Understanding Easter (1 Corinthians 15:9-28)

In the first century CE, just two decades after the events of the gospels took place, an early Christian leader named Paul traveled across the known world of the time, preaching and teaching.  Much of the New Testament comes from Paul and his counterparts, writing in the form of letters (aka “epistles”) to small Christian groups scattered around the Roman Empire.   These epistles give us a glimpse of what Christianity was like in the early days.  From a historical point of view, the epistles of Paul and other early leaders offer a glimpse into a religion finding its voice, wrestling with questions of identity, and sorting out what it means to live as a follower of Jesus.

Last semester, I was part of a team offering a religious studies course at Southern Vermont College.  The instructors were largely local faith community leaders, who offered their time to share the wisdom and perspective of the religion they practiced.  As you can imagine, tackling a variety of religions in a course was fairly daunting to schedule.  Nonetheless, we were able to use the religious diversity among the instructors to model inter-religious dialogue, which we agreed was the most important “lesson” to impart to undergraduate students who have grown up in a time when “religion” (of any persuasion) has become less of interest, and for some, part of what ails the world today.

One evening, the course explored Judaism and Christianity with Rabbi Joshua Boetigger and myself serving as the lecturers.  The last of the three-hour class period was given over to questions of Jewish/Christian relations, and that was the easier part of our duties for the evening.  The first two hours were the more daunting.  Joshua and I had an hour each to introduce Judaism and Christianity. 

How do you explain Christianity in an hour?  For starters, how do you deal with 2000 years of history?  How do you explain why the Church is really comprised of a variety of churches, and within these varying movements, there are people within each tradition who come from just about every theological position imaginable? 

To explain Christianity in an hour is next to impossible, however, there is one core belief that can explain Christianity: Christians confess Christ as Lord.  We may vary in our doctrines, rituals, and ethics, yet Christians seek out ways to demonstrate how we are shaped foremost by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of our faith.   To understand a Christian is to understand the resurrection is the inner core of the beliefs we confess, proclaim, and live.

 At the end of First Corinthians, Paul offers a hearty defense and celebration of the Resurrection in the fifteenth chapter.  He tells of the many who were eyewitnesses to Christ himself, who passed down their testimony in support of what they believed God brought about in the resurrection of Jesus.  This belief Paul claims is “the” belief that grounds the faith in a way of believing and living in the world. 

For the first century Corinthians (and yea verily, even the 21^st-century Christian as well), belief in the fullness of resurrection’s promise was difficult to take in.  Some within the Corinthian fellowship believed in the resurrection of Christ, however, they struggled with the belief that the believer would be likewise resurrected someday.  Paul argues that Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of something new that transforms what we have taken for granted about this life.  What is an ending (our death) is just a beginning. 

Although the world as we know it is broken and mired in its own sin, Christ’s life, death and resurrection recasts the world in a new light.  The resurrection restores what Adam and Eve lost in Eden long ago.  In his resurrection, Christ becomes the first fruit of the New Creation, the first sign of what will be coming.  No more shall death be the final word.  In the end, Christ offers us a verdant hope where death shall be no more and the brokenness of the world as we know it shall be no longer. The follower of Jesus claims the Resurrection redefines the relationship between God, humanity, and the world.  The sorrows of humanity’s finite and flawed existence are given new hope in a New Creation.

Down the ages proclaiming and living this faith, Christians have created works of art, liturgy, and composed songs to celebrate the resurrection.  For we western Christians, we tend to imagine the scene drawn fairly literally from the gospel narratives:  an Empty tomb, persons standing around as the angels give their proclamation.  From the world of Orthodox Christianity, another image is quite common, less immediate from the gospels, however, quite in the spirit of other parts of the New Testament writings.  The German Protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann observes,

The wonderful Orthodox resurrection icon [a holy image] shows the risen Christ as the head of the new humanity.  He is holding Adam and Eve by the hand, and pulling them with him out of the world of the dead. 

The Orthodox liturgy runs:  “Everything is now filled with light, heaven and earth and the realm of death.  The whole creation rejoices in Christ’s resurrection.” 

So Christ ‘descended into the realm of death’ in order to fill it with the jubilation of the resurrection.  The night of death gives way to the daybreak colors of the resurrection. (In the End—The Beginning:  The Life of Hope, English translation, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004, p. 149).

In Moltmann’s glorious turn of phrase, “the night of death” is no more.  The “daybreak colors” of resurrection cast the world in a different light.  No more should we live as if the brokenness of the world has the last word.  The Christian does not wait idly by for “the sweet bye-and-bye” of the End yet to come.  Instead, we believe a story so powerful that it can transform the world by its hope and those who carry the hope deep within. 

Hence, Paul calls the Corinthians to cease their conflict and focus on their calling to proclaim and live out the Christ story.  Hence this Easter morning is not just about the traditions of family and food and fun.  Rather, Easter worship is about the retelling of the story that gathers us here and summons us to live out the gospel in the world.   The Church is not meant to be a place for the chosen few or the needs of the fold.  The Church is a place where resurrection’s hope and power is encouraged to spread out through the rest of the world. 

A few years ago, it was Easter Sunday morning at my previous parish in Kansas City.  At one point in the service, the congregation was encouraged to greet one another with the traditional greeting and response for Easter.  One would say, “Christ is risen.”  And the other would respond: “Christ is risen indeed!”

The congregation rose up to greet one another.  This was a new experience for many, as we Baptists have tended not to have such formal liturgy in our worship.  After the exchange of greeting and response was given, people began to hug one another and talk animatedly to one another. 

Looking around the sanctuary from my place up on the altar area, I noticed one man moving through the crowd rather quickly.  He was shaking every single person’s hand during this time.  I was curious how he could do the exchanges so quickly.  Literally, out of a crowd of thirty-plus people, he finished shaking hands of the people in the pews and now headed for the altar area to greet the worship leaders and myself.

He came up to each of us, though he was in a hurry, he deliberately paused, letting us initiate the greeting (“Christ is risen.”) and then the man said, “Indeed!”  And off he went back to his seat.

That Easter morning the man summarized the good news so well.  Christ is risen!, he had been told, and he affirmed the faith, perhaps with the most brevity known in the history of Christendom, but nonetheless, he did it well.  The Christian is the one who hears the good news, and no matter where along the journey of faith one is at, in the newness of belief or the long season of keeping the faith thereafter, “Indeed!” is our continuing response to the good news.

When Paul encouraged the Corinthians to keep the faith, when the Christians down the centuries did the same, we are here this morning to carry that tradition and belief onwards.  This day as we hear the good news of Easter resurrection morn long ago, how can we not help but add our own alleluias to the generations before us?  Together with the saints in heaven and the global Church, this day, we celebrate the day when Christ was raised from the dead and became the first fruits of New Creation.   Christ is risen! 

May we always say, “Indeed!”