April 19, 2009 Sermon

Resurrection Life
I Corinthians 15:1-11

I started writing this sermon on Thursday. In the meanwhile, six young people, one adult and I have experienced the pressure cooker of the state finals of Odyssey of the Mind. Though I did not know the result as I wrote, I am using the competition as an opening illustration. I can do this because win or not the question OM coaches often ask each other would apply: Is there life after OM?

If an OM team wants to be competitive, it must spend many hours, and a great deal of emotional and physical energy, on its preparations. Our team has worked. We started meeting once a week for two hours in late September. With January came the addition of a second day each week, on this day for four hours. The team gave an entire Saturday to a special training event. We worked four days in the week before the Regional Tournament in mid-March. In addition, our kids often had OM homework assignments. Since Regionals the team has met twice a week. This past week they spent ten hours here at church. They left for the State Tournament in Grand Rapids Friday afternoon and did not get home until nearly midnight last night. And this time card does not account for the great expenditure of intellectual and emotional energy, the lost sleep, the anger, the frustration, the joy.

Is there life after OM? I coach OM because it changed my own children's lives, and I love to offer that same transformation to kids in the church. Through OM my own children learned they were smarter and more creative than they believed of themselves. Through OM my children learned what it meant to be on a real team where each member was vulnerable and valuable. Through OM my children learned to solve problems of all kinds. Through OM my children learned how to persevere through disappointment. OM has no direct spiritual component. Yet if by the grace of God OM coaches do it rightly, children grow. I help coach a church OM team on my own time because I believe it is time well spent for those young people.

If our team did not finish first or second in the state yesterday, the OM year has ended. We now know for certain the answer to the question, “Is there life after OM?” is “yes”. It hurts not to win. Yet I know that God started the transformation of these young people back in September and will complete it in due time. If the team finished first or second in Michigan yesterday I am now feeling dazed, exhausted, exhilarated, and worried about raising the money to travel to the World Finals in Ames, Iowa. The team is happy. If there life after OM? Yes, but that life has changed.
The Apostle Paul wrote the words we read from the Bible this morning. He wrote them to a congregation of new Christians. They had many questions about what it meant to follow Jesus. This passage comes at the end of an extraordinarily long letter filled with answers to many of those questions. But Paul clearly labels this answer “as of the first importance”. The Corinthians—and all Christians---were asking, “Is there life after death?” “Yes!” Paul answers, but the character of that life has been changed. You (we) have been transformed. Jesus has accomplished our resurrections if we believe in Him. Paul explains.

Paul starts by reminding the Corinthians that he has taught them the Gospel. He has given them the Good News and it is saving them. They are being saved. Their lives are being changed. They are gaining a new depth and peace and joy in this life, and they are gaining secure hope for life in the presence of God in the life to come. But, Paul reminds them (and us), we must hold firmly onto the message, onto the Gospel, in order to receive this new life. We must believe the Good News. This congregation once had an elder (now moved on to a church downstate) who approached me with passionate anger. I had preached about the evil side of human nature. I had added an appeal that we all confess our sins in order to receive the forgiveness Jesus longs to give us. I had concluded with my belief in eternal life—the unimaginably blessed life we will know after our own resurrections. This elder did not buy any of it. This elder did not believe that people are necessarily evil—indeed, that some people have practically no evil in their natures at all. This elder did not believe in the need for what this elder called “self-destructive” confession of sin. And this elder wanted me to admit that I didn't really believe in my own resurrection. It was a nice story, don't you know. Keeps people happy. But we ought to be zeroing in on social causes in this world. That's what a good church is really all about.

I remember literally blinking my eyes. I have no problem with the church addressing certain social causes. I have long known that many do not believe in the resurrection: the resurrection of Jesus or the resurrection of believers. But to have an elder so boldly proclaim this point of view disturbed me. It made me wonder whether my preaching really made any difference. It made me question whether other elders might quietly hold the same view. Just this past Sunday a woman shook my hand after worship and said something along the lines of, “There really are a lot of people who think Jesus lived but was not the Son of God, aren't there?” I have always known this to be true, but to have an elder take that position so firmly shook me.

Holding onto our faith in the resurrection really is of the “first importance”. Persevering, hanging on to our faith changes us. It transforms us. It opens our eyes to what our lives can be. We live in the love of God. Paul points to this by reminding us that, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day...” Christ died for our sins. Jesus Christ died. Whereas some struggle to believe in His resurrection, others deny he ever died. If He is the Son of God, God in the flesh, how could he die? Far fewer disbelieve the death of Jesus than the resurrection, but the point remains vital. Jesus died. Jesus loved God the Father, and us, so much, he willingly died for us. He died “for our sins”. He nailed our sins up there on that cross with Himself and killed them. If that is not life-transforming love, what is?

Paul also insists that Jesus rose from the dead. Like an attorney Paul gives us his witness list. The risen Jesus appeared to this follower, then that, and finally to Paul himself. Paul attributes his last-place position in this line to his own guilt. He had persecuted the church. At first Paul had turned Christians in to the Jewish authorities. They and he, as a prominent Pharisee, feared this growing movement, this wildfire that was Christianity spreading through Jerusalem even after they believed they had eliminated its creator. But the Creator lives on, Paul points out, and because He does we are no longer who we once were. We are forgiven. We are transformed. Whereas I sinned by hunting down followers of Jesus, after He appeared to me I came to understand that he forgives me. He changes me. He loves even me.

Do you believe in the resurrection? Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? Do you believe in your own, coming resurrection? Resurrection faith transforms us. Have you experienced that transformation?

According to a recent Barna organization poll, less than one percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 23 hold a “Christian worldview”. I do not agree with the literal interpretation of Scripture that Barna uses. I would therefore find that more young people have a biblical worldview. But I bet the number that meets my standard would still be abysmal. In fact, the number for my generation, the Baby Boomers, would probably be shockingly low. Belief in the risen Jesus Christ transforms life in precisely the way people are thirsting to experience. Faith in the risen Jesus tells us life has a purpose. God loves even us. We can go out and minister in an infinite number of ways only and exactly because what we do matters when seen in the light of Christ.

Young people have left the old, mainline churches because the music and the ministry these churches tend to offer do not connect in any meaningful way with the rest of the lives they lead. This has led to the rise of a new kind of church, one that packages the Gospel in a contemporary entertainment format. These churches (including two big new churches in our neighborhood) have existed for about a generation, now, and the leader of their mother ship, Willow Creek Church near Chicago, has publicly repented for what his church model has produced: a wide-open back door to match its wide-open front door. Hundreds of thousands of people ages birth to about 50 years have passed through these churches. They came because they liked the music and the slick sermons that focus on the people. (One friend calls it “youpreaching”, ala YouTube.) But while these churches have generally taught biblical truth they have not lived it. They have not challenged their folks to let the Gospel change their lives. Indeed, they have carefully avoided any critique of the modern American lifestyle.

Young people between the ages of 18 and 23 see this. They are idealistic. They are naïve. They are passionate. And just this once, they are right. Unless we believe in the risen Lord Jesus our lives are pointless. And unless we let that faith transform our lives our lives are empty.

Let yourself believe. Give yourself over to prayer for faith in the resurrection. Believe in Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the tomb on the first Easter, and believe in your own resurrection to eternal life. Ask Jesus for forgiveness. Follow where He leads.