I Corinthians 12: 1Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.  4There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.  7Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

Brothers and sisters, we celebrate today on Pentecost Sunday nothing less than the Eighth Day of Creation. In Genesis 1 we read that humanity was created on the sixth day of Creation’s unfolding, to bear the image of God in his creation. Then in Genesis 2, we hear how humanity was created: “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” That was the creation of the First Adam. On the seventh day, God rested, meaning, among other things, that God gave us and all creation a degree of freedom and responsibility.

But we know what happens next: our un-creating through rebellion and a state of sin. And the marring of God’s image in us, leading to disunity and divisions within us and among us. So God sent us the Second Adam, Jesus, to restore his marred and broken image in us.

But God’s work of re-creation did not end with Jesus ascending to the right hand of the throne of God. It continues with the gift of God’s Spirit, breathed into the church, on that Pentecost Sunday, so that we too can bear the image of the Second Adam. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, “wind,” “breath” and “spirit” are one and the same word. The sound of the mighty rushing wind that the 120 disciples heard in that upper room indicates the reappearance of God’s Spirit, the divine breath, that filled the body of the first Adam. On that Pentecost Sunday that we celebrate today, God again breathed his Spirit into a new humanity, the church of Jesus Christ. That makes Pentecost the beginning of the Eighth Day of Creation.

Now, even if this were a classical, traditional, Pentecostal church, it would be rare and ground-breaking news if, after this gathering, we too all ran out of here suddenly, compelled and empowered to preach the gospel in languages we had never studied, but which some of our neighbors speak, such as Somali or the native Indian languages of Mexico and northern Minnesota. I’m open to whatever the Spirit wants to do, but experience tells me that demanding certain miracles doesn’t work any better than denying them. God won’t be put in a box. So what remains of that first Pentecost Sunday outpouring, or in-breathing, of God’s Holy Spirit?

Our second passage, from I Corinthians 12, draws the connection between the Pentecost re-creation of the new humanity and the local church today. It shows how Pentecost continues, how we are still in the Eighth Day of Creation. Its about so much more than speaking in unlearned languages. The links between Acts 2 and I Corinthians 12 are twofold: 1) our faith in Jesus Christ, and 2) the work of his Spirit in us and among us. Its what Christ makes of us, together, based on our common confession that Jesus is Lord. That’s why Paul says, “No one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

Now technically we know that anyone, believer or not, can parrot the phrase, “Jesus is Lord,” including, a parrot. But Paul knew he needed to reassure these new Christians about what the Holy Spirit was doing in their lives. For as he says, most of them had experiences with other spirits in their pre-Christian past. Such experiences probably included things like going into trances at pagan shrines or pagan ceremonies, and becoming channels and mouthpieces for ancestors, or for local spirits, gods and goddesses. They might come out of such trances and states to find that they had done and said all sorts of surprising things. Like revealing who was responsible for the epidemic or the flood that hit the town and what taboo they had broken to make it happen. Or what allegedly was going to happen in the future. In addition to such trances and channeling and ceremonies might be things like casting spells to influence people on your behalf. Or to get revenge on someone who wronged you. Or to attract money and good fortune, allegedly. Now that they’re Christian, they would naturally wonder, What got into me? Or who?

This is not just ancient history, by the way. Its still common in much of the world. And its enjoying something of a revival in America, especially here in South Minneapolis. I recently took a two day retreat at a retreat center south of town, and found myself in the company of another group taking a very long retreat, of about eleven days. I ate meals with them and got to know them, and learned that they were an advanced group in their religious society, undergoing, as one person told me, their secret initiations into the thirteenth and fourteenth levels of their evolution towards becoming “beings of light.” They even told me where I could learn more on their website. I checked it out to find that their leader, who was there, claimed to channel messages to them from the Pleidians, advanced spiritual beings from the Pleides Galaxy, millions of light years away in outer space. These Pleidians are said to be sending, through their leader, healing, hopeful and helpful messages to help us earthlings along on our cosmic evolution.

I don’t say this for us to mock them or roll our eyes. If we want respect as persons, we must offer respect to all persons. I enjoyed getting to know most of them as persons. In fact, it occurred to me that we have several things in common, one of which is that we both get accused of believing some pretty wild stuff. But one major, major difference between us is that their leader demands much more by way of faith from her followers than I am asking of anyone here, in myself at least. That great runs on a great deal of faith in the leader and in her claim to channel messages from beings in outer space, as well as in the messages themselves.

From what I’ve seen, such blind faith in persons and in their gifts and powers can do at least as much to bust up communities as to create them. Secretive, magical and exclusive spiritual gifts and knowledge can introduce dependency, even fear, suspicion and dissension among people and neighbors. Get into that kind of stuff, and you’ll start to wonder, Is my illness just a natural event, or was it caused by a jealous neighbor? Or an unknown taboo I violated? Many of the street children wandering cities in Central Africa begging for food were cast out of their homes, accused by their neighbors or families of secretive arts and sorcery. In effect, a divisive love of power overrules the unifying power of love. To be honest, that can happen in churches, too. That’s why Paul had to write these words to a church.

Now that these Corinthians, with this kind of past, believe in Jesus, and are exercising various spiritual gifts, they may again be wondering, What’s got into me? Or who? Paul’s answer: The Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit. You can tell that its him by the faith he’s given you, to confess that Jesus is Lord. Especially when that’s a dangerous and unpopular thing to confess. Back then, Caesar claimed to be Lord. You can also tell its Jesus by how the gifts of the Spirit are given, according to verse 7, to each and every one of them, and that they’re given “for the common good.” They are not given just to any one person. Nor are any one person’s gifts more important than anyone else’s. And they are given to create community and to strengthen it, not to elevate or benefit any one person, certainly not at the expense of others.

That’s how Christ is still active, present and powerful in the world today: not so much by exclusive, eye-popping, attention-grabbing personal powers, or claims to such powers, but by something even more miraculous: relationships and communities of loving and interdependent people, endowed with gifts and qualities that are different but equal in value, that make such love and interdependence possible. Our nation’s Declaration of Independence begins with the words, “We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal…” Those words started a revolution. In I Corinthians 12 we read something even more revolutionary: not only that all people are created equal, but that in God’s kingdom, all are endowed by their Creator with gifts of equal power and importance. That is God’s Declaration of our Interdependence.

But don’t take that on my word alone. I’m not asking of anyone that kind of faith. I am asking of us faith in something that stands outside and above all of us, myself included: the Sacred Scriptures, especially in the vision they present of this Beloved Community, of this Peaceful Kingdom, of this interdependent and mutually-dignifying new humanity. I’m also asking for faith in the Holy Spirit who is present and powerful, among us and within us, to gift and to endow us, each and everyone of us, to make such a miracle happen. That miracle does not depend upon any one person, not even the one who preaches. That’s just one gift among many in this congregation’s divine gifting. It happens through all of us and all our gifts, together.

One implication is that this also calls for a measure of faith in ourselves. Or at least in our passions and talents for ministry. If, for example, you have some interest in the faith life of teen-agers, and experience says that you can connect with them, then that’s worth exploring. Maybe its your Holy Spirit- given gift for our common good. Or the friend who called me recently to say she has applied for a job as a parish nurse and is really, really interested in it even though it pays only chicken feed, could that be God’s gifting and leading in her life? she wondered. Check it out and see what you learn, is all I could say.

This also requires some faith in each other. It means that we learn to look at each other with eyes that see possibilities, eyes that look for the goodness and giftedness in each other, eyes that can even see each other’s gifting in unique and surprising ways. Someone may freeze up when it comes to speaking or doing anything public, but with the eyes of faith in the Holy Spirit, we can see other gifts in them that contribute just as much to the common good, like visiting and serving the sick and shut-ins. Or doing hands-on, practical and mechanical stuff for others. Such gifts are just as important to our interdependent community as the more visible or verbal ones. When all such gifts, and more, are working together for the common good of the church and the world, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, for his honor and glory, then the world sees nothing less than Jesus himself, still present and active in the world. That’s how Pentecost continues, today, on this, the Eighth Day of Creation.

Acts 1:1In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”  6So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”  7He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8But 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.”  9After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.  10They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11″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.”

When Becky and I were recently in Washington, D.C., we got a tour of the U.S. Capital Building. One of the places we went was to the Capitol Rotunda, a big round space with murals depicting important scenes from American history, at least up to the end of the American Revolution. At the very top of the Capitol Building, inside the dome over the Rotunda, is a big, bold painting like what you’d see in the Vatican. In fact, it was painted in the 19^th Century by someone who had done similar paintings for the Vatican. Its called, “The Apotheosis of George Washington.” “Apotheosis” is an ancient Greek word for “being made God” or “to be declared divine.” It shows George Washington ascending, upon his death, to heaven, in flowing, angelic robes, attended by thirteen lovely young women who represent each of the thirteen original colonies. Everything about that painting is overtly religious. It borrows both from Biblical themes, and ancient Roman ones, when they would regularly declare their emperors to be gods. Not only is Washington going to heaven (which I hope he did), but he almost looks like God himself, at least how Michaelangelo painted God in that famous Vatican fresco, as a bearded old man reaching out to to touch Adam’s hand.

I have mixed feelings about both those paintings, the one of God in the Vatican, and the one of George Washington, in the Capitol Rotunda. From what little I know about George Washington, I suspect that he would have very mixed feelings about that painting too. Just like my high school orchestra conductor would yell at us and say, “If Mozart were still alive to hear you, he’d be rolling over in his grave,” I’d say that if Washington could see that painting, he might be rolling over too, and gnashing his famous wooden teeth. For one thing, he was a modest enough man to refuse a title like “king,” when many people clamored to thrust a crown and a throne upon him. So, to be “apotheosi-fied” or de-ified like that would probably make him blush on every single dollar bill.

But secondly, I don’t think Washington expected to go anywhere after he died, up or down. Like many of our “Founding Fathers,” Washington was a deist, someone who believes that there probably is a Creator God, but not one who is interested in us personally, nor who does miraculous things for us. Certainly not like raising someone from the dead, or raising him to heaven. As my sister remarked when I told her about that painting in the Rotunda, “How ironic, the deification of a deist.”

When you look below the ceiling of the Rotunda, you see all those other murals I just mentioned, depicting important moments in American history. Most of them depict war, weapons and conquest. From a heavily armed Christopher Columbus to the surrender of the British in the last battle of the Revolution, war and conquest are present and implied almost everywhere. You even find armor and weapons in the painting of the baptism of Pocahontas, the Indian woman who saved the Jamestown colony. The most peaceful, least combative picture, is that of George Washington handing in his commission as general to the Continental Congress once the Revolution was over. I find that the most inspiring of all the paintings. It reinforces what was truly revolutionary about us: being a government of laws, not of personalities or dynasties.

But put all the pictures together (except one) and one message you get is this: that conquest and the brute force of arms is the way to ascend to divinity. We rise above our meager station in life, to our destiny in the sun, over the bodies of our adversaries, thus proving that God is with us. With one exception: George Washington, at the peak of his power and popularity, bearing the swords and surrender papers of his vanquished foes, when thousands of soldiers and citizens would have marched behind him in the streets to declare him king, resigning his commission, knowing when to call it quits and submit to the same laws as the most humble of his fellow citizens, friend or foe. You just gotta like a guy like that. Even if he wears a wig.

In today’s Bible passage, we also get an ascension to heaven, but with a totally different history leading up to it. The events, words and images leading up to it are not of conquest but of sacrifice, not of men with muskets driving out Redcoats and Indians, but of the Prince of Peace washing his disciples’ feet, and praying even for his enemies as they nailed him to a cross.

In Acts 1:9 we read, “After he said this, [Jesus] was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.” So ends the most stunning and surprising reversal in recorded human history. The One who, for love, stripped and divested himself of his throne in the holiest, most heavenly glory, and who took upon himself the weakness and limits of vulnerable human flesh, and the worst that the human heart could conceive at the time by way of humiliation, shame and torture, to take on the form of a servant, on that day of ascension returned to his holy, heavenly glory. That he, the Exalted One, descended into such weakness and humiliation is surprising and stunning enough. But that he would make of that descent the very way and means back to his holy and heavenly throne, makes this reversal all the more stunning and surprising. If that’s not enough, then consider too how he does so not only for himself, but that he does so for us. He undergoes this descent and emptying so as to bring back with him to his glory the very race that rejected, humiliated and murdered him. As he told his disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Where? On his heavenly throne.

Fifty-plus years ago, someone else ascended into the heavens, but it wasn’t anyone you’ll see pictured in our capital rotunda. It was Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut and first man in space. After his Soyuz space capsule returned to earth, he held a press conference to say that nowhere up there did he see any pearly gates of any heavenly city, no angels nor saints walking or floating among the clouds playing harps, and certainly no glowing white throne with a giant, bearded, white-haired man in a spotless, white, robe sitting on it. Like a good card-carrying member of the Communist Party, he had to get that dig in against God and religion.

If Gagarinn were here, I would tell him, “Comrade, in Biblical language, the word ‘up’ does not always mean away from us, up high and out there, into the stratosphere and beyond, against the force of gravity, far removed from us and our struggles below. The word ‘up’ can also mean two other things. One is that to go up is to be proven worthy and rewarded, exalted and honored with power, authority and a title, in effect, ‘enthroned.’ Like a king.

So now are fulfilled the words we find, such as Psalm 68: “When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train;  you received gifts from men, even from the rebellious— that you, O LORD God, might dwell there.” These were words to celebrate God’s kingship. But the early church also saw the script for Jesus’ life in the words of enthronement for earthly kings, such as Psalm 110: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Whenever you read the Psalms and encounter these words and prayers for the enthronement of God, or of his king over his people, they have all been fulfilled by Jesus on the day we celebrate today.

But that is the second-to-last ascension we read about in the Bible. The last one is not by Yuri Gagarin or Buzz Lightyear—I mean, Buzz Aldrin. Its our ascension. The Apostle Paul used the same language of ascension for us in I Thessalonians 4: “16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” In other words, Christ’s Ascension to his rightful throne, the last step in the divine seal of approval upon him and his kingship, is the guarantee of our exaltation and honor as well.

The other biblical meaning of “up” is tantamount to everywhere, invisible and yet equally available, in the same sense as when smoke goes up, and disappears, and yet remains powerful and present at our level. Even far away from where the dark plume of smoke rises and disappears into the air, we can smell smoke, and our eyes sting, That’s also what we mean when we say that Jesus ascended, not that he left the planet to walk among the stars and the clouds, while we’re left all alone now down here. We mean that his reign now extends directly to his subjects anywhere and everywhere, no matter who we are, where we are, or when.

Put these two ideas together and you end up with something stunning and revolutionary, more so than George Washington handing in his commission before anyone can declare him king. The revolutionary implication is that Christ is now available to any of us, anywhere, and everywhere, so that we too might be exalted to share his glory, honor and throne. It also means that his ascension to honor, titles and a throne is our ascension as well, even if through the struggles and sacrifices of this life. And finally, it means that the values we often deride as signs of weakness and lowliness: compassion, faith, hope and humility, are royal signs of heavenly status.

Which means that, from the world’s point of view, the way up will start by going down, down in service, humility, and a compassionate identification with others. Down through hard times and struggles, living and dying, in weakness as well as strength. In the span of our lives, from youth to aging, and in the frailty that leads to death, we are not just seeing people waste away and die. We are seeing people in the process of their own “apotheosis,” of being prepared and raised to share Christ’s throne, the same way he did: by words and works of love, under the grace and guidance of God.

That’s what I want most to say to you, Katrina, while you’re still damp around the edges and the waters of baptism still chill you (I hope you don’t mind me addressing you personally like this). You have begun a journey with Jesus by which he will take you up with him to share his throne in glory, honor and eternal life. What a privilege for us all to have our parts in that. But don’t be surprised if the road to glory takes you down as often as up. Be surprised if it doesn’t. Don’t be surprised if the road goes down into some dark places of doubt, confusion, questions, and painful lessons about the broken-ness of the world and of human nature, including your own. Nothing unique to you: we’re all discovering our own weak and wounded parts, and hopefully also experiencing how God heals and transforms those parts. Don’t be surprised if the road to glory goes down into service, where you might be called upon to bind the wounds and wash the feet of the unlovely and the un-loving, down to where you might take some grief and guff for the decision you made today. You already know what that’s about. But you’ll find that someone else has walked that path, whose foot prints show a nail scar. And you’ll find him walking the path with you. And if the Lord tarries and the biblical blessing comes true for you, “May you live to see your children’s children,” you’ll also find that aging and ailing exert a downward pull on the body, and sometimes the spirit. But with the eyes of faith you’ll be able to see that the road downward is really the road upward. With the eyes of faith you’ll also see that what the cynics and scoffers see as a pointless waste of time, a life span of fear and futility, beginning and ending with tears, is actually our “apotheosis” in progress, our preparation for our own ascension to share the glory of the Ascended One. Amen anyone?

“One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”

John Donne, Divine Sonnet Ten, “Death, Be Not Proud”

I Cor. 15:50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55″Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?” 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  58Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Over the door of a church nursery, where volunteers watch infants and toddlers during the Sunday morning worship service, in what otherwise is called a “crying room,” was posted a placard with the words of I Corinthians 15:51: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” Cute, but I don’t think that babies, nurseries and diapers are what today’s passage is about.

On the other hand, the whole point of today’s Bible passage, indeed, of First Corinthians, can be summed up as “Grow up.” Or even, “Staying as we are is not an option; ‘We shall be changed;’ God has something better in mind for us.” So, will we cooperate with God’s great growing up project for us? Or will we have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the maturity of our immortality? Or worse, will we refuse and resist it all together?

Which means we’ll have to learn to leave behind two immature things as we make the transition from the perishable and corruptible, to our future state of immortality and incorruptibility. One of which is the controlling and enslaving fear of death. If anything, from where we stand now, after the resurrection of Jesus, we can see what its like when death will have lost its sting. So the fear of death does not have to drive all our actions, nor limit all our options.

The second matter, related to the enslaving fear of death, is to outgrow and leave behind a childish sense of irresponsibility, futility and irrelevance, the idea that, if death always has the last word over our lives and our labors, then nothing we do really matters all that much, that we’re not really responsible for much, that our choices in life are basically frivolous and unimportant. Rather, Paul assures us, “our labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Choices do matter, now and forever.

About the first lesson in maturity, breaking free from the enslaving fear of death: Paul does not say that death has no sting anymore. Death hurts. Grief is the other side of the coin from love. The more we have loved someone, the more we grieve their absence when they die. If we love life, and others, as I hope, then of course its sad and hard to think about them leaving us, or of us leaving them, even if we trust that something better is coming.

During times of war, people who have lost friends to battle and bombings, combat veterans and civilians, report that they often learned to withhold themselves from forming friendships, making connections or commitments, or loving. That was to keep from having to do the hard work of grieving over and over, should the death machine of war take other persons, again. After the war, with the resumption of peace and safety, sometimes they said it was hard to relearn how to love, make commitments, and relate. Shutting down our capacities to take risks on love: that’s one of the many ways in which death enslaves us and keeps us immature.

When Paul asks, “Death, where is your sting?” and “O grave, where is your victory?” he’s not saying death now has no more sting for believers. He’s saying that one day, death will have no more sting. He’s quoting the prophets, especially Isaiah 25, and the promise that one day “God will swallow up death,” deliver us from the reproach of our mortality, and wipe all tears from our faces. That obviously hasn’t happened yet. We trust that it will, but for now Paul is only speaking from the perspective of the future, saying that the time will come when we shall be able to say, “Oh death, where is your sting,” and “O grave, where is your victory?”

I say this because I sometimes hear from fellow Christians that we feel perplexed and confused and even a little bit ashamed when we grieve the loss of a loved one. Or when grief takes time to work through, sometimes, years. As though grief shows how little faith we have. I think, rather, that it shows how much love we have. In a world of one hundred percent mortality, what a courageous thing it is to love, and to love deeply. I ask if we believe that the day will come when we will be able to rejoice and to say, from experience, “Death, where is your victory?” and “O Grave, where is your sting?” and the honest answer often is, “I believe, Lord, but help my unbelief.” And that’s okay; that prayer will be answered on the day of our great resurrection reunion.

Death still does have a sting, but not for keeps. We do grieve, but “not as those who have no hope.” If we were in France, we would say, at every graveside service, “Au revoir”–see you again—and not, “Adieu,” which is what you say when you expect to never see each other again. So no love is ever wasted. And that’s the second point to which this passage is leading. In fact, I’d call it the main point of this whole chapter, when Paul says, “Your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” So we can “give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord,” trusting that God will see to the results and fruits of our labors, in this life or the next. “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done,” says Jesus, in the last chapter of the Bible. And when it comes to rewards, he will be no one’s debtor.

We need to hear that all the more, because the most important works to which we are called can feel like an endless round of futility in a world like this. Like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble. Or the reality of death can make them feel pointless. But today’s words about the next life call us to persevere in this one.

While he was leading the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, in 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., received on the average about 30 death threats a week by mail or telephone. Not all of them were idle. Two bombs landed on his porch, one of which went off and did considerable damage. The voice of one of the callers began to grow familiar. His hateful harangue was nearly a daily event. This was before the day of caller ID. But King refused to react or retaliate with the same kinds of words. After months of this daily abuse, one day the caller asked King a question, and finally, King got some words in for a change. They were gracious, peaceful words that made a winsome case for racial justice. The conversation ended with the caller saying, “Thank you, Dr. King, and you know, I can almost see myself agreeing with you one day.” That was the last time Dr. King heard that particular voice.

King got that far by persistence. But his persistence did not depend upon everyone converting to his cause and agreeing with him. In fact, he knew that many people never would. In fact, in the last speech of his life, he seemed to have foreseen that his work would outlive him, and that he would not survive to see the results of his prayers and labors. During that last night of his life, King said, “I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” Less than twenty-four hours later, Dr. King entered the pages of our nation’s history, felled by an assassin’s bullet.

King always knew that he faced that risk. But that didn’t deter him from his God-given task. Because he knew that he only played a part in God’s work of the world’s redemption and recreation. He called himself, “a drum major for justice,” not the composer nor the conductor. After he was gone, the band kept going and growing. What kept Dr. King going was not a sense that his dream depended upon him alone achieving it, but that his dream was not just a dream. It was reality, more real than the racist delusions that he was up against. For, as he often put it, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

The peace that King felt that last night of his life, when he shared his presentiment of approaching death, is justified and validated by a voice heard once in heaven by John of Patmos. In his Revelation, chapter 14, he records, ^“Then I heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’
“‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.’”

Here is assurance, from heaven itself, that our deeds in the Lord will follow us, at least into the New Jerusalem, if not always here. Maybe those are what the gold paving stones and the precious jewels that we read of on the walls and gates of the New Jerusalem are all about: the infinite and priceless value of our words and works of love. Here and in this life, they may seem inconsequential, without weight or substance. They often have to be sustained and repeated, daily or more often. And then there’s no guarantee in this life that they will always have the effect we intend. So, we may feel like that character in an ancient Greek myth, Sysiphus. He was condemned in the after-life to roll a giant stone up a hill. But every time he’d get it anywhere near the top, it would slip from his grasp and roll back downhill. He could never stop his labor, because he never could complete it. For some of us, that may sound like aspects of our life’s work.

That sense of futility could lead to irresponsibility. If we believe that all our labors might ultimately lead nowhere, or just finally to a dead end wall of death, then we might very well be tempted to just give up, drop out, sell out and tune out from life’s highest and greatest calling: love. And that would doom us to a life-long, state of spiritual and moral infantilism.

But if its true that “our works shall follow us,” and “that our labors in the Lord are not in vain,” and that they have something to do with the shape of the world and the life to come, even, that they are foretastes and care packages from the world to come, then that’s not just something to wait for in “the sweet bye and bye.” It does not only affect the life to come. The future shapes the here and now. We can either be a pathetic people, who are mired in passivity and immaturity by the fear of death, or we can be a prophetic people, who mock death by investing boldly in this life, and the one to come. I see us as a prophetic people, who do not only foresee the future which God has promised the world, who do not only preach and teach that promised future, we ourselves are signposts and demonstration plots of that promised future, we are even living prophecies, through our lives, our loves and our labors.

And if that seems far-fetched and hard to believe at times, there is one other way in which we know that our labor is not in vain. That is in the effect of our words and works of love on ourselves, at least. If it looks like no one else and nothing else is changed for the better by our efforts, then at least we are. If our labors seem not to have had the grand and glorious effect on others or the world that we had hoped for, they will still have done something to shape ourselves. When the moment arrives that we stand before the One to whom all things are known and no secrets are hidden, the One who knows us and loves us better than we do ourselves, and when we know as we are known, then the full effect of our words and works of love upon ourselves will be seen in what we will have become, in how well we reflect back the image of the One who formed us in his image. And thus all secrets will be known. They will be visible in what we will have become, all throughout our lives. Maybe we are the precious stones and jewels on the walls and gates of the New Jerusalem. In that way, Paul’s words are coming true: we are being changed, even now, as we “give [ourselves] fully to the work of the Lord.” The image of the immortal Christ is formed in us through what Thomas Merton called, “a long obedience in the same direction.” No one and nothing will be able to take that away from us.

Not even death.

I Cor. 15: 35But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.  42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

Focus statement: just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

A young woman, about the age of 13, received a gift from her father. It was a pair of beautiful amber ear-rings. When she put them on and looked at herself in the mirror, she burst into tears. “Why are you crying?” her father asked.

“It’s like you’re making fun of me,” she replied.

“Why ever would you think that?” Dad asked. “I gave them to you because I love you, not because I’d want to hurt you.”

“But they just make my big ears look even bigger. And my big, fat, nose too, and my pimples stand out all the more. I already feel so ugly, and these beautiful ear rings make me feel even uglier by comparison.”

To which Dad replied, “I see those pimples, and yes, for now your ears may have grown faster than the rest of you, but that’s all temporary, the rest of you will catch up; it just comes with being thirteen. But when I bought these ear rings for you, I was not only thinking of you as a beautiful thirteen-year old woman, but of you as a beautiful twenty-year old woman, and a beautiful thirty-year old woman, and even a beautiful eighty-year old woman. You’ll change through the years, but my love for you will not. That’s what the ear rings are about.”

I don’t know the rest of the story, but I’d like to think she wore those ear rings for her high school graduation, her college graduation, maybe even on her wedding day, maybe even at her grandchildren’s graduations, and that all that anyone thought was, “What a beautiful, dignified woman, so tastefully dressed and confident of herself.” And what a Dad; he could see his daughter not only for who she was, but for whom she shall become. The ear rings were not only a gift to her then and there, but a down payment on who and what she would become. When we get this sense, a vision for what is to come, and of ourselves in the process of becoming, that has to have an effect on how we see and treat ourselves and each other even now. In that way, the future affects the present.

That’s what today’s passage from I Corinthians 15 is about: the importance of the future to the present. How what we shall become affects who we are now. For as powerful and all-absorbing as the present may be, one implication of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that the horizons of our lives are no longer cramped and shadowed by a looming, impassible wall of death. They open up with the promise of more to see beyond what we can see, like when we gaze at the horizon on the ocean or the prairie, and know that there’s more beyond the unending curve of the earth.

In this life, then, we are like caterpillars on the way to becoming butterflies. As someone has said, “God loves us just the way he finds us. But he loves us too much to leave us that way.” The Risen Jesus already shows us the direction and the goal of our own metamorphoses. More than merely a comforting hope for the future, that has to affect the way we see ourselves and each other, as people in the process of becoming, with a destiny and an identity not less glorious than the Risen Jesus.

Paul sums up this process of becoming in verse 49: “For just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” The man from heaven is obviously Jesus. The earthly man to whom Paul refers is Adam, the first human, made from the dust of the earth, infused with the breath of God, and who fell into disobedience, from which came more sin, shame and death. Before his fall from grace into disgrace, Adam knew a perfect unity of his dust-borne body with the Spirit of God who animated him, maybe even a symbiosis of body and spirit. After his fall, the human condition became something more like a war between our dust-formed bodies and the spirit which God put in us. That’s part of the dishonor and weakness of our current bodily existence which Paul describes in this passage: that while our spirits may want to do one thing, our bodies often seem to have independent lives and contrary, stubborn wills of their own. As Jesus said to his sleeping disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

So, Adam’s fall to pride and disobedience is everyone’s story writ large. But the second Adam’s rise to divine glory through humility and obedience is the new story into which we are invited. The first Adam’s fall brought about death, while the second Adam’s resurrection and ascension brings about life for us all. As Adam was, so are we all, currently, now. As Jesus is, so shall we all be. That is, in a nutshell, Paul’s answer to the Corinthian question, “”How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”

Remember again, please, that the controversy in Corinth was not over whether or not there was life after death, but what kind of life there would be after death. Some in the church seemed to prefer the idea of some sort of invisible, non-physical, matter-free existence, in which they would escape the world of matter and bodies. From their ancient philosophers like Plato, they’d grown up hearing that anything eternal and perfect has to be something immaterial, that you can’t touch or see. Because anything physical, material and touchable that we currently know of always decays and eventually disappears. So for the ancient Greeks, the idea of resurrecting whole persons, spirit, soul and body, probably sounded like something impossible and illogical, or worse, like something out of a zombie movie.

If that’s how we imagine the resurrection and the next life, like another round of the same thing here and now, only warmed over and served up again, then Paul’s words in verse 36 apply: “How foolish.” When we talk about the resurrection of the body, we’re not talking about a mere resuscitation, but something more like what happens with a seed planted in the ground. You already know about seeds, Paul says. Plant a tomato seed in the ground and you don’t get more of the same tomato seeds, only halfway decomposed now; you get something sharing the same source, the same DNA, the same history, also something material and physical, but also something new and infinitely more glorious, a full-grown tomato plant bearing lots of luscious fruit. But the seed had to be planted in the ground—in effect, to die– before that could happen.

And you already know about different kinds of flesh, such as that of fish or birds, Paul says. So why wouldn’t post-resurrection flesh be different from pre-resurrection flesh, even though they’re both still flesh, in the same way that bird flesh is different from fish flesh? And you know about different kinds of glory, such as that between different stars and planets. So why would it be so hard to imagine that the resurrection glory of the person, body, soul and spirit, would be different from, and greater than, the glory of the body that we already know here and now? And yet still be related to it, like a tomato to a tomato seed?

So yes, the body will be resurrected along with the spirit. Because both body and spirit are important to who we are. At our best, we are a symbiotic unity of body and spirit. God still says of his physical, material world, “It is good.” So, he’s not about to surrender any part of his beloved Creation, physical or spiritual, to all the forces of chaos, corruption and sin that he already defeated with Jesus’ resurrection. Only, this body will be “a spiritual body,” no longer just an earthly body, or a physical one.

What is that, you ask? A spiritual body? As we think about a “spiritual body,” don’t think about spending eternity in some sort of ghostly, floating, substance-free ethereal body-shaped cloud like Scrooge’s Ghost of Christmas Past. Or Casper the Friendly Ghost. That’s precisely what Paul is arguing against. Let me recommend instead an idea offered by one of my favorite Bible scholars today, Bishop N.T. Wright, who compared Paul’s doctrine of resurrection body to cars, of all things.

Let’s say you go into a show room and see a new kind of car. Like most other cars it has four wheels and a windshield and doors. The connections to previous models of cars are obvious. But this new generation of cars, it is said, runs on a different kind of fuel that will never run out, let’s say, air. It uses air and spits it back out, as clean as when it went in. And it does so with such perfect efficiency that no energy is lost to heat. Obviously, it has a different kind of engine, one that will never run out, and a totally different kind of steering mechanism that will never permit a crash or a collision, and a different kind of body that will never rust or wear out. Because the previous generation of cars ran on some form of petroleum until they wore out or fell apart, we might call them, “short-lived petroleum cars.” But since this new generation of cars runs on air and can conceivably last forever, we might now call them “eternal air cars.”

And that’s how we might understand the difference between the perishable “natural bodies,” or “earthly bodies,” and our coming imperishable, incorruptible “spiritual bodies.” Not that the first are more solid and material than the latter ones, but because the first ones run and function according to natural, animal and earthly laws, which include a law of thermodynamics: everything eventually falls apart; when left to itself, a complex system, like the body, will eventually revert back to its simplest components, in our case, dirt. This body, made from the dust of the earth, feeds and runs on reconstituted dust in the form of vegetables, fruit, milk and meat, and finally, it reverts back to the dust of the earth.

But the spiritual body, though no less material or physical than the natural body, will run on spirit, be one with spirit, and, through union with God’s Spirit, be eternal and indestructible. We’ll still be creatures and creations, but then, the creatures and creations we were meant to be: in harmony and unity with the Spirit of God, whom God breathed into the very first of our dust-formed parents. Should there one day be indestructible cars that run on air, we shall look at them and say, “This makes sense; this is what cars were developing towards; this is what cars were meant to be; it had to be so; it could not have been otherwise.” I believe we will say the same thing about our indestructible, eternal bodies that are totally united to, motivated by, and in harmony with our spirits and God’s Spirit. “This makes sense; this is what we were developing towards all along; this is what we were meant to be; this had to be, it could not have been otherwise.” And don’t worry. Being so united and infused with, and sustained by, God’s Spirit will not make us any less our true and unique selves. We’re not talking about the Eastern idea of re-absorbing the illusion of the self back into the impersonal Nothingness and Everything-ness of the universe. Our resurrection, spirit-united bodies will be more our true selves than we ever could have been whenever we are slaves of society or of our basest fears and passions.

For that’s the direction that our Christian lives want to take even now. And when it all comes to pass, it will all be by grace and gift. But it will also be something of a reward, because such unity and harmony of body and spirit, self and God, are the goal and nature of Christian life and growth even now, on this side of the New Jerusalem. Its what we labor for and cultivate in our prayer, our worship, our discipleship. And as painful as aging, illness and dying are, they also serve to remind us that we are destined for something better, all of us, body, soul and spirit.

If that’s hard to believe, just as hard as indestructible cars that run on air, remember that we have already seen the proto-type of the eternal, indestructible and complete human being, united bodily to God’s Spirit, and who runs only on God’s Spirit: the Risen Jesus. The resurrection accounts record a body that was visible, material, touch-able, one that even consumed a smoked fish and which made a beach-side breakfast for his disciples. But also one that seems to have appeared inside rooms with locked doors, and disappeared from others, as God’s Spirit led him.

Does that make sense? Well, I’m stumped about a few things too. I’ve got some questions left unanswered, like what my junior youth students have asked me during our Christian education classes. Questions like, “What age will my body be in the next life? Will it be my thirteen-year-old body, or my thirty-year old one, or the one I had when I died?” And will we look the same as we were here and be able to recognize each other?” Or “Why did the Risen Jesus still have his scars? Will we have ours?”

Beats me. Paul’s answers to the Corinthians’ questions leave us with even more questions, whose answers must wait. But that’s just as true for most other worthwhile things in life, including science. Each answer opens up lots of new questions. The main point again is that God loves us, just as he finds us, with body, soul and spirit in a confusing and sometimes contradictory relationship. And God loves us too much to leave us that way. Therefore we are being changed into something holy, eternal and incorruptible, spirit, soul and body, after the manner and image of the Man from heaven, the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In this life-long process of metamorphosis, God takes even the defeat and disgrace of death and turns it into our triumph. That has to make a difference even now, in how we see and value and treat ourselves and each other, as bearers of the glorious image of the Man from Heaven, an image that is emerging in us even as our natural image ages and wears out. And that’s the good news today.