A Place to Stand – I Corinthians 15.1-26
A sermon preached at Ellenbrook Anglican Church on Easter Day 21st April 2019
I read a line in William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill. When Churchill was a young military officer at Aldershot in England Queen Victoria came over from London to take the salute in one of their endless parades: 25,000 horse, foot, artillery. For the 21 year-old Churchill it was a marvelous game, part of what had become for him a wonderful life. “Never,” he wrote, “would anyone there have ever believed that our little army would ever again be sent to Europe.” (The Last Lion, I, 214) It was an age of confidence and optimism. But it would soon be shattered by an assassin’s bullet, and the avalanche of fire which followed.
I read this as I was thinking about our own times, and trying to discern some meaning in the fiery destruction of Notre Dame. We live in an age of uncertainty, and though people are not pessimistic – not like they were during the cold war, when nuclear holocaust was a real threat – still it seems that every new wave of optimism about the future is flattened by events, and many are anxious. So much happens, so fast, so unexpectedly. What can you remember twenty five years ago? Try to think of one thing from 1994. It was the year Nelson Mandela became President of a new South Africa; do you remember that? Mazwe, a Zulu student, spoke to me the morning after the election many thought would trigger a civil war; he was a leader in the youth movement and had spent time in gaol: “Doc, I cannot believe it has happened. All my life I have dreamed and struggled for this. But as it got closer I thought, ‘it will never happen; they won’t allow it; they will do something.” He was euphoric, the world was euphoric. It was the end of apartheid, the Berlin Wall had fallen; people spoke of a new world order. But there was genocide in Rwanda that same year. In 1995: the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, civil wars in Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka; 1996: the Port Arthur massacre; 2001: The World Trade Centre, symbol of American financial supremacy destroyed; 2004: the Iraq War; 2007: the global financial crisis (someone called it the greatest corporate swindle in human history); then the Syrian civil war, ISIS, the refugee crisis, floods in Queensland and Mozambique. A mosque attack in New Zealand. There is no end to it. And who would dream a thousand-year old stone building, that has survived two world wars, would suddenly, in our super-regulated world, become a blazing torch? What does it mean? Does it mean anything? We have lived with so much of this; so quickly does one disaster follow another, we wonder what is next. What might shatter the peace of our comfortable Australian community? Definitely we live in a time of uncertainty.
And yes, for Christians too there is turmoil. Two centuries of attack on the Bible have weakened the churches. Scandals in church leadership make it difficult for Christians to take a strong line on anything. Redefinitions of marriage and morality add to the confusion, and now a move to make doctors licensed killers. Muslims declare the bankruptcy of the whole Western moral system. Atheists are determined to unravel the whole legacy of Christian culture. The words of W.B. Yeates nails it: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
When the ground begins to move beneath you, it becomes desperately important to find a firm place to stand. It is this need I want to address today. Archimedes, the ancient Greek scientist who wrote about levers, observed that a very large weight could be moved by a very small force by means of a lever. He speculated that with a good lever he could move the earth, provided he had a fulcrum against which to work the lever, and a solid place to stand. He is supposed to have said, “Show me a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” There is no such place, and that is the problem we face in the breaking apart of our world and its cultures. And what about me? If I wish to find stability for me and my family, is there a place for me to stand, which will remain, when all around is dissolving?
There is such a place. Jesus said, “I’ll show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well-built.
Paul also speaks of such a place in his Letter to the Corinthians: “Now brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you … on which you have taken your stand, by which you are saved, if you hold on to it firmly …”
He is talking about a place which, if you stand there, you will be saved. Jesus also speaks of the person who builds his house on a different foundation; when the flood comes everything is swept away. And so does Paul; if you are not in that place, all your good works, all your church-going, all you achievements will be for nothing.
What is this place? Paul says, “I passed on to you as of first importance – that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day …”
Three facts here, if you receive them, stand on them, do not let them go, will anchor you in this life, and ensure you are still standing when everything breaks up, and the new age dawns: Jesus died – for you; he really died – they put him in a place where he would rot; and he came alive again – God raised him. Paul focuses on the third of these, and so will I.
“If you confess with your lips, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That is how Paul puts it in another place. And it raises questions. Why should believing something make the difference between life and death? Let me explain it as quickly and simply as I can. God is the giver of life and of everything good. Mankind turned its back on God, and God sent our ancestors away from his presence, to live in a dangerous place. Away from God we die, and the natural tendency of everything is to confusion and chaos. But God has always intended a new world, which will be led by his Son. He sent Jesus into this chaotic world to save it. We killed him – our natural tendency manifesting itself – but God raised him up, and gives him to us as our true and eternal leader. Those who join him and are happy to live under his lordship will share in his kingdom. Those who don’t will have no place in this new world. So, the critical thing is what you do with Jesus: “If you confess with your lips, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Notice that you are acknowledging that Jesus is alive, and that he is the ruler of everything including yourself. It is the bedrock minimum that God must ask of anyone who would live in his kingdom. And it is all he asks. Do this and you will be saved.
I shouldn’t need to tell you that you need to be saved. Apart from all the uncertainty we see every evening on our TV screens, we ourselves struggle with our health, our habits, our home, our emotions, our relationships, our work, our financial security – and it is a battle, a battle with the tendency of things to fall apart, which is part of living in a world away from God. And, however well we do, none of us wins the last struggle with age, weakness and death. In all of this we need to be saved.
Can you imagine what it sounded like to those Corinthians, beset as they were with all the same struggles we are, and more, where the average lifespan was more like 32 than our 82. You didn’t have much time! But Jesus, a man marked out by God by many miracles: they killed him, but he came alive again, and he promises life to those who join him. It was sensational. And it still is.
Of course, everything hangs on whether it is true. Some think it is a fairy tale, but it isn’t. Fairy tales come from a creative individual writing about a mythical time and an imaginary place. We know exactly when Paul came to Corinth and the Corinthians first heard the gospel. A stone inscription found not so long ago in Delphi reads:
Tiber[ius Claudius Cae]sar Augustus Ge[rmanicus, … Imperator for t]he 26th time, F[ather of the Fa]ther[land…]. For a l[ong time have I been not onl]y
[well-disposed towards t]
he ci[ty] of Delph[i, but also solicitous for its pro]sperity … But] now [since] it is said to be desti[tu]te of [citi]zens, as [L. Jun]ius Gallio, my fri[end] an[d procon]sul, [recently reported to me, and being desirous that Delphi] should retain [inta]ct its for[mer rank, I] ord[er you (pl.) to in]vite well-born people also from [ot]her cities [to Delphi as new inhabitants….
It is an order from the emperor Claudius, written in stone and erected for all to see, dated AD 51, mentioning his friend, L. Junius Gallio, the same Proconsul Paul appeared before when he first came to Corinth. It is the fixed point, from which most of the events of Christianity’s first forty years of history can be dated. Four years later (AD 55), Paul wrote to the established church in Corinth, reminding them of events 25 years earlier, when Jesus died, was buried and rose again. Most of those who saw him alive after his death, he says, are still living, he himself being one of them:
he appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Corinthians 15.
The interesting thing about this statement is that it is incomplete; there were others who saw him and told their story. He does not mention the women who were the first to discover the empty tomb. He leaves out Cleopas and his traveling companion. He overlooks Thomas who would only believe if he could put his finger in the place where Jesus was speared. He fails to tell of the meeting on the mountain when Jesus told them to baptize the nations in his name. He forgets the time they ate breakfast together by the lake. This was a big event; as Luke writes in another place, “These things were not done in a corner.” (Acts 26)
I was walking down a hospital corridor on my way to see a sick person. I looked sideways into an open room and my eyes locked with the eyes of an old woman. I was embarrassed to walk on without greeting her, so entered the room. It was my first year as an ordained minister. I was wet behind the ears and hardly knew what I was doing. I was on duty, so wore a clerical collar, which I normally don’t. I said hello, and it immediately became evident she didn’t like clergymen. I found out later she was an atheist, and had been a leader of Perth’s Humanist Society. We were soon arguing. Christianity was a pack of fairy tales as far as she was concerned. I mentioned Jesus’ resurrection and said the word “evidence”. “Evidence,” she spat back, “what evidence?” That started a discussion which went on for several visits. Once there was evidence to consider she was interested. And when I buried her six months later, she truly believed that Jesus was Lord – her Lord – and that God had raised him from the dead, and would raise her up too. One of her daughters told me at the graveside that she and her sister had prayed for their mother for many years.
There were many more than 500 witnesses to Jesus being alive again. Some of their reminiscences we find in our New Testament. It happened, and is an event which changes things. If you believe it yourself, it will give you a place to stand in the midst of all the uncertainty, and know that whatever may happen – to your world or to you – God will work it out and have us standing when it is all over.
“By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you …” There is much to persuade us to let go: our human nature resists the idea there is a God who rules over you; we want to be our own god, and call the shots for ourselves. The pressure of the society around us marginalizes God and ridicules anyone who takes Jesus seriously. The ups and downs of this fallen world suggest we stay clear of him; in the ups we will think we don’t need him, in the downs we blame him for what goes wrong. There will be any number of temptations to let go, but don’t! Imagine you have fallen from a ship and are in the water. They throw you a line and you just manage to reach it with your hand. You hang on. You know if you let go, you are lost. You just hang on. Nothing will make you let go.