THE TIE THAT BINDS OUR HEARTS

1 Corinthians 15: 12-22

In her classic book UNDERSTANDING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, Georgia Harkness wrote these words: “Good Friday is the most solemn, soul-searching day in the Christian year. It should stir up penitence; gratitude to God for his supreme, unspeakable gift; and new resolution to do his will. But Good Friday is not the end of the story. Around the world we sing on Easter morning, ‘Christ the Lord is Risen today! Alleluia!!’ But in our day Easter has become a largely pagan festival. To make of it a time of feasting and new clothes is exactly opposite to the spirit of the One who said, ‘Take no thought, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the first Christians, the resurrection of the Lord was life, power, hope, and victory.” [Abingdon Press, 1975, p. 86] Preaching this on a day other than Easter let’s us talk about all that Resurrection Day—Easter—has become. Do you pine for, as Georgia Harkness did, the good old days when Christians knew the true meaning of Easter and showed it with what they did? When do you think that was? Can you believe that Harkness wrote the words I just read in back 1946? It’s true. How far back do we have to go to find people who appreciate the power of death and the even greater power of being raised from death? Dr. Paul Tillich was a professor of Christianity in Germany during the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich. As he stood for justice in dealing with Jews, he was pressured by the Nazi party to leave Germany, at which time he came to America. While teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City he wrote these powerful words in 1948 in his book THE SHAKING OF THE FOUNDATIONS:

“In the Nuremburg War-Crime Trials a witness appeared who had lived for a time in a grave in a Jewish graveyard, in Wilna, Poland. It was the only place he—and many others—could live in hiding after they had escaped the gas chamber. During this time he wrote poetry, and one of the poems was the description of a birth. In a nearby grave a young woman gave birth to a baby boy. The eighty year old gravedigger, wrapped in a linen shroud, assisted. When the newborn child uttered his first cry, the old man prayed: ‘Great God, hast Thou finally sent the Messiah to us? For who else than the Messiah himself can be born in a grave?’ But after three days the poet saw that the [starving child was trying to nurse on] his mother’s tears, for she was without food herself for so long that she had no milk to give….] Tillich goes on to observe: “It has been forgotten that the manger of Christmas was the expression of utter poverty and distress before it became the place where the angels appeared and to which the star pointed. And it has been forgotten that the tomb of Jesus was the end of His life and of His work before it became the place of his final triumph.” [Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948, p. 165.] So today, friends, we work to get back to first century Corinth, to be the excited recipients of a letter from it’s founding pastor (Acts 18: 1-11), the Apostle Paul, to reclaim the power, like a gravedigger who sees a birth in a borrowed grave; this birth is the new birth, the second birth that Charles Wesley put in the Christmas words to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” If we were to reclaim the power of that second birth, we would know, KNOW! Beyond a shadow of a doubt what the tie that binds our hearts is: It is the death and resurrection from the dead of Jesus, the one we know as Lord and Savior. That’s it; there IS no other tie that binds us so beautifully. It is not love, for love is shared by Jews and Muslims, and Buddhists and Atheists as well. The tie that binds us is not doing unto others as we would have them do unto you, for others also believe in the Golden Rule. It also is not Baptism or Holy Communion, for even in the Christian faith we have splintering beliefs about them and other faiths, Judaism for example, had clearly similar practices. No, the tie that binds us is the Easter event, but not the bonnets and the eggs and the pot roasts or the hams; (My, it is much less offensive to talk about those things on a day in February!) It is Jesus being tortured on a Roman cross at the behest of a mob of Jews without a protest from those early Christian disciples, we know that much. People say Jews killed Jesus but not so fast: Romans had the cross of Capital Punishment and Christians were like a little lamb on wobbly legs: not mature enough to stand on their own. We also know that plenty of good people have been tortured, often for political or religious reasons. Finally, hundreds had been crucified before Jesus and hundreds after: no, that is not unique to Jesus. Then he was taken down, not by disciples, but by Roman guards at the request of a respected Jew who also was a seeker after the Messiah. Joseph of Arimathea had his body placed in his family tomb. But that kind of thing had been done before too; it was sacrificial, but it had been done. Since on rare occasions someone was put into such a cave unconscious but not actually dead, Jewish law said a person would have to lie there without moving or breathing or a pulse for three days before a priest finally issued a declaration of death. So when Jesus raised Lazarus, he could have come quickly as Mary had requested, but instead he waited three days to raise Lazarus from death so all might proclaim Jesus as having the power of God. In Greek and Roman mythology stories were told about gods giving birth to gods and gods who could never die. But no one before or after staked their claim so completely on a living, breathing mortal person who was also God, truly dying, and then gaining a new and eternal life for all who believed in him.

This was Paul’s argument in a land that had strong superstitions concerning the Greek and Roman gods living forever. And he makes his argument using logical progression from verses 12-22, to using both emotional and scholarly persuasion. This Christ, this Messiah, really died, and really rose from the dead, giving power for followers to do the same. In musical terms, it is the crescendo of the Christian faith; the “Hallelujah Chorus” of our lives. “For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!”

Listen to how the late Albert Curry Winn, once Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S, once put it: “He lived under the unpredictable arbitrariness of human political arrangements …. He died as a victim of torture and capital punishment. And he descended into hell experiencing the absence of God totally and absolutely. Then, at last, the [message] takes an upward turn! … The least we can do [at the announcement of such news] is to quicken the pace and increase the volume to make a joyful noise unto the Lord! Bach does it best,” Winn said. “If you have ever heard the Credo in B-minor Mass, you surely remember it. ‘Et sepulchrus est’—and he was buried—ends with the wailing of strings softer and softer until the sound dies in utter despair. There is a moment of silence so heavy it weighs you down. Then the director raises his baton, and all the timpani and all the trumpets and all the singers burst forth with ‘Et resurrexit!” and he rose again!” [A CHRISTIAN PRIMER, Westminster John Knox Press, 1990, p. 134, 135.]

So friends, the tie that binds Christians around the world is the tie we need to reclaim for resurrection day, for Sundays and for every day: to throw our hats in the air, to make our hearts leap, and our eyes tear, and our voices sing for joy: God loves and has saved us: it is evident in Jesus and it is for us! One need not cling desperately to the body of a loved one as non-believers have done at funerals I have conducted. The human body has died; and for those who follow Christ, a new body takes its place in a world that we call Heaven! We have a Lord who rose, who beckons us to rise as well, and lets our loved ones rise from their broken bodies with new spiritual bodies! It is good news! And all because Christ has risen from the dead: the thing that Christians affirm and NO ONE ELSE DOES! God bless your life … and your afterlife. Amen!

Jeffrey A. Sumner February 11, 2007