Sermon of Easter Sunday 4 April 2010 Is compost all that there will be? 1 Corinthians 15

1 Corinthians 15.1-20
written perhaps 15 years after the first Easter

Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen is famous for his style and designs
someone who improves the quality of life for many people.
I read in an article about his personal views
that he has no sense of a new life beyond death.
We had best accept, he said, that we ‘gently compost’.
Our lives only have meaning in this earthly life, there is nothing else.

Is he right? If he is right, are we not wasting our time here?
But his position that this is all there is, is empty and dissatisfying.

It reminds me of Peggy Lee’s song:
‘when I was 12 years old,
my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth.
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears.
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.
And so I sat there watching the marvellous spectacle.
I had the feeling that something was missing.
I don't know what, but when it was over,
I said to myself, "is that all there is to a circus?
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is …’

There were people in the New Testament times
who echoed Peggy Lee’s words.
They said as Paul quotes them in v 32
‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’

But many of us find that idea hard to accept.
Life has a hollow ring if our fate is only to end up as compost
and more than that, we have a deep seated fear of death.
That finds expression in Hamlet’s famous speech ‘To be or not to be’
He speaks of
‘the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of’

What is the Christian answer to these things?
Is there something for us beyond compost
and must we be afraid of death
as the undiscovered country from which no traveller has returned?

Resurrection truth: God keeps his word; v 3

This is what is ‘of first importance’ for Paul
'that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day
according to the Scriptures'

Christ died for our sins We can be forgiven,
Christ was raised from the dead we can have new life
it was planned and predicted in the Scriptures
in Isaiah 53, in Psalm 16
'My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices
my body also will live in hope nor will you let your Holy One see decay'

On the first Easter evening Luke tells us about two friends of Jesus
walking on the road to Emmaus outside Jerusalem.
They are in bits.
Their friend Jesus is dead and now his body has disappeared.
Their hope has been shattered and they are confused.
A mysterious stranger appears - we know it is the risen Lord, but they don't.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus did not at once tell them who he was?

Instead he gives them a bible study in what the Old Testament says
about his death and resurrection.
Then at supper when he takes bread and gives thanks and gives to them
their eyes are opened and they do recognise him
but they also comment
'Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road
and opened the scriptures to us?'

That's authentic Christian experience:
the risen Christ making the scriptures clear
bringing reassurance to the frightened, hope to the despairing,
understanding to the confused
because what God says, he does.

In our post Christian world
which has lost the Christian assumptions of previous times
we need simply and unashamedly to get this message out
most of all to tell to ourselves these exciting liberating truths
that God keeps his word; that life has meaning, that God has not rejected us,
that death is not the end, that that sin can be forgiven
and that there can be something so much better beyond death for the believer.

Resurrection truth: something to look forward to v 42-44

Easter gives us hope beyond this life.
It's a big question: what happens when we die?
It make us afraid, we are uncertain
but the Bible points to us to a picture from the natural world
the difference between the seed, small, shrivelled, colourless
and the flower or the plant, blooming fragrant alive

When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed,
perhaps of wheat or of something else.
38 But God gives it a body as he has determined,
and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead.
The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory;
it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;
44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed-
52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable,
and we will be changed.
53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable,
and the mortal with immortality.

There is a life beyond this life
we shall have an existence, we shall be the same people
but we shall be transformed
It makes me wonder why we have so many flowers at funerals
because the picture the wreaths give is of great beauty
but beauty that does not last.

The flowers wither, a sad picture of human mortality
Surely Christians ought to bring not flowers but seeds
to the funerals of believers?
As good as this life can be, isn't it always overshadowed by death?
There is something better yet to be where death is defeated.

Resurrection truth: keeps us going v 58

Right through this chapter Paul points out the futility of unbelief
and the need for Christians to continue to believe
2 By this gospel you are saved,
if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.
Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
14 if Christ has not been raised,
our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile;
you are still in your sins.
18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ,
we are to be pitied more than all men.

Paul highlights the futility of human life without faith in the risen Lord.
That is the big question which should be posed to people who will not believe.
What is your purpose? Why do you do what you do?
That's the big theme of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.
The writer considers everything that happens 'under the sun'
'God has made everything beautiful in its time,
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men;
yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.'

An Easter faith does not give us answers to everything
but it connects us to the one who does know and care and save.

Resurrection truth tells us that God does what he says
that there is a new life to look forward to in faith in Christ
but pity those who think it’s only compost afterwards.
In rejecting Jesus, they make the most awesome and eternal mistake.

What's the bottom line then? Don't give in. Don't give up.
Receive the victory over sin, be confident in the triumph over death
and therefore keep going

58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you.
Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,
because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.'

The truth of the resurrection encourages us
not only to look forward to meeting Jesus after we die
but also to do whatever we do now with renewed joy and hope.

Maybe you are tired and burned out spiritually today.
You’ve done your best for Jesus but so few seem to listen.
People go their own Christless way and it’s dispiriting
and you wonder why you bother.
Paul is saying to us that the resurrection means
we should stand firm and let nothing move us,
always giving ourselves fully to the work of the Lord,
because we know that our labour in the Lord is not in vain.

But this truth goes further than just spiritual realities.
What Paul has been writing about the resurrection of the body
means that this life matters as well as the next
and how we live in this life determines how we shall be in the next.
And it means that all of this life matters
what we do and how we relate and live at any point.

The problem is that many have been deceived by an old Greek philosophy
which suggests that this present physical life is soiled and degrading
and the sooner we can be rid of it the better.
That is not what the Bible says at any point.
Yes, this present life is soiled by sin
but God’s plan is that we be rid of the sin and its judgement
to serve him in a new creation.
It is not that we escape this tainted body
and our pure spirit flies off to some air fairy heaven
but that this body, and this present life
weak and frail as they are, are transformed into resurrection life.
There will be not only a new heaven but also a new earth.
And there is a profound carry through from this life and this earth
to the new life and the new earth
so that everything we do in this life, even the everyday earthly things,
caring for the environment, doing our work well, respecting other people.
has an eternal significance.