1 Corinthians 15:19-26
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
April 20, 2025 – Easter
9:57 a.m. Sanctuary Worship
At first glance, Rolf Klasson, a gray-haired senior citizen who hobbles along on a walker, looked like an easy target. At least that’s what the two thugs thought when they accosted him. One waved a knife in his face while the other demanded his wallet.
The two didn’t know that their victim was a former champion boxer. Klasson warned them, “This is not going to go well for you.” When they scoffed at his words, he knocked one of them to the ground with a right hook and then laid out the other with a left jab. Later, one cop noted, “They sure came after the wrong guy.”
In the same way, the forces of evil and death came after Jesus. At Calvary, they thought they had Him, but they’d come after the wrong guy. To their surprise, He knocked evil to the ground and took the life out of death (“the last enemy” of humanity today’s scripture says). Jesus rendered death ultimately powerless.
By His resurrection Jesus destined death for destruction. Though we still die, His resurrection disabled death and incapacitated it from ever having the final victory over those who live in Him.
And what Jesus did to death, He also did to all other forms of evil. That means that, thanks to the Easter miracle, we can be, as the Apostle Peter put it, “born again into a living hope”. The hope is living because it is rooted in a living Hope Giver who makes His resurrection life our resurrection life.
His resurrection life in those who trust Him makes them strong with hope. It invigorates them with a beautiful dream of how they and the whole world can become better, and inspires them with the assurance the dream can be, and will be, fulfilled in the end.
This living hope gives them undaunted courage. They bravely attempt great things: to seek to set deep and long-established wrongs right, to respond to ugly conduct with beautiful behavior, to defy the dangers and opposition that arise against the righteous and to never give up in working to make a difference.
Because those with this living hope are, in fighting the good fight, trusting in a risen Leader who defeated death, they trust that, thanks to Him, love, justice and gospel truth will win at last. As they battle for righteousness, they count on final victory in the war they wage. They believe Jesus will keep His word and one day destroy every spiritual, political and cultural force opposing God and put every enemy “ruler” and “authority” and “power” under His feet to establish God’s reign of shalom forever.
And, though in fighting the good fight on the way to that great day, they suffer wounds and losses, they don’t worry about being those who “are of all people most to be pitied”. They view their self-denials and their pains as short-term losses for long term gains awaiting them ahead.
Can you then see how their living hope gives them, not only undaunted courage, but also undaunted joy? They accept that life can be tough, but they’re not dismayed by the fact as those without hope. And they accept that they will die, but they are not dismayed by the fact as those without hope. They believe that “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” and that, though dead, they will “be made alive in Christ” – forever alive with a degree of vitality and vigor they never had before.
The Apostle Paul in today’s scripture compares Christ to “the first fruits” of a farmer’s harvest. The “first fruits” were the initial produce of a crop that the law of Moses said should be sacrificed in the faith that God’s grace, in giving the growth of the plants in the first place, is so great that there will be more than enough yet to come. Jesus then, like “first fruits”, is the beginning of a much larger harvest. Just as the one man Adam brought death to all of us, so the one God-Man Jesus brings life to all who, as verse 23 puts it, “belong” to Him. That life is an increasingly better one in the here and now and an infinitely better one in the hereafter. Therefore, those who have a living hope in Christ ever look forward to the future – for, as good as it now can get, the best is always yet to come!
If we let the living Jesus live in us, we live in happy anticipation. Though we may be buried in a grave, we see our dying as being sown like seeds in the fertile grace of the God who raises the dead. And though we may struggle against weakness, character defects and bad habits, we embrace them as what reminds us of our need for God and motivates us to turn ourselves over to the One who can take a corpse and remake a person at a higher, holier and healthier level.
We who have a living hope in the living Christ obtain countless reasons to rejoice! We not only look forward to heaven; but, as we make our way there, we savor the foretastes of it from earth. We appreciate, to the full, sunrises and sunsets, concerts and works of art, feasts and friends; but we further appreciate them as suggestions of still more beautiful sights and sounds and still richer relationships and delights. And we do so realizing that, while earth’s joys eventually diminish or disappear over time, heaven’s joys only grow larger and more vibrant over endless time. On earth we say in the midst of a great blessing, “I don’t want this ever to end”; but it invariably does; while in heaven we say, “I want this to go on forever,” and it invariably does.
In offering us a living hope, Easter offers us an opportunity. But the opportunity only becomes a reality operating in our life if we make a choice to embrace it and to sustain it by making the right follow-up choices day after day after day. We must choose to keeping doing the little things that feed and strengthen our hope. We have to show up at church regularly; guard our alone, one-on-one time with God each day; and take care of others and give of ourselves in our arenas of responsibility.
Doing these things is not a big accomplishment, but little things done a long time produce a large result!
And for every step we take forward in pursuit of our hope, the risen Christ carries us 1,000 steps forward. He’s alive, and a real help at every point of the journey.
Will you dare to be as faithful as you can and depend on Him to make something wonderful of it? Let us pray!
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