The Son Also Rises
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series I, Cycle C
When it comes to the resurrection, one of the things that all of the Gospel writers agree upon is that nobody was expecting it. Even the disciples seem to have been caught by surprise. This is actually kind of surprising in and of itself, considering that on at least three different occasions Jesus took the disciples aside and told them exactly what to expect. "See, we are going up to Jerusalem," he explained, "and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again" (Mark 10:33-34).
Now I'm not sure how he could have put it any more plainly than that. He practically gives the disciples an hour-by-hour itinerary. But apparently, they never took Jesus at his word. They literally didn't think that he would live up to it. That's why there is no receiving line at the tomb. No one shows up on Easter with a "Welcome Back" banner and a fresh change of clothes for the Master. Indeed, one gets the impression that the disciples had no intention of showing up at all.
They send the women to the cemetery instead. And as far as I can tell, they aren't any more eager to make this trip than were the men. The only reason they trudge down there at the crack of dawn is to anoint the body with spices. Ordinarily, they would have attended to that ceremonial matter prior to his burial. But in this case, since Jesus' body was removed from the cross just hours before sunset and the beginning of the Sabbath, they ran out of time.
So, first thing Sunday morning, before the sun even came up, they set out on their lonely pilgrimage. Why so early? It could be that this was their way of coping with Jesus' death. Sometimes, when your grief is too heavy and the pain too fresh, you just try to stay busy. You concentrate on the things that need to be done, and occupy your thoughts with various chores here and there, so that you can keep on keeping on. However, I'm guessing that the main reason for their pre-dawn departure is to avoid the snickering crowds, with all of their snide comments: "What happened to your Wonder Boy? Some Messiah he turned out to be!" These women aren't really in the mood for that right now. They just want to go to the tomb and get it over with -- the sooner the better.
The last thing they expected is that the tomb would be empty. I've always thought that question the angel poses in Luke's Gospel, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5), missed the point. They weren't seeking the living among the dead; they were seeking the dead among the dead. They were not looking to find anything in that cemetery but a corpse. And maybe a few guards, who somehow got stuck with the most impossible assignment in military history, that of trying to keep the Lord of Life in the grave.
The bottom line is that the resurrection was not anticipated by anybody. Even the Apostle Paul had trouble believing that Christ had risen from the dead, until he was practically knocked half-dead himself on the road to Damascus. It was an experience that left him blind for three days. But in a sense, it also opened his eyes. Never again would he be able to look at life -- or even death -- the same way. More than anything else, that seems to be the source of his concern with the Corinthians. Paul couldn't understand why on earth they would want to go back to their old worldview. "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead?" (v. 12).
It's hard to read these words without having the sense that he is speaking here not just theologically, but very personally as well. For Paul, the resurrection is the linchpin of the Christian faith. Remove it and everything else falls away -- including us! If the real flesh-and-blood Jesus Christ, who was crucified dead as dead can be, did not get up on that first Sunday, then there's not much sense in our getting up and going to church any Sunday thereafter. "Everything I have been preaching to you has been a lie," says Paul. "What's more, everything you've been doing has been a complete waste of time." Granted, he had told them earlier that "we are all fools for Christ's sake." But there's a difference between appearing foolish and actually being foolish. Playing the fool will at least get you some laughs now and then. However, the way Paul sees it, if the resurrection never happened, then we shouldn't be laughed at; we should be pitied (v. 19b).
Hence, what he strives to do in this passage is to provide the Corinthians with a rationale for believing in the resurrection. The argument he offers is a deductive one. That is, it moves along a logical chain of reasoning, one link at a time.
If there is no resurrection of the dead ...
... then Christ has not been raised
And if Christ has not been raised ...
... then our preaching was a lie ...
And if our preaching was a lie ...
... then your faith is futile.
It sounds solid. But as anyone who has ever studied logic will tell you, in order for this kind of argument to work, it has to be anchored somewhere. In other words, I need to offer some evidence of the initial proposition. If you accept the first link in the logical chain as an established fact, then the rest will follow. If you don't, the whole thing immediately falls apart.
I am indebted to Thomas Long for this insight. He suggests that we think of it this way. Suppose I am trying to convince you that a mutual friend, Ernie, was absent from church last Sunday. It obviously won't do much good for me just to insist repeatedly that he was not there. If you are skeptical that I'm telling the truth, I need an argument. So I construct the following: "If Ernie was in San Antonio last Sunday, then he could not have been here in our town, and if he wasn't here, he, therefore, could not have been present in our church." So far, so good; the logical chain makes sense. But it only works to the extent that I can prove the first link in that chain of reasoning. Thus, I need a photograph of him standing in front of the Alamo, or a receipt from a restaurant on the River Walk, or something of the sort that will verify for you, and anyone else who is interested, that Ernie was, indeed, in San Antonio last Sunday. If I can produce the evidence at the beginning, then the rest can be logically deduced.
However, as Long points out, in these kinds of arguments, sometimes the proof is not at the beginning, but at the end. So, to return to our example, I say to you, "If Ernie was in San Antonio last Sunday, then he was not in our town, and if we wasn't here, he couldn't have been in church." At which point, you respond, "But he was in our church last Sunday. He sang in the choir. He was part of my Sunday school class. I shook hands with him as we were Passing the Peace." In other words, because you know and trust your own experience, the logic of the argument now runs the other way. Ernie was definitely in our church; therefore he could not have been in San Antonio as you claim.
I think that's precisely how this argument from Paul is meant to work. It taps into our own experience. "If there is no resurrection of the dead," says Paul, "then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching was a lie. And if our preaching was a lie, then your faith is futile." At which point, the Corinthians would have surely responded, "But our faith is not futile!" Even the Corinthians -- as badly divided as they were -- knew that their faith meant something, because they had experienced the risen Christ.1
The same is true for you and me, of course. We do not need to conduct a congregational expedition back to the empty tomb, and weigh out all of the evidence to discern whether it is true. Go to the places in your life where you know it's true, because you have already encountered the risen Christ.
Go back to that dark valley, where you could barely see because of the tears in your eyes, and you didn't know how you were going to make it through the end of the day ... and then you felt a gentle hand upon your shoulder and a voice whispering in your ear: "Do not be afraid, I'm here with you."
Go back to that time when you tossed and turned all night, anguishing over a decision for which there were no easy answers and every alternative carried a certain degree of risk. You didn't know for the life of you which way to turn ... and somewhere, somehow, you felt a strength not your own, which said: "Trust me, I will look after you."
Go back to that occasion when you were struggling to believe in yourself, and your entire life seemed pointless ... and suddenly you felt the embrace of Christ's love, providing you with the assurance that you count for something in this world, and in the next.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we don't need to explain the resurrection. The resurrection explains us. We know our faith is not futile. And if our faith is not futile, then our preaching has not been a lie. And if our preaching has not been a lie, then Christ has been raised from the dead. And if Christ has been raised from the dead, then so shall we.
____________
1. Thomas Long, "The Easter Sermon," Journal for Preachers, Vol. X, No. 3, pp. 6-7.
Now I'm not sure how he could have put it any more plainly than that. He practically gives the disciples an hour-by-hour itinerary. But apparently, they never took Jesus at his word. They literally didn't think that he would live up to it. That's why there is no receiving line at the tomb. No one shows up on Easter with a "Welcome Back" banner and a fresh change of clothes for the Master. Indeed, one gets the impression that the disciples had no intention of showing up at all.
They send the women to the cemetery instead. And as far as I can tell, they aren't any more eager to make this trip than were the men. The only reason they trudge down there at the crack of dawn is to anoint the body with spices. Ordinarily, they would have attended to that ceremonial matter prior to his burial. But in this case, since Jesus' body was removed from the cross just hours before sunset and the beginning of the Sabbath, they ran out of time.
So, first thing Sunday morning, before the sun even came up, they set out on their lonely pilgrimage. Why so early? It could be that this was their way of coping with Jesus' death. Sometimes, when your grief is too heavy and the pain too fresh, you just try to stay busy. You concentrate on the things that need to be done, and occupy your thoughts with various chores here and there, so that you can keep on keeping on. However, I'm guessing that the main reason for their pre-dawn departure is to avoid the snickering crowds, with all of their snide comments: "What happened to your Wonder Boy? Some Messiah he turned out to be!" These women aren't really in the mood for that right now. They just want to go to the tomb and get it over with -- the sooner the better.
The last thing they expected is that the tomb would be empty. I've always thought that question the angel poses in Luke's Gospel, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5), missed the point. They weren't seeking the living among the dead; they were seeking the dead among the dead. They were not looking to find anything in that cemetery but a corpse. And maybe a few guards, who somehow got stuck with the most impossible assignment in military history, that of trying to keep the Lord of Life in the grave.
The bottom line is that the resurrection was not anticipated by anybody. Even the Apostle Paul had trouble believing that Christ had risen from the dead, until he was practically knocked half-dead himself on the road to Damascus. It was an experience that left him blind for three days. But in a sense, it also opened his eyes. Never again would he be able to look at life -- or even death -- the same way. More than anything else, that seems to be the source of his concern with the Corinthians. Paul couldn't understand why on earth they would want to go back to their old worldview. "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead?" (v. 12).
It's hard to read these words without having the sense that he is speaking here not just theologically, but very personally as well. For Paul, the resurrection is the linchpin of the Christian faith. Remove it and everything else falls away -- including us! If the real flesh-and-blood Jesus Christ, who was crucified dead as dead can be, did not get up on that first Sunday, then there's not much sense in our getting up and going to church any Sunday thereafter. "Everything I have been preaching to you has been a lie," says Paul. "What's more, everything you've been doing has been a complete waste of time." Granted, he had told them earlier that "we are all fools for Christ's sake." But there's a difference between appearing foolish and actually being foolish. Playing the fool will at least get you some laughs now and then. However, the way Paul sees it, if the resurrection never happened, then we shouldn't be laughed at; we should be pitied (v. 19b).
Hence, what he strives to do in this passage is to provide the Corinthians with a rationale for believing in the resurrection. The argument he offers is a deductive one. That is, it moves along a logical chain of reasoning, one link at a time.
If there is no resurrection of the dead ...
... then Christ has not been raised
And if Christ has not been raised ...
... then our preaching was a lie ...
And if our preaching was a lie ...
... then your faith is futile.
It sounds solid. But as anyone who has ever studied logic will tell you, in order for this kind of argument to work, it has to be anchored somewhere. In other words, I need to offer some evidence of the initial proposition. If you accept the first link in the logical chain as an established fact, then the rest will follow. If you don't, the whole thing immediately falls apart.
I am indebted to Thomas Long for this insight. He suggests that we think of it this way. Suppose I am trying to convince you that a mutual friend, Ernie, was absent from church last Sunday. It obviously won't do much good for me just to insist repeatedly that he was not there. If you are skeptical that I'm telling the truth, I need an argument. So I construct the following: "If Ernie was in San Antonio last Sunday, then he could not have been here in our town, and if he wasn't here, he, therefore, could not have been present in our church." So far, so good; the logical chain makes sense. But it only works to the extent that I can prove the first link in that chain of reasoning. Thus, I need a photograph of him standing in front of the Alamo, or a receipt from a restaurant on the River Walk, or something of the sort that will verify for you, and anyone else who is interested, that Ernie was, indeed, in San Antonio last Sunday. If I can produce the evidence at the beginning, then the rest can be logically deduced.
However, as Long points out, in these kinds of arguments, sometimes the proof is not at the beginning, but at the end. So, to return to our example, I say to you, "If Ernie was in San Antonio last Sunday, then he was not in our town, and if we wasn't here, he couldn't have been in church." At which point, you respond, "But he was in our church last Sunday. He sang in the choir. He was part of my Sunday school class. I shook hands with him as we were Passing the Peace." In other words, because you know and trust your own experience, the logic of the argument now runs the other way. Ernie was definitely in our church; therefore he could not have been in San Antonio as you claim.
I think that's precisely how this argument from Paul is meant to work. It taps into our own experience. "If there is no resurrection of the dead," says Paul, "then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching was a lie. And if our preaching was a lie, then your faith is futile." At which point, the Corinthians would have surely responded, "But our faith is not futile!" Even the Corinthians -- as badly divided as they were -- knew that their faith meant something, because they had experienced the risen Christ.1
The same is true for you and me, of course. We do not need to conduct a congregational expedition back to the empty tomb, and weigh out all of the evidence to discern whether it is true. Go to the places in your life where you know it's true, because you have already encountered the risen Christ.
Go back to that dark valley, where you could barely see because of the tears in your eyes, and you didn't know how you were going to make it through the end of the day ... and then you felt a gentle hand upon your shoulder and a voice whispering in your ear: "Do not be afraid, I'm here with you."
Go back to that time when you tossed and turned all night, anguishing over a decision for which there were no easy answers and every alternative carried a certain degree of risk. You didn't know for the life of you which way to turn ... and somewhere, somehow, you felt a strength not your own, which said: "Trust me, I will look after you."
Go back to that occasion when you were struggling to believe in yourself, and your entire life seemed pointless ... and suddenly you felt the embrace of Christ's love, providing you with the assurance that you count for something in this world, and in the next.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we don't need to explain the resurrection. The resurrection explains us. We know our faith is not futile. And if our faith is not futile, then our preaching has not been a lie. And if our preaching has not been a lie, then Christ has been raised from the dead. And if Christ has been raised from the dead, then so shall we.
____________
1. Thomas Long, "The Easter Sermon," Journal for Preachers, Vol. X, No. 3, pp. 6-7.
