6 Epiphany C 2025
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Every morning when I get up I honor the teaching of a great pastor, Harry Emerson Fosdick, who said, “Every preacher should have the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” So I keep up with the news as best I can. I expect most of you do too. Some, I know, have greatly reduced the amount of time they do this, and I think this is probably a good thing for your souls. But I think we’re all paying attention to some degree, yes? We live in an attention economy, have you heard?
And from what I have read and seen on the news, I expect that some of our brothers and sisters here this morning are pretty happy about everything they’re hearing. And I expect that some of our members really don’t have much of any opinion one way or another. Finally, though, I think there might be some who are frightened and anxious about what they’re hearing. I wouldn’t be much of a pastor if I didn’t somehow address the feelings of my flock.
Some of you have been through the chaos of a pastor taking an unpopular political stance from the pulpit, and feel we should stay out of it. I agree, but probably for different reasons. I think our most passionate feelings and opinions, particularly since Covid began, are no longer about God or Jesus Christ, but about politics.
This, all by itself, is a matter of pastoral concern. If you think that God restricts his activities to the spiritual realm, you’re very much mistaken. If you think God is only concerned with individual moral purity, you’re also very much mistaken. God has a plan for the whole world, this world. We can believe in Jesus’ resurrection, and we can believe that our lives will be kept with God when we die. But that, Paul is saying, is a fraction of the story! Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of everyone else’s. It is proof that God is indeed coming to mete out final justice, just as Jesus warned and promised.
To get across exactly what the gospels mean by the resurrection of the dead, I’ve prepared a little parable. The prophet of Wake, Earl Simpson, has often complained that we need new, up-to-date scriptures. I’m afraid that’s not doctrinally possible, Earl, but here’s an attempt.
The Parable of the Mower
The resurrection of the dead is like a homeowner who carefully cut his lawn every week so that every blade of grass was the same height. Of course, every week between mowings, rain would fall on some parts of the lawn but not others, and the sunshine would bless certain blades of grass but not others. So certain blades of grass grew taller than their fellows.
These blades of grass forgot about the mower. Instead, were very proud of how tall they were, and they lorded it over the rest. They sucked the water and nutrients from the soil, leaving their shorter fellows to wither and turn brown. The dying blades of grass would plead with the tall blades, “please share some of your water and nutrients, so that we can live too!” But the tall, proud blades answered, “You are lesser beings, and I am great. I deserve all that I have, and you do not.”
But then, every week, the mower would come. Those tall blades of grass would fall victim to its blade, which would become stained with their green blood. Their bodies cut in half, the chunks ejected into the air, only to be raked up and burned. But once the mower left, the blades of grass would forget the lesson, and soon enough, some would stand tall again, proudly preening while their fellows languished.
The homeowner went on vacation and missed a week of mowing. When he came back, he saw that the lawn had become a real mess. Brown patches surrounded great overgrown stalks. “Well,” the homeowner said. “I’m going to to mow that right after breakfast.”
One little blade of grass heard the homeowner. He began to warn all the others that the mower was coming. He said to the small ones, “Don’t worry, the mower’s knife will pass over you.” He said to the too-tall ones, “If you share your water and nutrients with the other blades, you will not grow so tall as to suffer the mower. It will pass over you and you will be saved.” Some believed the little blade, and some did not. But when they believed, when the tall ones shared with the small ones, the tall ones diminished and the short ones grew, so that all came to the same height, the very height the homeowner required.
After breakfast, the homeowner came. Some patches of grass had become so tall that the mower would be no use. So the homeowner just pulled them up, roots and all, and threw them in the burn pile whole. Then he got the mower, and all of the rest of the too-tall blades were decapitated, their bloody members thrown into the fire. But all those who had shared were spared the mower’s violence.
After that terrible mowing, the rest of the lawn came to believe in the little blade’s idea. Those who received more water and sunlight shared just the right amount with those who did not, so that all the blades of grass stayed just the height the homeowners required.
And the homeowner never had to mow that law again.
Paul was amazed that there were those at Corinth who denied the general resurrection of the dead, even as they apparently believed that Jesus, like many other heroes in Greco-Roman cultural myths, ascended to the gods. His first point is that if you don’t believe in the general resurrection, you don’t really believe in Christ’s. Furthermore, by inference, you accuse the apostles of deliberately lying about God, a very grave sin.
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, and three days later he rose from the dead and appeared to a lot of people, including finally Paul himself. The gospel, in other words, was the good news of Christ’s resurrection, and also, inevitably, the resurrection of all of the dead who have ever lived, specifically for that final new creation, the lawn in which all the blades stay just the right height.
As different as the various testimonies are, there is no doubt that for Jesus, Paul and the early church, the resurrection heralded the beginning of a new age, the resurrection of the dead, which would culminate in a final judgment of those who happen to still be alive, but also of all who have every lived. The general resurrection, in other words, will be God coming to mow the lawn of history. Jesus frequently, clearly and openly preached exactly this. Even unbelievers will be judged. Those who shared with the needy will be spared God’s mower blade, but those who didn’t will not.
Another way of putting it, when the stock market crashed in 1929, it wasn’t the poor who were jumping out of windows.
What this says about current events is for you to evaluate. I said three years ago, perhaps in my very first sermon, that I suspected that many who think of themselves as Christians would leave the church if they really knew what Jesus was proposing. For example, I heard this week about a very popular charismatic televangelist recently appointed to a government position who literally said, and I quote, “Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan.” Perhaps she forgot that Jesus said in no less than three of the four gospels, “If anyone would be my disciple, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.” She may not have realized that, by implication, she was accusing Jesus of being from Satan, that his Holy Spirit was in fact a demon. Not the first time. Two thousand years ago, the Pharisees said that Jesus cast out demons by the power of Satan. That preacher’s statement was about as purely anti-Christ as it could be.
I mentioned her comment to one of our members, who said, “I wouldn’t want to be standing behind her on judgment day.” The good news is that our members believe in the resurrection of the dead.
Finally, just to validate the gist of my poor little parable, I’d like to read to you the gospel lesson appointed by the lectionary for this morning:
Luke 6:17-26
He came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”
Amen.
