Materials
What We Believe
#7
The Life Everlasting
1 Corinthians 15:50-58
by R. Todd Bouldin
This morning we come to the conclusion of our series on what
we believe. Each week we have explored the basics of Christian faith
as expressed in Scripture and in the earliest written statement of
the early church, The Apostle’s Creed. While we do not recite
the Creed in worship as other traditions do, it is a helpful reminder
to us that the beliefs we espouse and proclaim are those believed
by the church for two thousand or more years. If there are days in
which you find these things difficult to believe, or days in which
you feel that you are the only one still believing them … Creed
reminds you that you are not alone. Untold millions of thinking, decent
and good people have affirmed these core beliefs for ages. Today we
come to the last of those core beliefs: the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Prayer
My friend Rabbi Michael Lotker always says that Christianity largely
is about what you believe, and Judaism is about what you do; that
Christianity is focused on finding paradise in the after-life, and
Judaism about making this life a paradise. I always tell him that
I don’t like his characterization because I think Christianity
is about both, but I think it is fair to say that the church sometimes
in the past has been so heavenly minded that it has been no earthly
good.
Today we confront a different problem. Sometimes the church is so
earthly good that it isn’t very heavenly. Talk about heaven
and eternal life has receded to the background as we seek to make
sense of our existence and to improve our lives in a chaotic and terrorized
world. We occasionally talk about heaven when someone dies, but that’s
about it. The Bible certainly doesn’t give us many details about
the afterlife, and I find that we are frustrated about that, and we
even make up some good stories when we need them to comfort us . .
. but they are not in Scripture. But I think we largely ignore the
after-life because it just doesn’t seem too relevant to people
who are just trying to get through the week.
I want to make the case to you this morning that what you believe
about resurrection and life after death is extremely relevant to how
you get through your week. Your view of death is affecting more
of your life than you may know.
One of the things about which the Bible is clear is that humans are
mortals created of dust, and to dust we will return. But we always
have resisted this sentence of death and nothingness, and we will
do anything to ignore it or avoid it. It seems to me that this is
what our busy routines are often about – the search to find
significance in our lives while we have them and to pass on a legacy
that extends beyond our death. Otherwise, our lives would be just
a few years journey from dust to dust. Some of us try to accumulate
and save wealth in order to survive ourselves. Others try to create
a legacy by what they build, achieve or accomplish. Presidents of
the United States and CEOs of major corporations think about legacies,
but most of us don’t. We are just busy trying to make a good
life for ourselves, spending incredible hours at work or raising children.
We try so hard to do well, to make the grade, and to live up to our
standards or to those of others. However we are doing it, all of us
are trying hard not to die. So much of our addictions, and hustling,
and even guilt about what we haven’t done is just another way
of protesting, “I am not dust! My life counts and adds up to
something.”
The problem is that no matter how hard we work at life, and no matter
what we accomplish or accumulate, mortals cannot achieve immortality.
As Paul says in this text, our bodies are perishable and are wasting
away. We all are more vulnerable than we like to think.
How we experience death has changed quite a bit. In past years, you
didn’t bring up sex in polite company but you talked about death
all the time. Now you can talk about sex but not about death. Bring
up the subject of death at a dinner party and you won’t be coming
back again. It was different a generation or two ago because people
lived with death. Death was in the air, and most people saw others
experience it. They didn’t think that seat belts, low carb diets
and vitamin supplements would prevent them from dying. But we live
in a time when we are given the illusion that we will never die. Here
in California many people are cremated so that funerals are rare,
and we rarely see cemeteries visible in our towns because we don’t
want to think about death. This illusion that we won’t die has
changed the way that we live. It’s one reason we are so obsessed
with sex in our culture – we have more time to think about it.
In an earlier time, life was hard and short and it just wasn’t
as important. From sexual obsession to substance abuse to workaholism
– they are just ways in which we try to ignore or at least minimize
our death and its consequences.
Just this past week, I met with Nathan about his baptism today and
we talked about the fear of death. Nathan was sharing how much he
wanted to get beyond this fear, but baptism for him seemed so connected
with death. I told him that this is true. Baptism is an entrance
into death. In the first centuries of Christianity, the church
often was persecuted and members of the church were dragged to their
deaths. To be baptized was to sign your death warrant. How would Christians
overcome their fear of being martyred? By going ahead and dying to
this life. They did that in baptism. That is why when Paul said in
Romans 6 of baptism “If we then die with Christ [in baptism],
we will be raised with Christ”, it had important significance
that is impossible almost for us to understand.
By the second and third centuries, baptism often was preceded by a
forty day period of preparation for baptism which included prayer
and fasting. Then in the dark hours of Easter morning those who were
ready to make this commitment walked down to the river, took off their
old clothes, and descended naked into the water as if they were descending
into their grave. The minister would then place them under the water,
and say, “Buried with Christ”. Then he would lift them
out of the water saying, “Risen to new life in Christ.”
And as they ascended out of the water, they would put on new white
clothes as a sign of their resurrection to eternal life in Christ.
This is the secret of the courage that the early church found to face
their deaths, and to eventually win the Empire. Caesar could not triumph
over people who already had died. It is impossible to scare dead
people. What Caesar did not understand is that not only had they
died to this life, but they had already discovered an eternal life
that they could never lose – right there in the midst of life
now.
We often think of “eternal life” as life after death.
But this is not the teaching of the New Testament. The life everlasting
isn’t something that waits for you after you are laid in the
grave. It begins at the moment of your baptism – you are there
identified with the death and resurrection of Christ, and you become
adopted into the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit –
now! Eternal life begins the moment you come up out of those
waters, and it goes on forever as you participate in the God life
forever. Eternal life then doesn’t mean life after death but
life that is characterized by God’s everlasting presence. Every
time the Church encounters death – whether physical death or
the death of those things and people most precious to us – rather
than try to resist it or to protest against it, perhaps we can accept
it and even embrace it and cry out, “Death has been swallowed
up in victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is
your sting?” (Romans 8). After the resurrection and your baptism,
death has no more sting in your life. There’s not even a sign
of it in your life. Life is lived from the perspective of living and
not from dying. Death is in the rearview mirror and life with God
is in the front windshield. To change around the words of the Tim
McGraw song, “You have to live like you’re living”,
not like you are dying.
This church believes in baptism for the remission of sins. That means
that we believe that baptism binds you into Christ’s life. It
is where we die and are buried with him. It is where our sins are
forgiven through his death. And it is where you are risen to a new
everlasting life in Christ that begins today and goes on forever.
That is why Paul says in our text, “If Christ was not risen
from the dead, then all our faith is in vain.” Your hopes for
finding a life that matters more than dust is going to take something
more than good health, a nice body, a decent sex life, and a legacy
of accomplishment. You have to face the truth that your ability to
outlive your death won’t depend on your accomplishments. It
is based completely on what Christ already has accomplished by defeating
death.
That is what it means to believe in the resurrection of the body.
It means that our bodies, in this life and in the next, are raised
to a radically new purpose. No longer are we knocking ourselves out
to get something accomplished before it is too late. No longer are
we trying to pretend that death will not come to us. It’s not
that we no longer fear death. We already have died! The “I”,
the “ego” (in Freud’s language) in me that wants
to stay alive – it’s already died in baptism and it now
has been joined with the resurrected life of Jesus Christ. Death is
behind us, and now every day is another experience of receiving more
of the new life of Christ into our bodies. But you can only receive
that life if you have given up the old life and your expectations
of it.
When you do this, then you can accept all of life as sheer grace.
A minister friend of mine had a young couple come to him for pre-marital
counseling and the husband to be said to his fiancée, “I
don’t know what would happen to me if something happened to
you. I would never survive it.” Then he said that he doubted
anything would happen to her anyway, as if to dismiss the possibility
of death. My friend decided to challenge him, and said, “Mike,
in my experience 100% of all marriages end. Some through divorce.
Some through death. The best hope you have is to enjoy 50 or 60 years
full of love. It’s going to be hard to give her up one day.
But I think you will find yourself enjoying your marriage more if,
instead of fearing that, you just go ahead and give her up today.
Get the grieving over with now. You have been baptized. That means
the dying is in the past, and you can give her up to Christ to whom
she belongs anyway. Then every day you have with her is just pure
gift.”
Obviously, the death of a spouse is just one of the many things we
lose and grieve in our lives. But this is an example of how the baptized
life is fundamentally different from the one where death is is in
the front windshield rather than in the rear view mirror. To be
baptized is to see death as in the past so that we can receive the
life we have been given with open hands. Things may be taken
out of those hands, but only so that more life can be placed within
them. The only other alternative is to live life with a clinched fist,
and afraid of losing things you inevitably will lose. That’s
to live a lie, and ultimately it’s a sad way to live, because
you can’t enjoy or even see the things you are determined to
hold in those clenched hands. Clinched fists or open hands; fear or
life. Death or resurrection.
Once you have been baptized into Christ, it is possible to live in
a new way where death no longer has a hold on your life. Go ahead
and give your life over to God. Open up your hands. Get the dying
over with. You have an eternity to live.
September 18, 2005
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