RESURRECTION MATTERS April 3, 2016 First Baptist Church, Kansas city, MO I Corinthians 15:3-8 Dr. Stephen D. Jones

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1 RESURRECTION MATTERS April 3, 2016 First Baptist Church, Kansas city, MO I Corinthians 15:3-8 Dr. Stephen D. Jones I grew up in a religion based more on piety and emotion. When I went to seminary, I was determined to fashion a faith of intellectual integrity, a faith based in logic and reason. Because of that, I found the supernatural parts of Christianity more challenging to accept. Were all those lame people really healed by Jesus, or did they just lack self-confidence? Jesus convinced them they could walk and they walked! Did Lazarus really return from the dead, or did they misdiagnose him and he was just comatose? Were the open wounds of leprosy really wiped away or were these just minor skin diseases, not full-blown leprosy? Were demons really excised or did these people just need someone to love and accept them, to overcome their mental illness? Was it really a virgin birth? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? We have to admit that the outcomes of these stories and statements are hard to accept. Then, I began my pastoral ministry. And I found that faith only bounded by logic and reason did not match up with my experience of faith in the congregations I served. I served people who recognized miracles in their lives, not every day, not routine for miracles are never routine but miracles nonetheless! I ve been with people who have long out-lived their doctor s dire projections. I ve sat with people when the second set of results came back and any signs of cancer could no longer be detected. I ve met with couples who had no hope for their broken marriages, and I ve seen a power of love, larger than the husband or wife, bring reconciliation and forgiveness back into their lives. I ve walked beside anorexic young girls who were literally starving themselves to death until they finally recognized the beauty in their God-made bodies and began new regimens of self-care. Many of you know that our son suffered a major stroke last Summer at the age of 33. He was a heavy smoker at the time. Jan and I have pestered him for years about stopping and each time he would say sincerely, I ll stop when I m ready and I m not ready yet. Last summer, his doctors told him the stroke was a warning sign. He may not recover if it happened again. What has happened since then seems nothing short of a miracle. Brian stopped smoking right on the spot, the day he walked out of the hospital, without any aids he just stopped. And he stopped eating red meat. When I called him last week, he was eating lunch and I asked him what he was having for lunch and he responded, I m eating a salad. That nearly took my breath away. And then he and his wife decided to go to the gym 3 times a week to get in better shape. It s such good self-care and taken by itself it may not represent a miracle to you. But it was his lack of willpower that got him into his health crisis, and the presence of strong willpower that got him out of it and though he s the same person, before and after, the stamina and strength required continues to take my breath away. He is drawing upon a different source of strength than before. And that s a miracle.

2 I still want a faith of intellectual integrity. I want my faith to make sense to me and since I am a preacher I want the faith I present to make sense to others as well. I am certainly not antilogic or anti-intellect. There is enough of that going around and I don t want to be part of it. But logic by itself tends to want to explain faith away rather than enhance faith. Intellect alone wants to dissect faith but not necessarily embrace it. As with everything, there has to be balance. After forty-four years in the pastorate, it is far easier for me now to accept miracles and supernatural power at work in my life and in our world. I no longer need to explain it away. In fact, I don t want to live in a world where there are no miracles. I don t want everything that happens to be subjected to my logical explanations. I don t want to live in a world where there is no Transformation. I now believe that God is the source of transforming power and I believe in transformation, conversion, what the Bible calls metanoia. It happens because it has happened to me and to others I have known. Nothing is impossible for God! I can tell you I would never have become a pastor or remained a pastor were it not for God s transforming hand upon my life. I don t want to live in a world where there is no Resurrection. I don t want death to have the final word. It is unacceptable to me that our Eternal God has no power to offer Eternal Life. That makes no sense! And so I come now to a strong belief that Resurrection Matters. There was a time in my life when I discounted the relevance of resurrection. No more. Now, I believe that Resurrection Matters. Every theological truth of Christianity rests in a story. There is no truth that doesn t emerge out of a story in history. Every truth is rooted in some event that happened. We have creation stories. And liberation stories. And stories of miracles. And stories of suffering and perseverance. We have stories of birth, as in a manger in Bethlehem. We have stories of coming of age, as in Samuel growing up in the Temple with Eli and hearing the Lord call for the first time, and of Jesus, coming of age at twelve when he visited the Temple and interacted with the elders of Israel. We have stories of betrayal, as with Judas, and stories of denial, as with Peter, and stories of doubt as with Thomas, and stories of courage, as with the woman who anointed Jesus for his burial while attending a dinner party. We have stories of wisdom, as told through the Sermon on the Mount. We have stories of suffering and death, as in Jesus dying on the cross. And we have stories of resurrection, as in Jesus arising from the grave on Easter morning. Because all our truths arise from stories, it is easy to become embroiled in all kinds of arguments over whether it really happened that way. Was the world really created in seven 24-hour days? Did God really flood the earth out of disappointment with the human race? Was Jesus really born of a virgin? Did Jesus really, literally, actually rise from the dead? Stories invite interpretation. The truth is that sometimes the stories didn t really happen and yet they contain incredible truth. For example, we have no reason to believe that any of Jesus

3 parables describe a real-life event. We believe that Jesus made up the stories of the Prodigal Son, or the Good Samaritan, or the Women with Ten Coins, so that his stories could communicate truth to us. We have four Gospels and some of the stories are told in all four Gospels with details that are unique to each Gospel. Does this make the stories any less true? I would argue that every story in the Bible holds significance and profound truth for us. Whether it is historically accurate is an utterly different issue and one that doesn t hold much interest for me. I believe in the Resurrection. I would say that my belief in the Resurrection is stronger today than at any other time in my life. There are four or more accounts of the resurrection in the New Testament, and I don t have any need to harmonize them or become scandalized if they don t fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Yet, I care deeply about the truth that resurrection speaks in our day and time. Resurrection Matters. I believe that Resurrection Happened. I don t believe that it was a hoax, or that somehow Jesus followers were clever enough to distract the guards at the tomb and steal away Jesus dead body and secretly bury it so they could claim that he was resurrected from the dead. For starters, I don t believe that Jesus disciples were that clever. If a hoax, I don t think the story could have held together. So, yes, I believe that Jesus actually died on Friday, lay thoroughly dead on Saturday, and was resurrected on Sunday. While it s a mouthful: I believe it. Resurrection is just another way of pronouncing Transformation. We humans aren t capable of transforming anything. We can change things. But we can t fundamentally change something from one thing to an entirely different thing. Only God holds transformational power. We more or less have to deal with the realities handed us, but God can transform our choices and our lives. Jesus died. His cold body began decomposing upon death, just like any human body. But Resurrection Happened. And Jesus overcome death. He was transformed from a dead corpse to a Living Presence. We may want to put the story of Jesus resurrection to a test: put it up to scientific evidence or historical truth. But God s Transformation is always the result of spiritual power. Jesus said, Real prayer can move mountains. It s a spiritual metaphor. Through prayer, we can t really relocate the Rocky Mountains to Missouri. But we can move mountains of guilt. Mountains of shame. Mountains of fear. Leave the Rockies where they are: this is better! God holds transformational power that cannot be subjected to experimentation, proof-texting, or scientific observation. Resurrection Matters. It really does. Resurrection matters because your dead-ends need not be dead-ends. Resurrection matters because your addictions, which could be the ruin of you and me, can be overcome. Resurrection matters because God can give you the spiritual strength to overcome any obstacle. In truth, I wouldn t want to live in a world that discounts the possibility of resurrection. Where everything exists along a predictable trajectory. Where everything happens according to our script or scientific projection.

4 God does intervene in human history. Do you believe that? Do you believe God intervenes in your life? I ve seen it so many times in my own life. God intervenes. And it is always with God s Transformational Power. God makes things happen that are beyond our imagination! These days, science has become our primary way of knowing. Huston Smith said, Westerners have come to believe more in the periodic table of chemical elements than they believed in any of the distinctive things the Bible speaks of angels, miracles, and the like. P. 194 Smith declares, Science can register only what is inferior to us The crux of modern science is the controlled experiment And we can control only what is inferior to us. (p ,Why Religion Matters) Science cannot study angels, or miracles, or eternity, or infinity, or the supreme good or existential meanings or final causes or spiritual matters. Oliver Wendall Holmes said, Science gives us major answers to minor questions while religion gives us minor answers to major questions. (p. 200) Put another way, science studies small t truth while religion reveals capitol T Truth. We want to believe, in this scientific age, that ultimate Truth will arise from the test tube or the controlled experiment. It will not. That is why I believe that Resurrection Matters. I believe with Apostle Paul as he wrote, Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures, he was buried, and he rose on the third day. He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve, and then he appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at once most of them are still alive to this day Then he appeared to James, the brother of Jesus, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me (I Cor. 15:3f) Let me share with you another miracle. Prior to the crucifixion, Jesus disciples are presented as a rather befuddled, dense and slow group in all four Gospels. They argue amongst themselves for the greatest position in the kingdom of heaven and they rarely understand Jesus parables. They were a motley rag-tag group of untrained, untutored, undisciplined followers. Jesus was only with them three years and that wasn t enough time to instill in them a gift of courageous leadership. Something happened. For it was these original apostles and those who walked with them that took the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. They were emboldened. They were courageous. They were theologically brilliant. That s a miracle. Let me tell you another. You know the story of a Pharisee named Saul. He was a Jew, but filled with violence for any group he perceived as being heretical to the faith. He hated the early followers of Jesus, and he persecuted them relentlessly. He was on the road to Damascus to round up some Christians and bring them, bound and gagged, back to Jerusalem to face a perilous verdict. Something happened on the road to Damascus. Saul was struck down blind. And he heard the Spirit of God speak to him, giving him instructions to travel on to Damascus, but to no longer persecute the people of Christ. Saul did a complete turn-around. From the persecutor of Christians, he became the first and foremost Christian theologian, evangelist, and shaper of the early Christian movement as it moved out into the gentile world. That s a miracle. That s God s Transforming Love at work. God needed a new leader for his early church and he resurrected Saul from his violent mission and named him Paul as he took the Gospel of Peace to the world. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, I don t deserve to be called an apostle, because I

5 harassed Christ s church. I am what I am by God s grace and God s grace hasn t been for nothing. (15:9-10) What I am now I am through the grace of God! (NJB) And while you and I are traveling down life s road, with our hands sometimes full of the wrong priorities, God can do the same with us. And that is why I believe that Resurrection Matters. Amen.