St Paul is no fool. He always anticipates objections. He goes on (v. 35): "but someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" And Paul's answer is, basically, "that's a stupid question. He's annoyed that the Corinthians are so literal minded. He wants them to understand that the Resurrection body, though it is recognisably the same person, is of another order of reality altogether: "you foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be .... God gives it a body as he has chosen." At this point Paul finds himself in a difficulty, and he is not altogether successful in getting himself out of it. He is trying to explain how the Resurrection body is different from an earthly body, so he starts talking about seeds and plants, birds and fish, stars and suns. The preacher is sympathetic to Paul's predicament here. It is always tempting at Easter to talk about how the ugly brown bulb is transformed into a gorgeous, colourful tulip or daffodil. The analogy doesn't really work, however, because flowers come up every spring and we expect them to, whereas the Resurrection was totally unexpected and explosively new. Paul, as he dictates, seems to sense that these illustrations from the natural world are not working so he abandons them and goes on to a much more arresting set of biblical images.
The first man (Adam) was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man (Christ) is from heaven ... Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Here Paul has more success as he begins to show how Christ is from another world order altogether. Together with us, Christ has borne the image of "the man of dust"; indeed he has borne it to its bitter and shameful end at Golgotha; but because he is "the man of heaven," his death and Resurrection are the evidence planted within human history that God has broken through from beyond human history, from beyond human imagining, from beyond human capacity. That is what Paul means when he says crisply, "I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." The Gospel of John says the same thing in a different way: "to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God .... Born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of human beings, but of God" (John 1:12-13).
Just as the crucifixion has always been problematic, so too has the doctrine of the Resurrection of the body. We don't seem to want to believe in resurrected bodies. We want to be "spiritual." But bodies are important. When Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, the whole world was touched by the grief of his young granddaughter who wept that she would never feel his warm hands again. I'm sure that you remember the famous photograph taken at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing ---- the big husky fireman cradling the tiny dead toddler. The impact of the picture, reproduced around the globe, came from the site of the bloodied little live body cradle in the huge arms of the fireman with the compassionate face. Bodies matter. Faces matter. We want to hold a warm hand, we want to see a beloved smile. I remember when I was young in Virginia and a wise older person said, "Virginians think they love Robert E Lee. They don't love Robert E Lee; they love their image of Robert E Lee. In order to love someone you have to have them right their."
Jesus is right here. He is right here in a way that no one else has ever been. Even now there is a real sense in which you can, as the song says, "put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee." It is very difficult to describe how this can be, but just as the beloved disciple grasped by faith that Jesus's body had passed through the grave clothes, so also we today may grasp by faith that he has risen and alive. Let us return to Paul's words;
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
Can you imagine anything more wonderful than this? On the contrary, we can scarcely begin to imagine it, for it does not come from human imagination but from God. All our sins wiped away, all evil done to death for ever, the devil and his hosts destroyed, our loved ones restored to us, all the injustices and wrongs of human history made right in a new heaven and a new earth.
These things are neither humanly possible nor religiously possible. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But as Jesus himself said, "all things are possible with God" (Mark 10:27) Paul continues this letter in a sort of rapture:
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
Changed! Our sinfulness exchange for his righteousness, our mortality for his immortality, our sorrow for his joy, our bondage for his freedom, and our deteriorating human body for an altogether transformed one that will nevertheless be our very own and no one else's, a body with which to love others and be loved in return with all the love of Christ himself. "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, "death is swallowed up in victory" (1st Corinthians 15:54).
Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, (The Undoing of Death)
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