I Corinthians 15:1-11

William F. Schnell

Easter, 4-12-09

Don’t we all look dandy in our Easter finery!?!  Last Sunday I came to church in a tunic, sash and sandals for our Palm Sunday Cantata.  Somehow I got cast as Doubting Thomas in a dramatic portrayal that featured my colleague as Jesus.  He did okay, but not nearly as well as when he was cast as the devil in a community theater production.  You can draw your own conclusions about that, but I will have to say that I was uniquely suited for the role of Doubting Thomas.

“Doubt,” as someone once said, “is the handmaiden of truth,” and I believe that.  A belief that is so fragile and uncertain as to risk buckling under the slightest scrutiny is no belief worth having.  Neither is a belief worth having just because someone told us it is so.   Anyone can tell us anything, and they usually do.  Further, they often do not agree with one what others are telling us about the same things.  This is why discerning people do not believe everything they read or are told.  Blind faith is no faith at all.  People with blind faith end up drinking poison out of Dixie Cups in the jungle of Guyana, or flying airplanes into buildings.

Perhaps the central most belief of the Christian Faith is that Jesus rose from the dead.  John Stott once said, “Christianity is in its very essence a resurrection religion.  The concept of resurrection lies at its heart.  If you remove it, Christianity is destroyed.”  If that is the case then the central most claim of the Christian Faith is subject to neither proof nor disproof in any objective sense.  Beyond hearsay, which is generally not admissible as testimony in a court of law, there is absolutely no documented evidence for the central most claim of our faith tradition.

If that does not sit well with you on this bright Easter morning, welcome to my world.  The first of several crises of faith I went thorough while a seminary student was precipitated by a similar statement made by a professor in my first theology class who began the first class saying: “God is subject to neither proof nor disproof.”  I argued back and forth with that professor but ultimately had to admit that he was right.  Here I had traded a commission in the United States Air Force for a load of student debt to be told that what I was pursuing only had a 50-50 chance of being true.  I was devastated but I got over it and I can speak from the voice of experience in saying that such crises are absolutely indispensable for growing a strong and enduring faith.

Such crises of faith are nothing new.  Mother Teresa’s private diaries have recently been published, revealing her moments of doubt and uncertainty.  Martin Luther, the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, had deep periods of doubt and darkness of soul.  Even Paul, the author of our text, went through a great spiritual crisis.  Prior to his conversion he was a zealously religious fellow who had advanced in Judaism well beyond his contemporaries.  But then came a spiritual crisis on the road to Damascus.  This crisis did not destroy his faith.  Quite the contrary, it transformed it into something new and better.

Perhaps that is why he was uniquely suited to address some doubts creeping into the church at Corinth.  Apparently there were some Corinthian Christians who were skeptical about certain claims being made by their relatively young Christian faith tradition.  News of this skepticism had reached Paul while he was planting new churches elsewhere and so he sought to address it in a letter to the Corinthians.  He writes: Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.  By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.  Otherwise, you have believed in vain (Verses 1-2).   

It sounds as if Paul is asking others to believe things because he told them to believe them, because he preached such things to them and because they were the gospel truth (so to speak).  But Paul did not believe the gospel was truth for the longest time—not until his previously mentioned crisis on the road to Damascus.  There and then he personally encountered the risen Christ, and that experience of the reality of the resurrection made all the difference for Paul.

Which leads us to the gospel truth about which the Corinthians are wavering.  It is the central most tenet of the Christian Faith according to Paul.  For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.  After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born (Verses 3-8). 

Paul considered himself an apostle abnormally born because the risen Christ appeared to all the others before he ascended into heaven, while he did not appear to Paul until after he ascended into heaven.  By the way an apostle is an eyewitness to the resurrected Christ, which would make Paul the last of the apostles.  Now it is easy for eyewitnesses to believe in something they have seen with their own eyes.  Even Doubting Thomas believed when he saw the risen Christ with his own eyes.  But Jesus said to Thomas: …blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed (John 20:29).  That would be you and me.

If Paul was the last apostle abnormally born, how can we who have never personally seen the risen Christ know the Gospel testimony is true?  How can we know that Christ rose from the dead?  How can we know that the faithful will rise with him?  How can we know these extravagant claims are true without any evidence?  The answer is that we cannot know they are true without any evidence.  We must have evidence if our faith is going to be any more than blind faith.  We must have evidence to know for sure and to know for ourselves.

Paul wrote: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:10).  How do we get to know one another?  We get to know one another by sharing common experiences.  We live together, we work together, we socialize together, we do church together and in many other commonly share experiences we get to know one another. 

We get to know Jesus the same way, by sharing common experiences with him.  Paul speaks of the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.  By sharing in Christ’s sufferings we enter into a fellowship with him.  We all suffer in many ways.  Some suffering we bring on ourselves through sinful living.  But there is another kind of suffering that is distinctly Christ-like.  It is suffering for righteousness sake.  It is denying ourselves for good and Godly causes.  It is making personal sacrifices because that is what God is calling us to do.  It is taking up our crosses to follow that Master. 

It is, as Paul puts it, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.  If I deny myself, bear my cross and make personal sacrifices to share the sufferings of Christ; and if the result of all that is the ruination of my life, I will never do it again I can tell you that.  And I would never expect you to do it either.   Nor would God expect you to do it because God is not in the life-destroying business.  God is in the life-resurrecting business.  If God asks us to sacrifice certain things, it is only because he wants to replace them with new and better things.  God always wants to raise us up to something new and better.

So if the end result of cross-bearing self-denial is not ruination but resurrection, that is all the evidence anybody needs.  We have no longer just heard about the resurrecting power of God, we have seen it for ourselves in our own lives.  We have not just heard about the risen Christ, we know him for ourselves.  We are, as the title of our message puts it, “Living Proof,” that the Gospel is true.  We are living testimonies, walking/talking witnesses and apostolic messengers of the most persuasive kind.  

In the larger chapter from which our text comes, Paul testifies: I die every day (15:31).  What he means is that he denies himself, takes up his cross and sacrifices himself with Jesus every day.  As a result of regularly sharing in the sufferings of Christ he also regularly experiences the resurrecting power of God.  Now what better assurance can we have for hereafter than experiencing something here and now?  We don’t have to know how God is going to raise us up at the last hour.  Heavens, we don’t know how he does it in this present hour. 

When I was thinking of leaving the Air Force for seminary a Major tried to talk me out of it.  He said, “You are making good money right now.  You are going to give that up and take on tuition expenses at this stage of your life?  How are you going to make that happen?  Those were good questions, and I did not have a good answer for them.  Interestingly enough, I still don’t have a good answer.  When I graduated from seminary I owed zero, and I still don’t know how God made that happen.  But he did.  

And so it is that we do not know how God will provide for us hereafter, but we can know that he will.  I had great parents who loved me.  I knew they would always love me, but I could never prove that to anyone in any objective way.  Sometimes the things we know most certainly we are least able to prove.  If we have come to know from personal experience how our heavenly Father loves and cares for us in this life, how can we doubt that he will do the same in the life to come?  Once we experience God’s love we know that neither death nor life nor anything in-between can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is what I think Leon Morris is saying where he is quoted at the top of our bulletin: “The same power that brought Christ back from the dead is operative within those who are Christ’s.  The Resurrection is an ongoing thing.”  But the only way the resurrection is an ongoing thing is if cross-bearing is an ongoing thing.  What does it mean for you to bear a cross today?  What does it mean for you to suffer with Christ for righteousness’ sake?  What does it mean for you to deny yourself and to make the personal sacrifices God is calling you to make?

I can’t answer those questions for you, but I can tell you this.  I have had my own crosses to bear in this life.  Great sacrifices have been required of me.  Indeed, the most important things in my life have been preceded by great sacrifices.  I have already mentioned the sacrifice of an Air Force Commission to go to seminary.  There have been other sacrifices like that one.  You have heard the song, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”?  Breaking an engagement was awful tough on me, and I resisted it until I was literally brought to my knees, but God had a better match in mind.  I just had to let go of the one before he could raise me up to the other, and I have had no cause for regret ever since.

I was the last candidate standing for an open pulpit in New Jersey—a senior pastor position on a staff much like we have here--but something was telling me it was not meant to be.  As usual I resisted until God really put the pressure on me.  And thank goodness he did, because if I had not sacrificed that opportunity he would not have been able to raise me up to this one.  And I have had no cause for regret ever since.

I have never had any cause for regret on account of the cross of Christ, and that is all the evidence this Doubting Thomas needs for the resurrecting power of God made known to us in Jesus Christ.  I am living proof of it, but I certainly wouldn’t expect you to take my word on it.  You must become living proof yourself so that the victory in Christ we celebrate on Easter is your victory too.