Easter Day April 17, 2022 Resurrection of our Lord
Resurrection of our Lord
1 Corinthians 15:51-57
April 17, 2022
“Death is Swallowed Up in Victory”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Why is Easter Sunday so important? In short, because it gives us the happy ending that we absolutely need. Without Easter, the ending wouldn’t be happy. How many of your favorite movies and books have happy endings? I venture to say most if not all of your top favorites have happy endings. Because we want a happy ending. We want a “happily ever after”.
That is, unless we’re already depressed and want to keep feeling sad about everything. That happens to some of you from time and time. And without Easter morning, that’s where we’d be stuck. Yes, this world of sin certainly has its great share of misery and depression. And without Easter, we’d be in that misery eternally. No happy ending. We’d be stuck with the disciples and women in the upper room in Jerusalem feeling that all was lost. Feeling that there was nothing to hope for or look forward to. We’d be going to the tomb with them all dejected and asking, “Who will roll away the stone from the tomb?”
But Easter is the happy ending. It takes a while for the disciples and the women to really believe that it’s possible to have a happy ending to this story. But they come to believe it. And not just believe it but stake their entire lives on this happy ending. Most of the disciples face quite tragic endings here on earth. But they face them with the promise of a quite happy ending coming for them. Like Stephen, for instance, the Church’s first martyr who looks up to heaven while he’s being stoned to death and sees his happy ending coming. He sees Jesus there in heaven and looks forward to eternal life and the resurrection of the dead.
In fact, Job even talks about this same happy ending in the first Scripture reading today. In fact, he even says it should be written down in a book or engraved on a rock with iron pen and lead forever. He thinks somebody should write down this happy ending, this happily ever after, for all time. Many Christians actually do engrave this happy ending on rocks—on their tombstones that is. “I know that my Redeemer lives.” The happy ending Job gives us is this, “For I know that My Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth….and in my flesh I shall see God.” What a happy ending! And that’s what Easter morning is about—it’s THEE happy ending.
Now I want to spend most of my time with you this morning in our second reading, 1 Corinthians 15. There Paul also ends with a burst of happiness and triumph. He shouts his happy ending, if you will, “But thanks be to God! Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Does that sound like the end of just an awesome and happy ending?
In this entire chapter of 1 Corinthians Paul is teaching about what will happen to our bodies after we die. If we die before Jesus comes again and we’re buried in the ground, then what will happen to our bodies? First, he vigorously defends the fact that Jesus did rise from the dead bodily. He gives all the witnesses who saw Jesus in His body alive after Easter Sunday. Then he goes on to teach all the reasons it’s foolish not to believe in the resurrection.
But then, toward the end of the chapter, he finally asks this question which is quite interesting. “Someone will ask,” Paul writes, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Basically, in my words, we’re asking here, “What kind of happy ending is this going to be?” We look at our bodies which are dying. We look at the bodies of our loved ones who have died, lying in their caskets and we ask, “What will happen to them? What kind of happy ending, what kind of happily ever after, is this going to be? How will this dead body come back to life?”
Now just for a minute, remember also what shape the body of Jesus was in when Nicodemus and Joseph or Arimathea laid him in the tomb on Friday evening. Was Jesus’ body in good shape? His back all cut up and striped from the flogging. His side with a big hole from a spear. His hands and feet with holes from nails. His body beaten, bruised, and lifeless. And we’re asking this question, “With what kind of body are the dead raised? What kind of happy ending will this be?” And Easter morning, you see, is giving us the answer here.
What kind of body did Jesus rise from the dead with? His body, of course, but better. His body now is glorified. Perfected. Yes, still has the marks of the nails and spear. But that’s so that we can all see the marks of our salvation. But His body now is imperishable, powerful, spiritual.
Well, this is how Paul teaches it. He says, “What you sow [into the ground] does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow isn’t the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. And so it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
You put a seed into the ground, it dies, and then it comes up a whole new plant. So our bodies are planted in the ground and God will raise them up like the body of Jesus. A perfected, imperishable, incorruptible, spiritual body. Yes, we want to be careful with that word “spiritual”. I’m using it because Paul is using it. It doesn’t mean like a “ghost” or “spirit” body. But more like a “heavenly” body. A perfected body.
And then comes this awesome and happy ending we were talking about. Paul says when all this happens that our bodies are raised from the dead perfect and glorified then shall come to pass this saying, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” The word swallowed there is literally “drinking down”. So death is drunk up and swallowed down by Jesus’ victory. What’s actually going on here is that Paul is taking us back to a happy ending described by Isaiah in chapter 25.
He sees a vision of this future happy ending. Listen to this from Isaiah 25, “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces…”
How about that happy ending? A great big feast of rich food, well-aged wine. Yeah, sounds good. And God our Lord swallowing up death forever. O death, where’s your victory? O death, where’s your sting? Haha! Yes, sin might sting us a bit here in this world still. Yes, the law bites us here in this world. But thanks be to God who’s given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! A glorious happy ending!
But wait…you say…it doesn’t look like death has been swallowed up in victory. We’re still dying. Yes, of course. Let God explain. You have to look and believe with the eyes of faith. Your body may look like it’s dying, but truly you’re not. Look, Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 4, that our bodies are jars of clay. They’re weak. But God has put a great and precious treasure in these jars of clay. In our bodies. And we have a spirit of faith. We believe and we speak knowing that God who raised Jesus on Easter morning will also raise us with Jesus. So we don’t lose heart, he says. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day….we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. See that?
Yes, your outer body is dying right now for a time. But inwardly you’re being renewed day by day. In you this saying is true, death is being swallowed up in victory. You just believe and wait and see. It will happen. As surely as Easter morning happened. He’s risen indeed. And indeed you’ll rise too.
In fact, that’s the way we look at everything in this life. It doesn’t look like it’s moving toward a happy ending. Very often it looks like all we’re getting in this life is tragedy. But we look at Easter morning and say, “No, something happy is on the rise. We look at all this sorrow and sadness in this life and all the evil and suffering and just all the “bad stuff”, the sin, and we say, “Aha, all of that bad stuff is swallowed up in Jesus’ victory.” This is going to be a happy ending. I know it and believe it. Jesus has guaranteed it on Easter.
All the death of this world is truly being swallowed up in victory. That’s why we can have a smile on our face every day. I’m not always good at that. I can be far too serious as I know many of you can as well. We listen too much to the devil telling us all that’s wrong. The devil and also cable news and social media. Ugh. We listen to the death far too much. But then we come hear to Church and we hear the sounds of victory. We hear the trumpet call. We hear each other singing together….one of my favorite things about our Church…not listening to some band sing TO us, but all of us singing together to one another….I love it. And we hear that victory song swallowing up the death song. And we get excited for the happy ending that’s coming.
And that drives us back into the world on Monday morning to work on swallowing up death in Christ’s victory. We love and serve our neighbor and do everything we can to bring the victory and happiness of Christ into the world of death. All the while we keep the victory in sight. He’s risen indeed. We know the ending is happy. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Happiness to all of you this morning!
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.