Resurrection Hope!

We have a book club here at church and this last month we read “The Unwomanly Face of War” which documents WWII from the perspective of many of the Soviet woman who fought in the war, many of whom who did so on the front lines.

The author Svetlana Alexievich interview literally hundreds of survivors collecting thousands of pages of text and miles and miles and recorded tape. The stories that are told are stories of horrendous suffering. The book is arranged in fragmented snippets, small stories loosely arranged. It comes at you much like war, unexpected, without context, seemingly random, senseless and almost all of it horrible. We read of

Of nurses just 16 years old walking into clinics with war torn bodies everywhere expected to help men with desperate eyes.
Innocent girls thrust into the brutality of war in heavy action combat positions as snipers, machine gunners, transport drivers.
Girls afraid of mice and rats asked to stand watch at night in the forest next to graveyards.
Situations so stressful that they would fully gray by age 30, streaks of gray emerged over the course of hours, situations so emotionally terrible that doctors upon post war examination mistook their scarred hearts for heart attack victims.
8th, 9th and 10th grade girls in boots 3 sizes too large, putting daisies in their bayonets thrust into environments where they had to dress compound fractures, kill other soldiers in cold blood and make impossible decisions.

It was a difficult book to read.

Now, of the many takeaways, one of the most sobering realities that readers were forced to acknowledge was that the war robbed many of the girls of joy. They left for the war, eager laughing, joking, singing, bouncing in the back of straw filled trucks, smiling full of life.

They’d show up to their training flushed with energy, enthusiastic, idealistic, eager to serve.

And these singing girls would look at their stony faced, serious commanders and think, “What is their problem? Why are they so grumpy? Why are they so joyless? What’s the deal with that stone face? They would joke, I think it might break if he smiles. Everything seemed so stern, so serious.”

Now of course, that commander was that way for a reason. That commander had been through war. And so the commanders would try to break them of this unrealistic optimism. War is not a joke girls. Do you think this is a joke? They would see all this boyancy and these girls and say, war is no place for that boyancy. War is no place for lightness of heart. That laughter is an incorrect response to the seriousness of what is at hand here.

And the general was correct. But there was no need to lecture because the war had a way of correcting that laughter. That laughter was totally and completely evacuated from these girls. They were shelled out through trauma, through the mindless, senseless brutality of war and through the experience of human suffering. They were 25 years old but in their souls they had lived 4 lifetimes of suffering.

Now they understood. There’s an inappropriateness to being light of heart when the situation is that serious. Never again would they be accused of laughing. It’s not that they were now able to restrain themselves. They could not laugh any more. With enough suffering, there is nothing to laugh about. The soul is so heavy, so weighed down that the soul is too heavy to be lifted by such a light influence such as laughter. The soul is only able to be carried by joy and laughter when it is light. Wind blows a piece of paper down the road, not stones. Laughter is a soft force that carries the light of heart.

Now why do I start with this? Because the fact that these women were permanently burdened by the trauma of war is an evidence of brokenness. This is an evidence of a heart that has been stretched so severely it’s lost its elasticity. It’s an evidence of a soul so emaciated, so malnourished, so broken that it can never fully recover.

Can they unsee those scenes? Can they unfeel those moments, unsmell those smells. It’s a permanent damage of the heart.

And if you step back, you see the ironic tragedy of it all. The young girl is cured of inappropriate laughter by destroying in her the ability to laugh all together.

And we are left with this question observing from a distance, what is worse, “Laughing irreverently and inappropriately in the face of human suffering or to enter into the seriousness of suffering so significantly that you have not the ability to laugh.” Which is worse?

And the answer is, both are terrible and the problem is unfixable.

And what we are sensing is the destruction of our world. We are sensing that there is such thing as unrepairable destruction.

The book was written by a woman of herculean strength, far more strength than I believe that I possess to interview so many woman of suffering and walk away a sane person. But she has no answers for this. She tells the story. She lets these voices be heard, but what is the solution? What is the answer? How can this be repaired? Death is so awful. Can there never be laughter again?

But here’s the amazing thing. When you open up chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians we hear laughter. We hear a deep belly laugh.

What Paul does now at the end of chapter 15 is he stares death straight in the face, he stares at the fangs of these unrepairable evils, his eyes burn with fire as he drills into the very evil that irreparably destroys everything he loves and he laughs.

It’s almost as if Paul is at a funeral staring at the dead body in a casket and he laughs. He’s actually light of heart. He taunts. His tone is so light, you want to rebuke him. Paul this is not place for laughter. If you don’t look at Paul and say, you are insane, you aren’t getting the irony of what’s going on.

He’s celebrating Christian immunity! How? Because the news is so good that it outstrips every terrible thought. The tone of the sermon today is celebration. Celebration in the face of death. Celebration in a morgue. Celebration in a graveyard.

Paul how can you be light of heart in the most tragic of all moments, the moment of death? How is it possible to be light of heart? It seems such an inappropriate response? Don’t you care? Don’t you sense the seriousness of the suffering and the irreparable nature of death.

Paul says, stand back and says, “Open your eyes. Look around you and you will laught too. Take it in folks! It look as if all is lost, but look on the horizon. Do you see victory coming. Today for FCBC is Easter Sunday.”

Paul is clearly celebrating. Your going to feel it as we read it. Your going to feel it in his soul? See it in his bones. Paul’s heart has been steeping in this truth. His heart is like a tea bag in hot water and the truth and him have merged. He’s just rejoicing in the implications! And so we want to celebrate with him since the same true thing which is the cause of celebration for him is the same true thing which ought to be cause in celebration for us. Both Paul and us will be resurrected in new bodies.

For celebration to really be celebration three things have to be understood at once. So we are going to look at the anatomy of celebration this morning. What’s celebration made of?

What’s coming. Why it’s amazing. What it Means for us now.

Here’s what Paul says is coming. It’s summary of everything he’s said so far:

Now all through chapter 15 Paul has been answering questions about what will happen to those who have already died. Paul’s answer they will be resurrected.
But what about those who are left alive in their present bodies at the time of Christ’s coming? Are they going to be stranded in deficient mortal bodies? This is for Paul not merely a scholastic problem: He expects Christ to come soon.

Paul’s answer is that when Christ descends, the transformation occurs and our flawed bodies are clothed in immortality at the resurrection, that will be the fulfillment of God’s long-promised triumph over the powers of sin and death.

And since that is all true. Since those who have already died will receive new bodies and since those who remain will receive new bodies, what should be our response? Celebration.

Celebration is the moment where the irrevocable implication of the some certain news has just hit you. There will be many future moments of glorious reality ahead of you but the peak moment of celebration is that moment when you realize it is certain.

Now to illustrate this consider the NBA Championship. It’s game 7. Someone is going to walk away with the title. Someone is going to get a trophy. And it all comes down to the last sixteen seconds. That sixteen seconds may as well be 600. Anything can happen in 16 seconds in basketball. It’s all tied up. And as the clock ticks away both teams are in such unreal tension. They both want it so badly. 16 second dissolves into three. Now they are inbounding from beneath the basket. There’s an in bound one pass and shot from three point range. It’s released - the game clock buzzer sounds in mid air and it’s nothing but net.

Now, AT THAT MOMENT, look at the bench.

You’ve got a guy who twisted his ankle badly in game 2 and is out.
You’ve got another guy who hasn’t played the entire game.
Another guy who disappointingly fouled out early in the game.

All this tragedy. And what do you see from the bench. I mean, volcanic eruption in celebration. Volcanic. Out of their minds in celebration! Towels swinging. Grown men, crawling all over each other like playground children.

It’s the peak moment of celebration because the victory has been secured.

No trophies have been awarded.
No MVP awards.
No names have been etched into official record keeping books.
No checks have been written.
No rings handed out.
No stories have yet been retold.

All that glory awaits. But it’s certain. It’s now irrevocable.

Paul is living in that buzzer moment. He sees the irrevocable reality of the resurrection. He sees the implications of it all. Yes, there a bodies strewn all over the place with unrepairable injury. Yes there those whose sin has got them fouled out of the game. Yes there are those who really didn’t contribute much on the floor. But the victory belongs to the team and it’s final and absolute and secure.

What is coming for the Christian is the resurrection. And Paul is in the mood to celebrate!

Do you see what’s coming? Let me tell you why it’s so amazing. Let me tell you why this future resurrection is such good news.

There’s no need to explain all the reasons it’s amazing to win an NBA championship. We’ve all seen it happen many times and have imagined what it would be like. It’s amazing because you get paid millions of dollars. You get honor and recognition. You think it’s cool to wear a State Championship sweatshirt? Try and NBA Championship Sweatshirt. There’s glory, recognition, accolades, honor.

But we’ve never seen a resurrection body. So we need to contemplate why this is such great news. What are the future, certain realities that are coming which should cause volcanic celebration in us?

Well here’s what Paul says:

Folks we have cause here for celebration…real celebration. Glorious celebration. The come-unglued, out-of-your-seats type celebration. The victory has been won. Let your hearts steep in that. Become one with that reality.

Yes, we stare with sorrow at the impossibly wrecked societies of our world.

The corruption of governments.
The chaos of human greed run a-muck.
The horrible destruction of the environments.
The fires in Africa.
The horrible suffering and destruction of the hurricanes and flooding in the Bahamas.
We stare in horror at our broken, failing bodies.

Yes, that’s true. That sprained ankle exists. We contemplate,

the broken relationships,
the irretrievable words of hurt and damage,
the shouting,
the anger that has scarred,
the divorces that have left deep scars,
the estranged children,
the tragic unfaithfulness in relationships.

Yes, there were some that fouled out.

But the victory has been secured. The glory has been secured for the team. Did you not just see the ball go through the net. We all get rings. We all get championship sweaters. The metaphor of putting on new and glorious clothes fits right into our metaphor.

Here Paul pictures immortality as a championship sweater that we will soon put on. It’s not on yet. It’s secured. It’s certain but still future.

Now this celebration climaxes for Paul in his citing a an OT text that hundreds of years previous predicted this ultimate victory over the enemy of death.
Isaiah’s Prediction
Paul unrolls the scroll of Isaiah. And if you read much of the prophets you know the pattern of Isaiah. It’s judgment followed by promises of restoration.

It’s destruction paired with hope.
Annihilation next to blessing.

You get emotional whiplash as you read the prophets getting yanked back and forth between these two extremes. Well Isaiah 25 represents one of those sharp cracks of the whip as we move in an instant from judgment and destruction to blessing and celebration.

And I love how Is 25 starts out.

Plans formed of old, faithful and sure. Even Isaiah doesn’t know the depths of what he’s saying. Unbeknownst to him, he’s predicting the resurrection. He’s predicting the cross. Redemption. The ultimate paschal sacrificial lamb. Isaiah’s rejoicing, but unbeknownst to him he’s celebrating a tenth part of the reality. But what he can see is causing goosebumps.

What a scary-beautiful picture.

No matter how excellent your life is.
No matter how setup you are.
No matter how secure your retirement portfolio,
no matter how amazing your health,
no matter how gifted and talented you are,
no matter what kind of social influence you have,

There is a blanket that is descending upon you, there’s a sheet that is falling from the sky that will suffocate you and you will be wrapped in that sheet and laid in the ground. And you can’t escape it. It’s like the walls of the trash compactor in star wars closing in on you.

That sheet is cast over the entire nation, over all peoples. Nobody escapes. And the cause for celebration, the feast of well-aged wine and rich food is the victory dance that happens because that enemy of death has been conquered. That sheet has been torn up. That suffocating blanket is shredded into party streamers. There’s nothing to fear!

This was Isaiah 700 years before Christ. Now it is no accident that the culminating vision of “a new heaven and a new earth” in the book of Revelation also alludes to this same passage in Isaiah:

What Isaiah could not see was that this final victory over death is realized in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The vehicle that accomplishes this destruction of death was the destruction and resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ.

And because death has been destroyed, because we have nothing to fear, we can celebrate. Can I get an Amen?

Now this all matters. This all makes a difference. Yes, resurrection is coming. Yes, it will be amazing. Naturally, in the flesh we should look at death and scream in fright. This will happen to me? You want to talk insanity. Insanity is the fact that anyone without Christ can live a normal life without freaking out. Naturally, there’s nothing but horror ahead.

Supernaturally, we laugh. Supernaturally we sing. Supernaturally we rejoice. **It would be totally appropriate right now for the world to just come together and with a single voice sing the Hallelujah Chorus."

Now like any good preacher, Paul’s not finished till he gets to application. This all is future and true but it means something for you right now.**

Paul’s again exhorting us to close the gap. This all has meaning. This actually means something for the lives we live right now. Because let’s just be honest, this glorious future reality isn’t what we are experiencing right now. We are experiencing a very different moment. We are in the middle of the war. And this brings us to the most important point. In fact, if chapter 15 is the climax of 1 Corinthians then this last verse of chapter 15 is the climax of the climax. It’s the peak, the pinnacle, the apex of the entire book. It’s the point of literally everything he’s said so far.

What is vain work? It’s work that is done for no purpose. It means that if you did the work or you didn’t do the work, it would make no difference. You are working in vain to plant a garden if 2 months later the bugs kill your tomatoes and the plants die and there is no harvest. There’s no point to the work. It’s work that has gone unrewarded.

Do you see what Paul is saying? All our work is given meaning because of the resurrection. Everything you do in the name of the Lord is given meaning. It actually has purpose.

Don’t buy the lie that meaningful work is work that is recognized or work that produces money or work that is admired by people.

Dull work for many of us is useless work, purposeless work. It has to be interesting in order to be useful. There are, perhaps, many here who feel that their labor is futile, routine, and unrewarding. I hear people complain all the time about how they do not enjoy their work, that they only work in order to eat.

A stay at home mom in our culture is not someone whose work is admired. My heart is so burdened for the countless mothers who raise their kids, who sacrifice their own eduction, their own dreams, their career desires and they give it all up to raise their kids. And then they feel as if life has passed them by. They feel as if others had their chance, and I wasted by life changing dipers. They watch the career woman shoot ahead with here trajectory.
And what do they get as a reward for the fruit of their labors? Ungrateful children and husbands who demand that they be respected for the important work they are doing. What a travesty! What crime against the backdrop of what Paul is saying here. Your labor in the Lord is not in VAIN. It is not pointless work.

You want to know what vain work is? It’s work done outside of the LORD. It’s work done without the resurrection in view.

Think about how pointless so much of our work is. It seems really important now, but what about in 30 years. How relevant is the Commodore 64 or the Apple 2E? The most respected well paid minds of the world developed those things and now your microwave is smarter than those things.

The life cycle of products is so short, the moment you retire, whatever it was that you spent your entire life working on is fodder for the land fill. All you design work, those ingenious solutions you came up with went out in yesterday’s garbage truck. Now it’s on to new things, better solutions. The cycle of greed is the engine that drives the vanity of labor forward to the point where we are just exhausted and if we are honest we stand in front of the landfill of our our effort in sheer horror.

What lasts and matters is not the outcome but what you do in the name of the Lord. If you do it for the Lord, he sees it and it matters.

It doesn’t matter if your parenting results in kids who follow Jesus, what matters it that you parent for the Lord.
It doesn’t matter if you work your job at Write Brothers Construction, or Micron or Sally Beauty Supply or HP or for St Lukes and get promoted. It matters that you work for the Lord.
It doesn’t matter if your boss commends you or ignores you. It doesn’t matter if your co-workers like you or dislike you. What matters is you do it for the Lord.

The resurrection makes this work matter. Because without the resurrection the only thing that would matter would be what results you could see in this life. It would be this-life oriented results that you would be chasing. What other results could there be if there were no resurrection?

But because there is a resurrection, there can be such thing as rewards that are unseen in this life. This was the mindset of Moses who was looking forward to the reward. All his decisions were meaningless, non-sense, pointless if there was no such thing as the resurrection! Why would you exchange palace living for sheep herding and then worse, people herding through desert conditions.

It makes no sense, unless there is a resurrection. Moses we are told, was looking to the reward. He was doing his work unto the Lord. The resurrection makes it all possible and gives a point to pointless work.

The resurrection is the necessary foundation for faithful action in the world.

Knowing that life does not end in the grave makes it so that when you go back to your work you do not see it as simply a way by which you earn your living. It has been given to you as an opportunity for you to have a ministry in which you witness, you demonstrate a changed life, a heart at peace, the radiant joy of fellowship with a living Lord on your face, and love pouring out of your heart to those who, like you, have struggled and lost frequently in the rat race of life.

When someone can see you glorying in dull work, it is a testimony to the resurrection.
When someone can see you stare in the face of injustice in the work place, corruption, a boss that is unreasonable and continue to serve with joy, that is a testimony to the resurrection.

That is what God sends us out to do as Christians. He has given us work…

NOT so w can make notable achievements which men applaud… NOT so we can make a name for ourselves. NOT so we can make money and relax and enjoy the wines of this world.

No, we are looking forward to the feast of Is 24, the feast of aged wines, where we experience the victory over death, the reward of the Son of God and the immediate presence of Jesus Christ.

That matters. That changes how you behave towards others. If there were no future reward, no future life, then of course the only thing that makes sense is to repay evil for evil, to grab and snatch and muscle your way into positions of privilege.

But this resurrection reality frees us to pursue future rewards, to show a loving spirit when a bitter one would be natural.
To show a gracious, forgiving attitude, a willingness to return good for evil when returning evil for evil would be natural.
To show an ability to speak a word of release to those who are prisoners of their own habits,
To set free those who are oppressed by wrong, hateful attitudes, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to open the eyes of the blind?

That is the work of the Lord. That is why God gives us contact with others. That is why God has given us our work.
Communion.
And do you want to know what the main message of all that work is? Do you want to know when your work has been accomplished.

When those who see you understand these words, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.” Now in the course of Paul’s thought there is a surface sense in which he means that these bodies are not fit for heaven. In the same way that you need a space suit to go to space without dying, you need a heaven suit that “suits” you to go to heaven. You need to get resuited to go to heaven. In your current suit you would be consumed. You’d be in a spiritual vacuum where you couldn’t breathe and you’d die immediately. So yes, flesh and blood can’t go to heaven.

But there is another more significant sense of what is meant by “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” and it is this sense that ought to be the subject of all your work done for the Lord.

Today is communion Sunday. And on this communion Sunday we proclaim that flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven by which we mean, that no amount of human effort will ever get you into the presence of Jesus Christ.

There is no way to achieve enduring value in God’s eyes by utilizing your natural, normal, human resources. That is what “flesh and blood” means. What Paul says, in effect, is: "Nothing that wins the approval or the applause of men has any value at all in the sight of God."

That statement ought to jar us all a bit, sober us up a bit, shock us back into consciousness. So many are chasing things that literally don’t matter to God. God couldn’t care less.

God doesen’t care about Hollywood Oscars. “That’s flesh and blood.” That can’t enter into heaven.
God doesn’t care about athletic trophies, state championships, world championships.
He doesn’t care about academic degrees. “That’s flesh and blood.” And that can’t enter into heaven.
He doesn’t care about Nobel Prizes
Or humanitarian achievements of a lifetime of labor.

None of these can ever impress God in the least degree.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is

Now if you are going to take that verse seriously – and remember it comes from the lips of Jesus himself – you will see that it agrees exactly with what Paul is saying here. Flesh and blood cannot do anything of value in the kingdom of God. So if God doesn’t care about Oscars or trophies or degrees or Nobel prizes or humanitarian achievements… what does he car about?

You know what is of value to God?

Let me ask you? Is there any work you could find to do in this category? That is living for the resurrection. Work done for the Lord.

Working for the Lord to demonstrate that we don’t have to work any longer.
Working for the Lord to show others that that work has already been accomplished.
Working for the Lord to glory in the finished work.

This is the real work. You see it is the work of Christ on the cross that secures our entry into heaven. His life given to us in exchange for our death. His broken body so we could have a healed body.
The Bread
Flesh and blood CANNOT lay hold of it; it cannot achieve anything within it.

#The Cup

This is what startled Nicodemus so when he came to Jesus, because he was a respected and highly successful leader in Israel, he thought. But Jesus said to him, “You have to start all over again. You must be born again,” (John 3:7 KJV). This is what Paul is saying here. Well, what is the answer then? How can you make your life worthwhile in God’s sight? How can you achieve, by means of labor and effort and energy, anything that is enduring beyond this life? The answer, Paul says, is, “It’s a mystery.”