Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
I Corinthians 15: 1-4; 12-22
1 Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain.
3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. 21 For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.
“I never quite understood this … missions thing”
We were sitting in class, and Patrick had just floored me. He is far and above the smartest person in the class, and he is a far better student than I am. He can rattle off quotes or the main ideas of any number of theologians at the drop of a hat, and is not afraid to state his disagreement with any of them, so it was a little intimidating to hear him question what immediately came to my mind as the lifetimes of service given by thousands of missionaries over the last couple of thousand years.
The question is a valid one: Why bother? What is it about the gospel that causes us to be sitting here, 2000 years after it’s beginnings, still talking about it, still acting on it, still caring about it? Why do we still engage in missions? In the sending out and GOING out to share the Gospel?
In 1792, when William Carey, the first British missionary to India, and the man considered to be the father of modern missions, presented this idea of going to India to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, one of the other ministers, a Dr. Ryland, interrupted him and shouted,
"Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine."
In spite of the opposition, Carey persisted, and the following year was able to set sail for India under the sponsorship of the Particular Baptist Missionary Society. Over the next 41 years, serving the first 20 undercover, since at the time it was illegal to BE a missionary in India, according to British law, Carey taught at the Fort William College in Calcutta, where the civil servants were trained. He taught Bengali, Sanskrit and Marathi. India is a multicultural nation, with hundreds of different languages, dialects, and subcultures. By the end of his career, Carey had succeeded in translating the Bible into 6 languages and the New Testament and Gospels into 29 other languages.
Our text speaks to the heart of why. Paul was addressing those in the Corinthian church who were, in their own minds, too smart for the Gospel.
Corinth would be the equivalent of a present-day New York, London, or Paris. It was a multicultural crossroads of trade and commerce. There were temples to all the Roman and Greek gods, as well as probably multitudes of other gods. The citizens, and, one would have to believe, the members of the church would have been steeped in the local culture, which included a very Greek understanding of the soul and the body, and how that played out in regards to the belief in a bodily, a physical resurrection.
Here we need to bring in a term that would not rear it’s head for another hundred years, but which had it’s roots in the ideas of the time that Paul was addressing: Gnosticism.
Bear with me; I’d like to quote from the commentary I was reading from:
GNOSTICISM A second-century heresy that was a mixture of Judaism, Christianity, and Greek mystery religions. Some of its major tenets were:
1.The human body is matter, and therefore is evil. It is to be contrasted with God, who is wholly spirit and therefore good. 2. Salvation is the escape from the body,
achieved not by faith in Christ but by special knowledge (the Greek word for "knowledge" is gnosis, from which comes Gnosticism). 3. Christ's true humanity was denied in two ways: (1) Some said that Christ only seemed to have a body, a view called Docetism, and (2) others said that the divine Christ joined the man Jesus at baptism and left him before he died, a view called Cerinthianism, after
its most prominent spokesman, Cerinthus. This view is the background of much of 1 John (see 1Jn 1:1; 2:22; 4:2-3). 4. Since the body was considered evil, it was to be treated harshly. This ascetic form of Gnosticism is the background of part Colossians (Col 2:21-23). 5. Paradoxically, this dualism also led to immorality. Since matter (and not the breaking of God's law) was considered evil, breaking his law was of no moral consequence.
Something to point out: Gnosticism as such was not a full-blown movement at the time that Paul was writing to the Corinthians, but there were … core Gnostic ideas already present, which eventually developed into the belief system we now call Gnosticism.
Basically, it went against the Jewish, and if the truth be told, the pharisaic understanding of bodily resurrection. Odd, isn’t it? That the Pharisees, the people with whom Jesus had the most problems, believed in the bodily resurrection, and actually were critically instrumental in making it a commonly held belief among first century Palestinian Jews.
The Greek understanding of resurrection – and the one with which Paul was contending at the church in Corinth – was a purely spiritual one. The only thing that is eternal is the soul. The body has no place in the resurrection. The Jewish understanding views the body to be as important as the soul in the resurrection, but views the bodily resurrection as taking place for all humanity at the same time at the end of time. They never lost sight of that original blessing bestowed by God after completing creation and pronouncing it ‘good’.
Back to the text: verse 12:
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.
Paul’s use of the term ‘resurrection’ was in the fully human sense of the word – in the bodily sense of the word. It was what he’d experienced in his meeting with Christ on the road to Damascus. Here he was, persecuting what he considered to be heretics, and he’s confronted with their leader in a way that confirms his own belief as a Pharisee in the bodily resurrection – as radical a transformation as can take place took place in Saul of Tarsus that day. He is speaking to the Corinthians not from theory but from experience.
Earlier in the passage, we find one of the earliest … some would call it a creed, but since we’re Baptists, I suppose we’d call it a ‘statement of faith’ beginning in verse 3:
3 That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures
Paul is again reiterating what he first preached to the Corinthians when he first came to them: the basic Gospel of Christ, that he gave his life for us, and that he rose from the dead, triumphant over death. What he’s found is that some believers were embracing this Greek understanding of the resurrection, this special knowledge was being imparted to them, and, being thus higher beings, they were desensitized to the needs of those around them – they were enlightened, holy, free from the law, and therefore had license to do as they pleased. There are issues that Paul addresses in other chapters; that a man was sleeping with his stepmother, that the Lord’s Supper has turned into a drunken feast, that members of the church are suing each other in court; They’d lost sight of what the primary call of the Gospel was. We find it summarized by Christ in Luke 10:27:
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself"
The point is this; we live in a cosmopolitan society, even here on the Northern Neck. Compared to the vast majority of the world’s population, our educational level is high. Simply taking into consideration the amount of information we have available to us through television and radio, to say nothing of the elementary,
intermediate, and high schools in the county, and having Rappahannock Community College just a few miles up the road, and the Internet, and the libraries of all those schools, there is no lack of knowledge.
I am a firm believer in the spread of knowledge, the discovery of knowledge for it’s own sake. There is nothing to fear from gaining knowledge, but we must never lose sight of the fact that no matter how much knowledge we acquire, we will never know all there is to know. As far as we can progress as a society and a civilization, we can never achieve … parity. Chuck Colson said that when humanity loses touch with God, one of two things happens: either humans try to become gods themselves, or they get lost in pursuing sensual pleasures. Does that sound like something that might be going on today?
This month we are collecting the Alma Hunt offering for State Missions. A portion of that offering is going to fund the Kingdom Advance initiatives of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. Those are: Empowering Leaders, Emerging Leaders, Glocal Missions and Evangelism, and Courageous Churches.
The way I see it, I think Jerusalem Baptist is moving forward in all those initiatives: Glocal Missions and Evangelism: You’re taking to heart the fact that missions is no longer divided into foreign and domestic, but that we find the world coming to us, so our mission is both global and local – Glocal.
In that Jerusalem decided to take a chance with a couple of nearly forty year old seminary students who had a heart for migrant workers and displaced people, you empowered us in this leadership role, and by virtue of the fact that you took on a first time Pastor, and in faith joined me in stepping into that partnership, you are encouraging an emerging leader and are a courageous church.
Patrick’s question was a valid question, and it deserves an answer. Why Bother?
This afternoon we are going to be hosting an ‘Encuentro’ – a Hispanic Gathering. What we are doing here today, both now and later this afternoon is all because of Christ’s resurrection. We gather, we remember, we study, and we worship. We live in community, love each other, care for each other, and sing together, pray together. And we give – to the ministry of the church, and to the ministry of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board through the Alma Hunt offering for State Missions.
Why bother with any of it? The word ‘bother’ can so easily – and accurately - be replaced by the word that is underneath. When we are asking why bother we are asking why care? Why love? The answer is simple: it is found in 1st John 4:19:
We love because he first loved us.
If you are here today and do not know that first love, that God felt for you so much that he sent his only son to die on the Cross for your sins and 3 days later raised from the dead, your invitation is to lay hold of that love, embrace the one who embraces you, and make Jesus Lord of your life.
If you are here today and are looking for a place to belong, where you can find family, and community, and fellowship, and challenges, and work to be done for the Kingdom, we would welcome you.
If you are here today and are needing to reclaim the simple mystery of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, your invitation is to rededicate yourself to living out the faith that calls us to proclaim what is foolishness to the gentiles.
Lets pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment