Epiphany 7
February 23, 2025
William G. Carter
For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
February is Boy Scout month. It’s a good time to remember a service project that I once did with the Scouts. As part of my Eagle Scout badge, I was required to undertake a project that benefited the community. The project needed to exhibit leadership, lead a group of volunteers, and make a difference. Naturally, I turned to my pastor for suggestions. He pointed me to the cemetery next door.
It had fallen into some disrepair. Some of the headstones had fallen over. Weeds and crabgrass had taken over some spots. An old pine tree, now dead, had dropped a lot of needles and several branches. The church’s part-time custodian couldn’t manage the work, and she probably pointed out that it exceeded her job description.
So, I talked a number of boys into helping out. Some collected the pine branches and raked up the pine needles. Somebody else got out the lawnmower, while another tended to the dandelions. A few of the husky guys lifted and adjusted the tombstones. And I directed others to fill a couple of wheelbarrows with topsoil and dump them in a few of the depressed areas.
I’ll never forget when one young Scout (I’ll call him Tommy) pointed and said, “Look at that depression in the ground. Why is it a perfect rectangle?” Everybody got quiet, almost reverent. Then an older kid replied, “It must have been a cheap wooden casket.” There was a flash of recognition and a unanimous sound of “Eww!”
We were working an acre of death. There’s no way to dress it up. That two-hundred-year-old field had been neglected for a long time. There were many depressed rectangles that needed to be filled in, raked, and reseeded. The flat limestone planks needed to be lifted and reset, even though the acid rain had erased the names and dates that had once been carved into them. It was a matter of respect. Whether we teenagers knew it, we were honoring people that none of us knew and nobody else remembered. Nobody, that is, except God.
Ever since, I’ve spent a lot of time in graveyards. Occupational hazard, I suppose. Most of my visits have lasted twenty minutes or less. One thing I’ve noticed: nobody wants to be forgotten, even though it’s probably inevitable.
Some years ago, a funeral director and I were winding up a morning’s duties at a local cemetery. We heard a sound, and my friend nodded toward a man riding in a golf cart. He was attached to an oxygen tank. He had come to inspect the construction of a large marble mausoleum with his last name inscribed along the top. My friend whispered, “Won’t be long.” The whole scene screamed, “Don’t forget me.” With the kind of money he was investing in his own memorial, perhaps folks might remember him a little longer than others, but maybe not.
Now, what would the apostle Paul have to say about this? Probably a lot. That church he started in the city of Corinth had questions about death. They all knew that death would come for all of us. It’s the one perfect statistic. We will try to postpone it as long as we can. But all of us have a shelf life and an expiration date.
But Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead. Somehow, the perfect statistic has been broken. As a character in one of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, “Jesus is the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance.”[1] Indeed he has. As we heard last week, Paul said, “Jesus has been raised, we shall be raised.” Jesus was first, the confirmation that everything he did and said was what God wanted said and done.
The more we reflect on the resurrection, the more expansive it becomes. In Christ’s raising, he did not return to exact revenge on those who wanted to get rid of him. Rather, he prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, they are clueless;” that is the one prayer we want the Father to answer, thank God. Then there’s this elusive quality of Christ’s resurrection. Jesus appears here and there, but never long enough for us to control him or capture him; all we can do is listen for him and pray to him. He says, “I am with you always,” yet we do not see him; not directly at least.
And the resurrection gets even bigger. Paul says to the Corinthians, “All will be raised.” Just as death came through the one man Adam, all will be made alive in in the one man Jesus Christ. That’s quite the promise.
I remember the afternoon when my Eagle Scout project was winding up. Most of my volunteer team had evaporated. The sexton of my hometown church appeared. She had some blank sheets of paper, a couple of chunks of charcoal, and a Bible.
She took the paper, held it up to the gravestone, and rubbed it with charcoal. She said, “Even if the name is faded, we might find out who is here.” Clearly, they deserved to be remembered. The people beneath our feet mattered to God even if everybody else forgot them.
Then she wiped the charcoal off on her pantleg and opened the Bible to the prophet Isaiah. She nodded toward those depressed rectangles that we had filled with topsoil. Then she read these words:
Every
valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people
shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.[2]
It was the same thing Paul said to the Corinthians, sharpened by the resurrection of Jesus. I stood in that field of death, now a field of memory. For the moment I imagined everybody rising. For that is what Easter has set into motion. And the worn-away gravestones don’t matter because God remembers who those people are. And that marble mausoleum that the rich man built won’t matter, either, because God knows his name, too, and he will be no better than anybody else. “All shall be made alive in Christ.” That’s the Gospel promise.
Now, we don’t know when. Nobody knows when. That’s why the language in our obituaries is so confusing. The funeral home may print, “Uncle Johnnie went into the arms of Jesus,” while another might say, “Aunt Sarah passed away and awaits the final day of resurrection.” I happen to believe both are true simultaneously; God is eternal, and our sense of time collapses in the light of eternity.
What matters is what Paul most wants us to remember, that Jesus Christ is the Lord of life, and death, and life. Christ is working out God’s purposes until he puts all his enemies under his feet. That’s an important verse. It’s from one of the Psalms. In fact, it is the most frequently quoted Old Testament verse in the Christian scriptures.[3] The essence is this. God has appointed one ruler over all things, one King, one Lord, one Savior. And he is going to keep ruling until he rules over all things. Until all things are either under his feet or removed from God’s dominion.
All things, not some things. All things. Just like he says, “all people,” not some people, but “all people.” All people shall be raised to stand before him once again. It’s hard to imagine this, but this is the size of God’s salvation. Every valley lifted, every mountain lowered, every life restored, every name remembered.
And
the wilderness shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice.
The
blind shall see, the lame shall dance.
The
hungry shall feast, the selfish shall be relieved of their selfishness.
And God shall dwell in the midst of them.[4]
We are talking about a really big resurrection. That’s the hope. That’s the promise. That’s what the raising of Jesus has begun. Any questions?
Well, just one. What about death? That’s a good question. People still die. They – we – run out of time. But Paul wants us to know one final thing. Death is more than a natural process; that’s “little d death,” and all things die. But there is a “Capital D Death” as well. This is the power that Adam and Eve unleashed when they ate the mythical apple in the long-ago Garden of Eden. According to the ancient story, when they disobeyed God, they created their own tombstones. And God said, “I still love you, but you have now put limits on your longevity.”
Ever since, the grandchildren of Adam and Eve have continued to get into one mess after another, largely of their own making. This is the evidence of Capital-D-Death. It’s there every day for those with courage to turn on the evening news. As someone notes, “Along comes capital-d Death to sneer at our hopes, to take away our freedom, and to turn us into slaves paid only the wages of sin, which severs our relationship with the eternal God… while Death stands in the shadows and laughs.” Only God can solve this problem.[5]
The good news is that God has loved all of us enough to stay with us, no matter what. But the day is coming, the Final Day when God will say, “Come home. All of you. All of you, or at least all who can still hear my voice. Enough with the mistakes, the pain, the losses, and the dying. All rise.” And Death, Capital-D-Death, will die. We know it to be true, because we sang it in the third stanza of our first hymn. Remember?
When
I treat the verge of Jorden, bid my anxious fears subside.
Death of death (hear it?) and hell’s destruction, land me safe on Canaan’s side.
Now, I know the hymn stirs the blood, as it should. And it’s the promise of God that points us to the final day: the death of death. And all that God loves will be brought alive once again. That’s the Good News.
How will it happen? We can’t say yet
because we’re not the ones in charge of the universe.
When will it happen? It will happen when
the God of eternity says so.
Why will it happen? Because God is a God of perfect love and perfect justice. And it is God’s will that everything shall be made well, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
One thing we know. On that final “getting up” day, all God’s creation is going to sing:
Songs
of praises, songs of praises,
I
will ever give to Thee. I will ever give to Thee.
[1] Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
[2] Isaiah 40:4-5.
[3] Psalm 110:1.
[4] Some of my favorite salvation
verses from: Isaiah 35:1-10 and Revelation 21:1-6.
[5] Thomas G. Long, Accompany Them
with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,
2009) 38-41.
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