what our faith was all about. For him, prayer and the inner life had little significance: it was a matter of keeping the laws as best you can. Motive and attitude was not the issue: it was what you do that matters.
I explained that in the Christian faith, our relationship with God was right at the heart of things. God was interested in our words and our acts, but he also saw behind them into our minds and hearts. Prayer was important, not simply because we could use it to get God to do what we want, but as an expression of our relationship with him. Although I did not say it then, it is true to say that many religions focus on what we do to please God. But the Christian faith is about what God has done to help us.
The Christian message is described as “good news”, rather than good advice, good laws, good principles, good morals. It takes us beyond the limitations and problems of life on earth to a greater hope, of sharing in the fulness of life in the presence of God.
And we see that in some of Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel from Luke 6. Following Jesus consistently will not always be easy. There are those who will be poor or hungry. There are those who will face pain and suffering and loss and rejection for Jesus’ sake. But things will not always be like that, says Jesus. “Your reward is great in heaven,” he says. He gives hope, but in is not necessarily hope in this life. There is something better.
Jesus would certainly agree with those words from Psalm 1 and Jeremiah that the way to blessing is to live God’s way, to put God’s truth into practice. But he also made clear the truth of those other uncomfortable words from Jeremiah: the human heart is devious and corrupt. We need God’s special help to show us the way to go, and the spiritual traps to avoid. And there is the implication that we will continue to need God’s forgiveness, because we will keep on at times choosing the wrong way, instead of God’s way.
Yes, forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith. We were created not simply to be God’s servants with jobs to do and rules to obey. We were created to be God’s children, to receive the love he shares and to respond to that love in faith and loving service. Through the cross God calls us back into a restored relationship with him.
That is what Christianity has traditionally claimed. But why do we believe it? Why believe that Jesus’ death was anything other than a tragic act of injustice, a martyrdom and nothing more? Because of the resurrection! Because on the third day, as we say in the Creed, Jesus rose from the dead.
It was extraordinary, unique. To many people it seems incredible. They find it impossible to believe that a dead man could come to life, never to see death again. Any explanation would seem easier to believe than that. But the resurrection of Jesus is an essential part of the Christian faith.
The New Testament is clear and consistent in insisting that Jesus really rose from the dead, and in last week’s reading from the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul went through the basic facts. Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. The burial of Jesus underlines the reality of his death.
And then Paul goes on to give a list of people who saw Jesus alive and well following his death. Peter, the twelve, a group of more than 500 people, his brother James, and then Paul himself. He could have mentioned others, but that was sufficient for his purpose of making clear that the resurrection was real, visible, tangible. It was not the wishful thinking of confused people. It was not the vision or dream of an isolated individual. Most of the witnesses were still alive: they could be questioned by anyone who wanted to test their credibility.
Now the nature of the resurrection still causes controversy amongst Christians. The New Testament doesn’t allow us neat answers to all our questions. But it is truly Jesus who is seen by these witnesses: he is recognizable, visible, touchable; his wounds can be checked out. He talks, eats, cooks.
And yet there are aspects of the resurrection stories that cause concern. There seems a degree of confusion about the exact course of events of that Sunday morning: who saw what, when and where. And there is something new about Jesus and his body: he is not always immediately identified, he seems to have new powers that enable him to appear and disappear in ways he did not do before.
I don’t think that the possible confusion about people’s movements of the first Easter Day really undermines the basic consistent message of the reality of the resurrection. And some of the strange aspects of Jesus after his resurrection remind us that this was more than a mere resuscitation. This was Jesus’ resurrection body, and its points us to the newness of resurrection life. The danger of getting too disturbed by the newness of Jesus’ body is that we will lose sight of the message that this was still truly Jesus, tangible, bodily, real. Jesus’ resurrection is not, according to its witnesses, just a spiritual unearthly visionary thing. We might say that it incorporates a new depth of reality.
The whole fifteenth Chapter of 1 Corinthians - one of the longest chapters in the New Testament - focuses on the resurrection of Jesus, its significance, the implications, and the hope which it opens up. This was of vital significance to Paul, especially as he had brought the Gospel of Jesus to Greek people, who had very different ideas about what lay beyond the grave. Many of them believed that the human body was a prison for the soul, and that death set the soul free of the body. Death destroyed the body, and good riddance to it, but the soul would be set free.
But the Bible sees the human body as part of God’s good creation, even though it has its problems. Resurrection means that the body is not disposed of, but transformed: there will be newness and yet continuity. The life to come will not be less than life on earth: it is not our souls by themselves marching on, but a new level of life, we might say as completed people.
And the resurrection is the key. Paul spells out the implications of the idea in some people’s minds that you could have Christianity without the resurrection. Without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no Gospel: just an admirable or confused teacher who had delusions of grandeur. Without the resurrection the Christian faith is useless - not much more than a fairy story. Without the resurrection, we Christians are telling lies about God: if he is there at all, he will not be pleased about that. Without the resurrection, we have no reason to believe that God will forgive us our sins. Without the resurrection of Jesus, we make fools of ourselves when we make sacrifices for Jesus’ sake.
But the reality, says Paul at the end of our reading, is that Jesus has been raised. We can believe the witnesses. It does make sense, extraordinary though it is. And the resurrection of Jesus points us to the hope of something even better, life in all its fulness, in the presence of God in all his glory and love, where we shall Jesus as he really is, where love and life shall be perfect. Jesus knew that hope when he told his followers to hang in there, even though it would be easier to give up.
What is the Christian faith? Above all it is good news - good news for eternity. It calls us to live now as Jesus’ people. But above all it calls us to humble dependence on Jesus the risen Saviour, whose resurrection makes clear that he is indeed the way, the truth and the life.