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As I began to prepare this message, I asked Christie what I
could say that would be new and exciting and interesting about 'I
believe in the resurrection of the body?' Her response: "I have
no idea; it has never been a burning issue with me." What's that
you say? AMEN??? True enough. This is NOT a subject upon which
we dwell too much. Except in the face of death, we almost never
consider it. But when confronted with issues of mortality...our
own or that of those we love...we become interested.
"I believe in the resurrection of the body." The
affirmation is virtually impossible to explain. The best minds
in the church have labored for nearly twenty centuries to do so.
The language itself is a problem. After all, we know that,
following death, our bodies deteriorate: "Earth to earth, ashes
to ashes, dust to dust," as our funeral services say. The most
secure burial vault in the world will not prevent the process.
We remember the little boy who looks under his bed, sees the dust
bunnies, remembers the dust-to-dust language, and yells to Mom,
"Come quick and check under this bed. If I'm not mistaken, we
got somebody here either comin' or goin'."
Perhaps that is one of the reasons so many folks, when
thinking about what life lies beyond this one, use phrases like
the "immortality of the soul" rather than "resurrection of the
body." Now, as you scholars know, nowhere in scripture is it
said that the soul will survive death in some inevitable and
automatic fashion, as though the soul were ultimately independent
of the body and had some kind of inherent immortality. That is a
Greek idea. Greek philosophers described the soul as a little
spark of the divine temporarily imprisoned within a material body
(which is inherently evil). The body - the prison house - is of
this world and will die, but the spirit, the spark, is immortal
and is released from the "prison house" upon death. It is this
spiritual part of us human beings which will survive death. So
said the Greeks. But the Hebrews saw the issue quite
differently. A human being is not easily separable into body and
soul, but is an integrated, indivisible unit, everything
combining to make a person. If there is to be a future life,
then somehow God has to re-create the whole person after death,
not just this or that part.(1) Understand this: in Christian
teaching, eternal life is not due to some property intrinsic to
the soul; it is entirely a gift of God.
So saying, the church continues to use the "immortal soul"
language without batting a theological eye. The picture of it is
clear in our minds: the body is the cocoon, the soul is the
butterfly. The soul flutters away in the sunlight, and no one
has any further regard for the dry, decaying, discarded cocoon.(2)
But then we are jolted by this weekly affirmation concerning
belief in the resurrection of the body.
We do have a bit of a love-hate relationship with our
bodies, don't we? On the one hand, we try to take care of them.
We wash them, shave them, primp them, paint them, nourish them,
exercise them, occasionally indulge them, and do all in our power
to ease their pains. On the other hand, the result of all that
effort is rarely satisfactory: too big, too little, bad hair, no
hair, and, as time goes on, everything just sags.
Two elderly residents of a nursing home were sitting in the
lounge when suddenly a sweet old lady wandered out of her room
and down the hall without any clothes. One said to the other,
"Did you see that?" The second responded, "Yeah, but whatever
she was wearing sure needed ironing."
Be honest - do you really want this body, this old cocoon,
resurrected? Not me. There is too much about this one that is
WRONG!!! First and foremost, there is too much of it. All my
life I have had to fight the Battle of the Bulge and I am tired
of it. I have told you before that my resurrection body will be
SKINNY; after all, scripture says there will be no more tears in
heaven, and if I am not skinny, I will CRY!!! Then there are the
ears that do not hear properly, eyes that need glasses, the nose
that gets clogged during allergy seasons, the blood pressure that
wants to make medical history, and, in general, a mind that
writes checks that the body cannot cash. Sound familiar? Is
this what we want to rise again? Get real!
But week in and week out we say, "I believe in the
resurrection of the body." Why? Simple. This is what the Bible
teaches.
We read about it in our lesson. Questions had been raised
in the church in Corinth concerning a Christian understanding of
life after death. For the Apostle Paul, it came down to one
word: resurrection. First, there was the resurrection of Jesus.
Then there will be resurrection for us all. What will that
entail, these Corinthians ask. After all, they had heard the
stories about Jesus' bodily resurrection from the tomb, but their
Greek heritage had trained them to discount the body (the "prison
house") as evil and something to be gratefully discarded.
Resurrection of the body? What kind of body will this be?
This is no foolish question. There are oodles of
possibilities. Ashley was 14 when she died; will she be
perpetually 14? Mildred was 68; will she be 68? What about
those who die in infancy or what about aborted fetuses? How
about those who have lost arms or legs in accidents? What about
the Thalidomide babies born with seal flippers? Will we still be
male and female with all the appropriate equipment? People have
been amused for a good many years (in a gruesome sort of way) by
a newspaper account some years ago with the heading,'"Who Ate
Roger Williams' Bones?" A historical society set out to dig up
Roger Williams' bones and bury them in a better place only to
discover that an apple tree had grown on his original burial
plot, and much of Roger Williams had ended up in apples, and the
apples had ended up in a lot of other people.(3) What about old
Roger?
The Apostle Paul answers with an analogy: a seed. The seed
is put in the ground and "dies," but in due time it rises again;
and does so with a very different kind of body from that with
which it was sown. What that says is what we shall be on the
OTHER side is somehow contained in who we are on THIS side, but
writ very large. Just as the apple tree comes from the apple
seed and the peach tree from the peach seed - from the very seed
that dies, not from some seed-in-general - so we shall come from
the body-mind combination we are now; but as the apple tree is
far more than the seed from which it grew, and the peach tree
more than the seed from which it sprang, so we shall be far more
than anyone could tell by looking at us now.(4)
Speaking of looking at us, the question of recognizability
arises. If we will go through such an amazing metamorphosis as
seed to tree, will anyone be able to tell who we are?
Absolutely. What has been your experience up to this point? In
your life, you have gone through major bodily changes - infancy,
childhood, adulthood, and beyond. Science tells us that our
bodies go through a 100% cellular change every seven years - that
means if you are 35, you have already gone through five brand new
bodies. But you are still YOU. And your friends and family KNOW
YOU as YOU. Amazing.
But on a deeper level, the answer to the recognizability
question MUST BE absolutely! Recognizability is the key to our
identity. For example, if I suddenly, in a fit of insanity,
chose to throw over my life and all that is in it, head off to a
new part of the country to establish a new life and a new name,
nothing could stop me UNLESS someone recognized me. Our
identity, for good or ill, is inextricably tied to being
recognized. If, right at this moment, no one recognized David
Leininger, I may as well be Joe Blow. If, when I get to the
other side, and this fat seed becomes a skinny tree, but no one
recognizes me, Joe Blow all over again. We WILL know one another
or else resurrection is not worth the bother.
"I believe in the resurrection of the body." Yes, the body
will be different. Paul says, "What is sown is perishable, what
is raised is imperishable." He knew just as we all do that these
earthly bodies of ours deteriorate. But on the other side, what
a change! Musicians won't go deaf; artists won't go blind;
singers won't lose their voices. No more of the physical
limitations that keep us from being all that we can be.
But Paul says the change involves more than just physical
characteristics. He says, "It is sown in dishonor, it is raised
in glory." For many of us, some of the saddest pages in the
history of our lives came because passions got out of hand. We
read about the epidemic of AIDS, the madness of child abuse, the
insanity of drunken drivers murdering people on the highway.
Yes, we dishonor the bodies we have, but our resurrection bodies
will have passions we can control. What a blessing that will be!
Paul says the blessings will not stop even there: "It is
sown in weakness, it is raised in power." Have you ever felt
limited by the body you have? Of course! And the older we get,
the more frequently we feel it. Nothing to be ashamed of...it is
a fact of life. Quite frankly, many of God's creatures have far
more ounce-for-ounce capability than we humans do. The lowly
little ant has a life span of all of eight or ten weeks and then
passes on into oblivion. But even that insignificant little ant
is able to carry burdens that are nineteen times heavier than
itself. Can we do that? Not without a truck! Will we be able
to do that with our new resurrection bodies? Who knows? Paul
does not give us the details. But we can be sure that our
capacities will be significantly improved.
Then there is one more thing: Paul says, "It is sown a
physical body, it is raised a spiritual body." That does not
mean we will be Casper the Friendly Ghost. We WILL have a body!
But it is going to be different from what we are used to. The
simplest way to explain it is to say that our capacity for
spiritual things will be enhanced. For those who struggle to
worship for even a hour a week, one would certainly hope.
There is one other aspect of the resurrection life that is
important to us which Paul does not discuss in this chapter...
family reunion. Paul did not discuss it, but Jesus did.
If you recall, some folks who did not believe in life after
death confronted Jesus one day with a strange scenario.(5) They
described a childless woman whose husband died. Tradition
demanded that her husband's brother marry her, which he did -
then HE died. The next brother married her; HE died. This first
century Typhoid Mary went through SEVEN brothers before she
finally ran out (and I tell you, had I been number six or seven,
I would have run out). The question posed to Jesus was, "In the
afterlife, whose wife will she be?" Jesus responded, "Don't
worry about that. Family relationships are going to be DIFFERENT
over there."
Oh really? Frankly, the idea of an afterlife for me without
Christie and the kids would be hell, not heaven. But if we think
about it without emotion getting in the way, we realize that if
God says earthly relationships will be changed, the change will
be for the better. If God has not chosen to explain just how the
changes will be made, perhaps it is because we would not
understand the explanation anyway.
My children are teenagers. David likes girls, Erin likes
boys. This is a bit of a change for them, because I can recall a
time not many years ago that neither one cared very much for the
opposite sex. I could have told them back then that things would
change, but it would not have mattered. I could have explained
to them the incredible joy of married love as they will
eventually experience it...but what good would that have done?
They would not have understood. Only when they began to mature
were they able to appreciate anything I might say on that
subject, and they will understand even more as they get older.
That analogy may explain why God has not chosen to let us in on
what kind of relationships are in store for us in heaven. We
would not understand anyway.
Paul again:
"I believe in the resurrection of the body!" And remember,
as we believe, so we behave. "Therefore, my beloved," Paul says,
"be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the
Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in
vain." YES!
"I believe in the resurrection of the body." And not just
ANY body either. In the richly descriptive words of John
Killinger, "It will be glorious, like the Hallelujah Chorus in
the flesh, embodied in a person. Like the sun breaking over the
Rocky Mountains in the early morning or settling its colorful
petticoats along the Pacific shore at twilight. Like a thousand
mockingbirds all whistling and yodeling and singing in unison, or
a flock of a million flamingos all taking flight at once!"(6) That
will be GLORY!
Yes, I believe. "I believe in the resurrection of the
body."
Amen!
1. Isabel Wood Rogers, "Our Hope for the Future," The Presbyterian Outlook, 4/7/86, p. 13 2. Albert Curry Winn, A Christian Primer: The Prayer, The Creed, The Commandments,
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 176 3. Addison Leitch, A Layman's Guide to Presbyterian Beliefs, (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing, 1967), p. 133 4. John Killinger, You are What You Believe: The Apostles' Creed for Today, (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1990), p. 113 5. Matthew 22:23-28 6. Killinger, p. 115
When 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." "Where, O death, is your
victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of
death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But
thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ.
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