Year C Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany February 18th, 2001
Lord of the Lake Lutheran Church
Web page http://lordofthelake.org
By The Rev. Jerry Morrissey, Esq., Pastor
E-mail pastor@southshore.com
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Title: “Exchanging our earthly body for a Heavenly Body”
Throughout chapter fifteen Paul has been reflecting on the resurrection of the dead. In these verses Paul compares two “bodies,” both human, one earthly or “natural,” the other heavenly or “spiritual.”
In verses thirty-five to forty-four he reverses the focal point of verses twelve to nineteen. Having established the resurrection of the dead by citing the example of Christ, he holds that if there is resurrection it must be “of the body.” However, he makes the profound point that there are different types of human body, one suited for earth, the other, after death, suited for heaven. Just as the planted seed looks very different at the end of the process of growth when it flowers as a plant, yet comes from the source-seed, so, too, the resurrected body will be different, if from the same source, stuff, material as the earthly body. Resurrection is not re-animation of precisely the same materials arranged and related to each other as when buried. Personal identity does not require such material reconstitution. The earthly is perishable, un-glorious, weak, limited in space, subject to illness and aging. The resurrected body is the mirror image of that. It is imperishable, glorious, powerful, and spiritual and eternal. The old human body is adapted and shaped by the Spirit of God for a completely different mode of existence. Paul is plainly using the example of Christ’s resurrected body. Thus, we can know something of this “body” but not more than has been revealed or can be imagined on the basis of revelation. Apparently, we do not need to know much more for now. The rest will be revealed to us after we physically die.
In verse forty-five, “the first Adam…the last Adam”: Paul accepts Adam as an historical figure, but here he is referring to the “archetypal human.” Underlying this is the notion of “corporate personality” wherein everything is present in the first human that has come out in subsequent humanity. Adam stands for humanity in general. Humanity is as limited as he. As a living being he “received” life. Christ, also an historical figure, but the archetype of a new creation, is presented as a giver of life. The reference to the “last Adam” comes from Philo, a Jewish philosopher, who discerned two Adams from the two creation accounts in Genesis (Gen1: 1-4a and 2:4b-3).
In verse forty-six, “but the spiritual was not first”: Philo held that first came the spiritual Adam, made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). The second, and therefore last, Adam is made of “dust from the ground endowed with a living soul” (Gen 2:7 quoted in v. 45). In contrast to that Paul makes clear that the earthly Adam came, obviously, first and then came Christ. It is a matter of history, a fact of history, one capable of empirical verification.
In verse forty-seven, “from earth…from heaven”: Paul is setting up a dichotomy that he would not want to press too far. He understands Christ as infusing the “heavenly” into the “earthly” realm. They are not mutually exclusive. Here, for the sake of argument, he is making a clear-cut distinction. However, in 2Cor3: 18, he sees the glory of the heavenly inchoatively possessed already by those who are in Christ and growing “one degree at a time” into fullness, a fullness which will be completed after physical death.
In verse forty-eight, “as was the earthly one so also the earthly…heavenly one…heavenly”: Paul, uncharacteristically, waxes philosophical. The “earthly one” means Adam and “earthly” is in the plural referring to humans, unredeemed. The “heavenly one” is Christ and the “heavenly” are Christians. In other words, what pertains to Adam pertains to all the unredeemed and what pertains to Christ pertains to Christians. The structure and point is similar to Christ’s dictum: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s….”
In verse forty-nine, “just as we have borne the image of the earthly one”: He now arrives at the point. “Image” is a very rich term, but here it means, “have the same sort of body as.” All have the “body of Adam” with all its limitations.
“We shall also bear the image of the heavenly one”: The glorified or resurrected body will resemble that of Christ’s resurrected body. It will be as real as Christ’s body, but “real” as defined in eternal terms, not earthly ones.
Paul returns to the Christian doctrine of the “two realms”-the earthly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal- in order to frame his thoughts on the resurrection of the body. He is in virgin territory, however. Not many thinkers before him had tackled the question. Oh, there was Philo, the Jewish philosopher, but he was not much help, except for his notion of the two Adams. No, Paul was stepping out of his “earth ship” into “outer space” and he knew it. Yet, he had God’s revelation within him and he wanted to share it, no matter how “far out” it might seem at first.
The divine was always present in the world. Otherwise this world could not or would not exist. John’s gospel opens with this very thought. He starts out by saying, “In the beginning was the word and the word was…God.” Over the many, many centuries preceding Christ’s first coming in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ was nonetheless present in the world, in every atom, sub-atom, we should say today, of the universe. Indeed, no atom could exist except in God and God in it. That divine presence was entirely invisible to the naked, unaided, unaided by faith, that is, human eye. Thus, there have always been two dimensions to material reality- the strictly earthly and the invisible heavenly or divine. Those two dimensions coalesced or fused together, in Jesus, the word became flesh. Indeed, he made the divine visible through the human, the earthly. He had absolutely no trouble seeing through everything, seeing the divine aspect to light, salt, seed, bread, wine, and especially people. He was equally at home on the earthly plane and on the heavenly plane. Now, even the heavenly plane has its evil aspects, evil spirits we call them. He was at home in that spirit world where there are evil spirits. He saw them too. He saw them inhabiting, possessing, taking custody of, human beings. He had the divine power necessary to overpower them, a power humans lacked. And he used that power. When he physically died his entire earthly body went with him, atoms and all, because his entire body was “redeemed.” That is to say that he allowed none of it, not one atom of his body, to be infected by evil spirits and so it could enter into the heavenly realm complete and entire.
Our “resurrected” bodies will leave behind those elements and aspects that remain infected by sin. However, those aspects that have been “redeemed” will go with us into the purely eternal realm. We live in the eternal dimension now, but our experience of that realm is still mixed in with the evil realm. When we physically die we will go with the Lord, but leave behind our physical atoms to be recycled by nature and used again for other purposes. At the very end of this process we call creation all the atoms God created will be fully redeemed. Just how God will do that we do not know. He is God and can do what he wants. We do not need to understand it, so much as believe it. However, we will still take with us some form of our bodies. We cannot be human without bodies. That form will be transformed, equipped, to live in the purely eternal atmosphere. It will be something like Christ resurrected body, both the same as his pre-resurrected body and different from it in some aspects.
It is not hard for us to imagine a time in the future when humans will be able to “transform” their earthly bodies by scientific and technological means, to be able to exist on other planets, planets, say, without oxygen or water, without having to resort to “space suits” and other cumbersome apparatuses. They would still be human bodies, but nor exact replicas of earthly ones. Using the same atoms, but rearranging them in such ways as to “conform” to the conditions of space, humans will be able to be “at home” in an otherwise alien, even impossible, environment. We can imagine this now, even though it may be eons in the future. The same is true of what Paul is saying here. Only, even now we have these “heavenly” aspects to our beings and bodies, thanks to our union with Christ who has already preceded us into the “outer space” of heaven. We enjoy here and now some of the benefits of having been “transformed,” even though that transformation is as invisible to the unaided human eye as the presence of God is now and was in the past.
The resurrection of our bodies into eternity and our resurrected life there will be a continuation of what has begun here on earth as a result of being incorporated into Christ, grafted on to him, body and all. All the more reason to respect our bodies, to honor them and those of others, indeed all matter in whatever form it presently takes.
The Caterpillar and the Butterfly: Thank God for the caterpillar! Without caterpillars and butterflies there would be fewer flowers and fewer kinds of them. Bees are not the only insects that pollinate flowers. Besides being a wonderful insect that eventually provides hope for the flowers, the caterpillar and butterfly provides insight as to what happens to us when we physically die. The caterpillar is a fuzzy worm crawling on the ground. To the naked, unaided, unaided by scientific knowledge, human eye it is only a worm. But inside that caterpillar there is a butterfly. Oh, not a fully-grown butterfly, but only the potential for one. At just the right time in its life the caterpillar turns gray and hangs upside down on a tree and weaves a cocoon. It looks like it is dying and creating its own casket and tomb. But the cocoon is no tomb. It is an in-between house, a place where a process takes place. So it is more a process than place. Inside the cocoon the caterpillar is transforming into a butterfly. It uses the same atoms as it had as a caterpillar, only rearranges them, recycles them, in order to emerge, rise, from the cocoon as a beautiful butterfly, no longer crawling but flying! Its atmosphere, its arena, it environment is not longer limited to the earth. It can now travel in the “outer space” of the air, the sky, the heavens. The same is true of us when we die. Our bodies will be transformed, using the same atoms, into a “body” equipped to live on a different level. When the caterpillar “dies” to being a caterpillar it looks to the casual observer that that is the end. It is not, of course. It is the beginning of a new life as a butterfly. That “different level,” that potential, was always present in us, but not awakened until the right time. Jesus came and told us that “now” is the right time for us to wake up to our potential. When we follow his lead, trust him, imitate his attitudes and behavior, we begin, really he begins in us, the process of really becoming what is inside us, placed there by God, to become. We die to our old selves and rise to a new level of life. That happens or can happen long before we physically die. Indeed, it has to happen before we physically die or we will not enter into the eternal realm of God, but be consigned to some other life or quasi-life outside of God. Just exactly what we will be, look like and how we will be composed has not yet been revealed. But, what has been revealed is that the process begins by being incorporated into, grafted onto, Christ. He is the essential, key ingredient that starts the process, advances it and finishes it. Without Christ we are like a brand new car with no key. Our outer bodies may look great but there is not life or movement.
Our Present Bodies: Our science tells us that what the early Christians believed about the resurrected body is not terribly different from what happens to our earthly bodies. We know that the visible, tangible part of matter decomposes and returns to the cosmic pool of elemental matter, only to be re-used in other ways. And we also know that while we live our bodies are constantly changing matter. Every seven years the atoms that make up our bodies have completely changed. The human body is never exactly the same from one minute to the next. By faith we also know that there is more to matter than meets the eye and whatever invisible and intangible dimension there is to matter -all matter- will participate in and be a constitutive part of the new creation. Amen.
