This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 146, 147; Exodus 13:3-10; 1 Corinthians 15:41-50; Matthew 28:16-20
This morning’s Canticles are: Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
What is sown is perishable,
what is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor,
it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness,
it is raised in power. …
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. — 1 Corinthians 15:42b-43, 49.
None of the people Paul wrote to in Corinth questioned whether Jesus rose from the dead. What some of them didn’t understand was what his rising from the dead meant for them. It had been some twenty years since Jesus’s resurrection, and they had seen plenty of their fellow church members—friends, husbands, wives, parents, children—die. Some in the church had concluded, therefore, that Jesus’s resurrection affected them only in a “spiritual” way. It provided a “ticket” to heaven in the future, and conferred new spiritual powers in the present, like miracles, heavenly languages and/or their interpretations, prophetic powers. But, while Jesus’s own physical rising may have been a powerful metaphor for the “new creation” they felt within themselves, they figured physical death was the end of physical, bodily existence for them.
That led to some unfortunate, even crazy, conclusions about what to do with their bodies in this life. Paul spends most of First Corinthians dealing with these problems. Some Corinthian believers, because they thought their bodies had no connection to being a “new creation” and going to heaven, were sleeping with people they had no business sharing a bed with—one person, with his stepmother; some, apparently, with prostitutes. Others, believing the Holy Spirit in them was holier than, in their way of thinking, their “polluted” bodies, were refusing to have sex with their own spouses. Some thought that Christ’s resurrection meant that they deserved to “grab all they could get” right now, right in this life. So they were using the court system to wrangle financial benefits for themselves, even bringing suit against other followers of Christ.
To Paul, these Corinthians were acting like entitled, over-privileged “king’s kids.” “Already you have all you want!”, he chides, “Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we might be kings with you!” (1 Corinthians 4:8).
And, as far as Paul was concerned, the issue was their confusion about what Christ’s resurrection meant for them, not only in the future, but in the now. Their basic problem was failing to see that Christ’s physical resurrection (which they believed in) necessarily also meant physical resurrection for them. If Paul could get the Corinthians straight on that, he could get them to back away from their ethical stupidity. Back in chapter 4 (where the above quote comes from), he had pointed to his own sufferings and weakness as evidence that none of us has yet to receive all the “riches” Christ has won for us or come into the fullness of the “kingly” status Christ confers. All of those promises await resurrection: a new bodily existence, after our physical deaths, when Christ returns for us to raise us up with a glory that is like his. If you let go of that hope, Paul insists, you get yourself into trouble—you become a petulant narcissist, demanding your “best life now.”
In today’s passage, Paul is asking them to consider the frailness and fragility of their own bodies: perishable, dishonored, weak, “of dust.” And then to dare to believe that what Christ died for was to guarantee them something so much better, even if they couldn’t have it now. That something better was imperishability, honor, strength, a whole new existence when the Holy Spirit gives their bodies—not to mention this entire weary planet—a complete “do over.” Resurrection. Paul wants them to take hold of the vision and truth of the riches, the inheritance, awaiting all followers of Christ.
Right now is a wonderful time for all of us who have benefited from living in one of the most prosperous nations the world has ever seen, and who have grown accustomed to life’s prospects getting better and better all the time, to realize that appearances are deceiving. The coronavirus has made it abundantly clear that, despite a level of freedom and safety unlike anything the world has previously known, our existence is actually quite tenuous. Apart from Christ, as the rock group Kansas put it a number of years ago, “all we are is dust in the wind.”
Easter’s glory is that, in the end, we are not dust in the wind. But Easter’s glory is also that, in the meantime, we can live more humbly, more graciously, and more lovingly. As heirs of the resurrection, we belong to each other, and so we can be more attentive to the needs of those around us than to our own needs.
Collect for Thursday in Easter Week. Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day.
Reggie Kidd+