As I was thinking about writing this sermon I was wondering if it would have been better to put it at the beginning of the service. Before all the “He is risen…he is risen indeed…Hallelujah .” The Easter Sunrise service tried to set the tone of that somber feel after Good Friday as the Ladies made the way to the tomb on Easter Sunday.
Can you imagine what they were feeling that Easter morning? Arms full of spices and with heavy hearts they made their way to the tomb. I wonder if the horror of Good Friday still weighed heavily on their hearts. I wonder if they were reminiscing about what Jesus did for them when he was alive or if they were walking in silence trying to hold back to the tears. They were fully expecting to peer into that tomb, see Jesus’ lifeless corpse, lying on stone slab.
Think about this scene for a moment. Is this the victorious Christ? Was this really the Messiah, the one who would save us from our sins? Was Christ victorious has he hung on a cross? Was Christ victorious as they took his corpse down from the cross? Was Christ victorious as he lay there on a slab of stone?
Death stings doesn’t it? When you peer into the casket of a spouse, a parent, a friend, or when you see the urn that contains the ashes of relative, it hurts. It stings. Was Christ really victorious? Something just has to be different. Something just has to change.
Our lesson says, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” Our sin is what gives the venom/poison to death. And what is the power of sin? It is the law. If we didn’t have the law, then there wouldn’t be sin because there wouldn’t be anything to break. But there is God’s law and we’ve broken it. It could be as simple as a thought. It could be your attitude and actions toward others. Where we failed to show love by what we say and do. We are all guilty of sin. We are all guilty of breaking God’s law.
We all feel the effects of sin. We can recognize our bodies start to decay. The things I could at 18, I can’t at 30. The things we did at 30 we can’t do when we are 50. The things we did at 50 we can’t wen we are 70. Before we know it, we will be the ones lying in the casket, with friends and family grieving. Where is the victory?
Something has to change. The sin corrupted, decaying bodies have to change. Paul says this in verse 50, “Now I say this, brothers: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom God, and what is perishable is not going to inherit what is imperishable.” If flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, then what chance is there for you and me, our friends and family, those who have died before us and those that will die after us?
We need someone to conquer death. We need someone to take away the sting of death. Paul, in a way, taunts death and says, “Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory.” I am about to show you some of my best art work. My catechism class enjoys making fun of my beautiful drawings. Imagine death for a moment is this bee. What is the sting of death? Sin. Can the bee harm you without his stinger? No. Something has to do be done about sins sting.
If I am conducting a funeral for someone and I have a private devotion with the family, I will share this illustration. I want you to imagine a father and a son driving in a car. It is a beautiful day outside, so naturally you have the windows down. A bee flies into the car at a stoplight. The son begins to panic. He is deathly allergic to bees and doesn’t have his epipen. The father reaches out and grabs the bee. Then lets it go. The son begin to panic again and asks his father, “Why did you let the bee go?!” The father shows him his hand, “See I took the sting for you. The bee can’t harm you anymore.”
That is exactly what Jesus did for you on that cross. Every sin, that was ever committed, that ever would be committed, he took punishment that the law required. He took away the sting of death by nailing it to himself on the cross. He endured God’s full wrath intended for you and me. And he said “It is finished” and he gave up his spirit and died. And with that Jesus took away the sting of death the punishment that God required.
How do we know that Jesus was victorious over sin? How do we know that death can’t harm us anymore? It is because life marches victorious over death. The women found that the stone was rolled away and they went in and didn’t find Jesus’s body. And do you remember what the angel said to them? “Why are looking for the living among the sea? He is not here, but has been raised!” How do we know that Jesus was victorious over sin and that death can’t harm us anymore? It is because Jesus lives! He took away the sting of death and shows that life marches victorious over death!
There has to be a change that takes place. If the correctable flesh and blood, if the perishable can’t inherit the imperishable, then how does life march victorious over death? A change takes place. Our lesson says, “Look, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” Whether we are left standing when the Lord returns or we died before the Lord, we will be changed. We will be given an imperishable, immortal bodies, uncorrupted by sin!
What will that be like? Will grandma have a limp? Will Grandpa need a cane? Will a baby be full grown? Will an old person be younger? What will it be like? Scripture doesn’t tell us. But what we do know is what will happen. At a certain point in time, Jesus is going to gift us with incorruptible, imperishable, non decaying, non dying body.
Because there is some uncertainty about it, because we have never experienced something like it before, I think there is a temptation that we want to cling perishable and not want to let it go. We want to cling to our loved one because we don’t want to be without them. We cling to the things we earned, the possessions we have, the relationships we made. They are those things that make us happy and it is hard to imagine what it would be like without them.
But Christ has given to us something better. A life that victorious over death. A life that marches over what it is perishable. 1 John 3:2 says, “Dear friends, we are children of God now, but what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he is revealed we will be like him, and we will see him as he really is.” Scripture doesn’t give us all the answer we may want to know about what the imperishable bodies we will have but we have his promise that it will be better and it is one of those things that we won’t know until we experience it.
Someone described it like this. Holding someone else’s baby is this really cool experience. It is a precious moment. But I wonder what it would be like to hold a child of my own. I won’t know what that experience is like until I actually experience it. We can’t imagine what Heaven is like. It is one of those things we will just have to experience.
This final victory of life over death is not something we must wait to enjoy. Because it is as certain as Christ’s resurrection from the dead we are able to taunt death just like Paul did in our lesson, “Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory.” Even though death appears to continue to reign in our world (we see it all around us), it has already been robbed of its power and its sting. Rather then languishing is a life that otherwise would have be rendered meaningless by death, those whose hope is in the resurrection of the body can stand firm and give themselves fully to the work of the Lord. Life marches victorious over death. Amen.