DEATH HAS LOST ITS STING
Imagine you’re out on a hike, walking through a desert canyon a box canyon you know, the kind you walk through but eventually ends at a mountain face, so there are walls on all sides except the one you came in on. Now imagine reaching the closed off end of that canyon and having a large swarm of bees descend on you! And imagine your friends running out and leaving you as the last one to deal with the horde of black and yellow, flying demons!
I actually don’t have to imagine that! And my friends? Well, you know who you are. Anyway, how would you feel if that happened to you, but you knew they were stingerless bees? I don’t know about you, but I still wouldn’t love them. Even if I knew that they couldn’t hurt me, and I was going to come out on the other end just fine.
Death is kind of like that for a Christian—and that’s because of Easter. God is here to tell us this morning that we are going to come out of this world just fine because the stinger of death has been removed.
Why is Death So Scary?
Still, thinking about death may be a little scary because, well, we’ve never experienced it before, obviously! And we’ve never spoken to someone who has been through it because it’s not something you come back from. And thinking about the process of our death how it will happen and how it will feel can be scary.
But finally, because we have faith in our resurrected Lord, we might think about death kind of like stinger-less bees. It doesn’t seem great. It looks menacing. We don’t love it. But deep down we know it can’t spiritually, eternally, hurt us at all!
This is the stuff the Apostle Paul wrote about in this letter to the Christians who lived in Corinth. Apparently, their world wasn’t so different from ours when it comes to thoughts about who Jesus is, what he did, and what happens to a person after they die. There were different teachings that caused those Christians confusion and challenged their faith. So, Paul spends a chunk of his letter—chapter 15—talking about the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection to eternal life for those who trust in him. This is why we sometimes call this the “Great Resurrection Chapter” of the Bible.
A Mystery
Many of us like a good mystery a book, a movie, a play. We like trying to figure out what happened, and we don’t want the ending spoiled! Paul wrote about what he called a mystery, but he wasn’t talking about something we were supposed to figure out or even that we have to wait for the very end to know. He simply meant something that God was finally revealing. It was this: that some people will be “sleeping, ” —that is, dead or in the grave—when this world comes to an end, and some will not be, and that either way, when Jesus returns on the Last Day, every one of us will be changed.
Some of us will be more grateful for the changing of our bodies than others no more dieting, no need for jogging, hair that actually behaves! Ok, that’s just our vanity talking! When God says we’ll be changed, it is a much bigger deal than anything like that! To get an idea, let’s think about Jesus Jesus after he rose from the dead His body that had been tortured and abused was raised a glorified body that was not bound by the earthly laws of physics!
After he was raised from the dead, he went from sitting down to eat a meal with two of his followers in the city of Emmaus and then being gone instantly and appearing in Jerusalem 7 miles down the road. You might recall that when he did that, he entered the room his disciples were in even though the door was shut and locked. On the other hand, the resurrected Jesus had his real body, he ate and walked and retained the nail marks in his hands and the mark from the soldier’s spear in his side.
Will we be like that? We can’t say that we’ll be exactly the same as Jesus, but we can say that our resurrected bodies will also be changed in some glorious way that makes us fit to live with him in heaven. Maybe think of the change this way: it’s kind of like when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly—it’s still the same creature, but now it has beautiful wings. We will be ourselves in heaven, but perfected. Christians have actually used the butterfly as a symbol of the resurrection for a very long time for that reason! We might be lacking the detail we would like to have about just how are bodies will be transformed and what they will be like in heaven, but we are told exactly why it needs to happen. Our bodies are perishable they wear down. Your aching back is telling you that…or your bad tooth…or the new knee brace…or having to get used to a walker…or the disease or condition you’re dealing with there are ALL kinds of things that send the message that we are falling apart! Our expiration date isn’t stamped on us, but we’re aware that we have one. After our bodies are done wearing down, they completely wear out. And if they are not cremated after death, they will disintegrate in the ground. Perishable… mortal. So, God says that we must be changed whether we are still alive at the end and only partly broken down or we are in the grave.
An Enormous Problem
At the moment this happens at the Last Day, in the blink of an eye and with the call of the heavenly trumpet this is what’s going to happen: Death is swallowed up in victory! It will be obvious to all that death has lost its stinger, and that the grave has been defeated because we will all be there raised to life!
God had told his people all along that a resurrection to eternal life would happen, so Paul quotes two of the prophets who said it and then he confirms that it’s because of Jesus’ resurrection that this is indeed how it will go when the risen Jesus returns.
We get a very brief explanation as to why Jesus’ resurrection means our resurrection is a sure thing. But let’s back up a minute and follow the Apostle Paul to see exactly why all this is the case. He says that The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. If we’re going to talk about sin and death, we need to go back to the Garden
of Eden. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin through the world’s front door, it became the houseguest that would never leave—and it brought death with it. The law of God “powers” sin, so to speak, because it shows what our sins are and condemns us for them. This is true for all people of all time and everywhere
I’ll admit that this is a tough thing to think about on such a happy day. Everyone is smiling, some are dressed up for the day, we had a church service outside, there are more flowers than normal up here, we enjoyed some good food together, we listen to beautiful music and singing from people who actually know what they’re doing, there was even a whole concert, maybe we get to share the day with family that we don’t always see…it’s a really happy morning!
Question for you though--will that happiness and joy over what Jesus has done for you and the joy of sharing faith in him with everyone here be gone already sometime after you finish lunch today? I hope not, but you know what life is like.
We leave here and we go back to all our usual stuff. And sometimes that means notgreat stuff. Most of us have moments or periods of time—maybe even long periods of time when we struggle with life, with just being in this world, dealing with the stresses and disappointments and the hurt. It’s the kind of stuff you don’t want to talk about on Easter. And yet, I bring it up…and now some of those things are running through your head…and if not on the outside, you’re nodding on the inside, agreeing that you have these times or even that you’re in the middle of some of that right now.
When you start picking those things apart and analyzing them, what do you find? I guarantee that you find sin at the center of them all. Someone caused your pain. Something you did is making you feel guilty. You’re not satisfied, but it’s because you’re being selfish or unrealistic. Someone died and you’re grieving, which is ok, but it is the sinful human condition that caused them to die.
We struggle and sometimes we just want it to be over. We want to get away from it all. We might even be so mired in our misery that we want to die just to escape. And when we’re thinking like that, we aren’t even thinking about the promise of eternal life we have in Jesus. It’s really ignoring him as we obsess over what’s in front of us.
The opposite can also be true. We can be overly attached to life in this world. We might enjoy things a little too much so much so that we crowd God out of our lives in favor of all the other stuff we have going on and things we like to do and have. Oh, we’ll drag God out on those rare occasions when we need him—kinda’ like that bread machine or ice cream maker that’s shoved way back in the cabinet.
So, when someone close to us dies…or when we get hit with awful health or financial news…or our kid hits rock bottom (or we do) …or when Christmas rolls around…we start thinking about God and life and death and maybe we’re more serious for a while about getting back to church. Otherwise, we’re kind of just enjoying life and not thinking much at all about what happens after we die. We’re very comfortable here in this world.
Do I have to tell you what an enormous mistake it is to ignore God or treat him like a bread machine? Either is a mistake because then your life doesn’t have Jesus at the center and it doesn’t have the everyday Easter joy and hope you could have. Even more concerning is that both those extremes are wrong in God’s eyes and damnable. There is no question that these kinds of sins, to say nothing of all the other issues we have with God’s expectations, require intervention. We need help because eternal death automatically comes along with our sin.
Victory!
Into our horrible situation, stepped Jesus son of God and son of Mary, truly God and truly human. He came to meet God’s divine expectations—the law that was condemning us and everyone else, the thing that caused us all to be staring down an eternity of separation from God and the never-ending suffering that brings.
Jesus did what we all know we cannot do. He met every expectation God has for human beings. And then, Good Friday happened. Now, it might not have looked like it from the outside, but Jesus willingly went to that cross. It may have looked like it was entirely the work of a traitor, and envious and resentful and hateful people, and a Roman governor whose job was to tamp down any threat of rebellion among the Jewish people. It may have looked like the crowds yelling “Crucify him!” had their way. But you know that looks can sometimes be deceiving.
Here are the facts. That sacrifice of Jesus’ blood was required by God as the payment for sin. Jesus had told his disciples that he was going to his death and that he did it willingly—no one was forcing him. Because he didn’t fight back or defend his words and actions, it seemed like he was killed against his will. That was simply not the case. Jesus did all this for you very much on purpose He loved you. He lived for you. He died for you. And…he rose for you!
He defeated sin and he defeated death! When he took your sins and mine to the cross, he gave something back to us his perfection. And because he has made us perfect in the eyes of God, we also have the victory that he had. And so, Paul says: Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
He gives us forgiveness. He gives us righteousness. He gives us victory over the grave. So, like Jesus, we will also rise from death. Like Jesus, we will also be changed. Like Jesus, we will live in heaven.
When you know all of that, death doesn’t seem as scary, does it? It’s a stinger-less bee bothersome in some respects, but harmless. Death Has Lost Its Sting, people. This is why we celebrate. This is why we’re here. This is why we confidence about what happens after we die. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.
Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.