Today’s Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 35 through 42 and 50 through 58:
35 But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ 36Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. 41There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.
42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, 52in 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. 53For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54When 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.’
55 ‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.
The teaching on resurrection has been woefully misleading for many centuries. We have turned the idea of resurrection into a spiritual evacuation plan for another world. This has led to all manner of misunderstandings and misappropriations — including the notion that we are saving only “souls” and that the body is essentially a shell to be “left behind” — just like the earth and all earthly things. The end result of all this is a disembodied understanding of resurrection, resulting in very careless approaches to the material world — including medicine, creation care, etc.
But look at Paul’s actual teaching on the resurrection and you see he uses a deeply embodied and even very earthy metaphor to describe it. Resurrection is like a seed reborn into another form. It changes forms; but it does not evacuate or evaporate. What happens between the point of planting and the first sign of spring is hidden and mysterious, but it is not other-worldly. The seed is changed; but it is not lost or forgotten or at all left behind. The world is not left behind.
“Therefore . . .” Paul says, “be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.”
Paul is in fact teaching the very opposite of what so many have come to think of resurrection. He is not saying that we are to disregard the earth or its concerns or all its labors for good. We are to remain in those. Excel in them even. For these plant the seeds which in God’s mystery and good time will be changed, taking off perishability and mortality and putting on immortality and imperishability.
In other words, the labor done under heaven is not in vain. The work of clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, caring for the earth is not in vain. It is not in vain and it will not be left behind. It will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye — from one glory to another, from earth and under heaven as they are into a new heaven and a new earth as they shall be forever and ever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment