We Will All Be Changed

This morning we come to the concluding section of Paul’s letter. Remember, Paul is writing 20 years or so after Jesus’s death and resurrection.

As he prepared to ascend, Luke tells us what happened, “the apostles gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

But it has been a WHILE, and people who were young then are old now. And word has reached Paul that some in the church at Corinth are struggling with the concept of the resurrection of the dead. They can’t believe that the body is resurrected.

The reason this is so difficult for them is cultural. Remember, Corinth is in Greece. And to say that the Greeks had a negative body image is putting it lightly. Human beings, the Greeks believed, were composed of both body and soul. The body was inferior. The senses were easily tricked or swayed or manipulated. The soul was pure, the mind, reason, could lead a person to the truth. The soul, though, was imprisoned in the body until death when it finally broke free and its flame rejoined the fire from which it had been separated. The body? Good riddance.

In fact, a lot of the behaviors that Paul has addressed in the letter stemmed from the Corinthians not caring for or about their bodies. Who cares about what you consume if you are shedding this body anyway? What does it matter what you eat, drink, or enjoy if this body is a prison anyway? So, when they ask, “How are the dead raised and with what kind of body do they come?” they aren’t asking a logistical question or a questioning God’s power to raise the dead. They want to know what kind of body they are going to have.

I get asked about what life after death will be like at least a few times a year. The questions vary, “Will I recognize my loved ones who have also died?” “Will I know what happens on earth to my loved ones after I am dead?” “What is heaven like?” Sometimes they have been bothered by things people have said as they tried to comfort them, things like, “She is so much happier now that she is in heaven” or “God must have wanted him to be with him” or “I just know they are watching you now and telling you not to be so sad.”

There are two main things to remember when someone is grieving:

The first is that the less you say, the better. Don’t try to minimize the depth of the pain. Listen, be present, and express your care by helping with the mundane rhythmic duties of life, like meals and carpool and shopping and cleaning, so that they have space and time to be still and cry out to God for comfort.

The other thing to remember are Paul’s words, “Listen, I tell you a mystery!” There is no way for us to describe with human language what will be. Luke described Jesus’ transfiguration as he prayed saying that the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightening. He only says that Moses and Elijah appear in “glorious splendor.” His face changed. Luke doesn’t say anything about what changed, just that it changed. We know that Mary didn’t recognize Jesus’ resurrected body until he spoke her name. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize him until he broke bread. When he appeared to Thomas, Jesus offered his wounds as proof that it really was him. So, Jesus’ resurrected body did not look like his earthly body, but he was still recognizable.

It’s like a seed, says Paul. Unless you bury it, it will not grow. When you plant a seed it doesn’t look like the plant that will grow. It looks like a seed. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body, the seed that is buried, is perishable, it is raised imperishable; the seed? Sinful and weak, is raised in glory and power. And finally, it is sown a natural body (the word translated “natural” is also translated in another part of the letter as “unspiritual” the meaning really is that the body that is sown runs on it’s own power, according to human nature, and it is raised a spiritual body, empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, permeated with God’s presence and power. And yet, still the same – in the way that seeds don’t look like the plant that they grow into.

We will all be changed, but there will be continuity.

We just don’t know more than that. And to say more than that may be more harmful than helpful.

Rev. Dr. Mary Luti shared that caution. She was giving a talk about heaven at a retreat to a group of church folks. She told them that the Bible doesn’t promise us an eternity floating on clouds, but it does promise a transformed creation where we’ll live a fully human life together. And a fully human life means an embodied life.
Then I said that in God’s new creation everybody will be healed and made whole.

There was a woman in a wheelchair who spoke up. Marian, her name tag said. “I’ve been using this chair for 27 years. It took 20 for me to stop believing I needed fixing. Don’t tell me I’m not whole. I won’t be walking into heaven; I plan to roll.”

Over the years she’d stomached a lot of glib churchy talk about wholeness and healing. The message was clear: her body is substandard, but—good news—she’ll be getting a new improved version in paradise!

It infuriated her. Talk like that dishonored her body and delivered only shame. Dr. Luti recalls, “She reminded us that Jesus’ resurrected body bore the wounds of spear and nails. It still does, and forever will. “Christ’s body is a disabled body,” she said. “You’re saying he’s not whole?”

It sounded like a speech she’d given before. Many times.

So, what should we say about the resurrection of the body? Duke New Testament professor, Dr. Richard Hayes, points us to the translation in the Jerusalem Bible, “When the body is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit. If the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment.”

We will be transfigured by the full indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. The spirit of God sown in us now will come to full blossom. The image of God entrusted to us at our beginning will be fully manifested. The glimpses of Christlike love seen in us now will reach wholeness.

How God will do this, we have no concept; THAT God will do this is part of the truth of God’s divine design for creation, and perhaps one of the most hopeful, comforting parts of all.