Epiphany - 9 - Invitation to Transformation

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50

1 Corinthians 15:35–38 NIV

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

1 Corinthians 15:42–50 NIV

42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. 50 I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

3/2/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Adding Apostle’s Creed before Communion

Opening Prayer:

Eternal God, you revealed to the disciples the everlasting glory of Jesus Christ. Grant us, who have not seen and yet believe, the gift of your Holy Spirit, that we may boldly live the gospel and shine with your transforming glory, as people changed and changing through the redeeming presence of our Savior. Amen.

Invitation to Transformation

Transformation?

Centuries ago, before the invention of the printing press that allowed us to mass communicate the written word, religion, and spirituality were taught with pride and expectation from the homes of believers all the way through the highest levels of education across our nation and the world. If you wanted to go into law, you were first taught the law of God. Science and medicine were often taught in ways that celebrated the wonder of God‘s creation and, in the best cases, imported a healthy sense of stewardship and responsibility to care for it. Even subjects like math, which we do not typically associate with God, had examples of some of the greatest minds working to prove God’s existence. None of it was perfect, and all of it had the potential to be misused. But these were days before the great divorce between following Jesus and being a student of higher education.

I have attended and taught in those places of higher learning, among both sacred and secular institutions. Please hear me out. Those days when people were forced to try to teach a version of the Christian faith brought us the broken world we live in today. Going back to those days and those ways won’t fix anything. I say try to teach Christian faith because we often try to help people follow Jesus like we teach them math. We go into a big room, we take out our books, we listen to the teacher, we try to pay attention to the visual examples, we read about the material in our books, and we try to memorize everything so that we can say it and write it for the day we have our test. After the test, we either find a way to use that knowledge or lose it for good.

There has been much discussion in the last few decades that has raised some questions about this kind of education. I don’t know what part of that system is right or wrong, what part works well, or what part doesn’t work at all. One thing I do know, though: That is not the way Jesus taught his disciples.

Jesus didn’t just teach in one classroom. He didn’t teach in just one building. Jesus taught in the temple of God in Jerusalem, the synagogue of his hometown in Nazareth, and any other synagogue that would allow him in. He taught outside to crowds, sometimes of more than 5000 people at a time, crowds that would not fit in any of the buildings he might teach from. Jesus also taught his disciples in smaller groups of two or three people, sometimes showing them incredible, miraculous things that the crowds never saw. Jesus taught His disciples every day and in different ways, but he wasn’t making house calls. He didn’t come to us with a bag of tricks to fix our homes and lives after staying with us for a while and then moving on to the next person. Instead, he called apprentices to follow him as they all went through the wilderness, stopping from place to place like a band of gypsies, blessing those communities they touched and adding new people to their family of nomads everywhere they went. So maybe making disciples the Jesus way looks a little bit more like joining the circus than going to school.

Today, we end our time with Paul and First Corinthians as he points us back to Jesus's call on each of our lives. All of our talk about the mystery and power of the Holy Spirit, those incredible and powerful spiritual gifts that God gives us, the way we become more than the sum of ourselves when we work together under God‘s direction, and the real beauty of this body of Christ, we call the church family when we allow God to grow new life from our sinful, dead hearts that we bring him… all of this comes out of sin that has been forgiven and new life raised up from death. Jesus invites us to follow Him and allow Him to transform our life.

The Delta (The Change)

Jesus wanted his disciples to do more than copy and paste what he did with them. He wanted them to understand why he did the things that he did. We sometimes feel like we can’t know why we’re supposed to do what God tells us to do. But Paul taught through the Holy Spirit. We have the mind of Christ. Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit is there to remind us of what he said and did and to open our minds to understand more than we could on our own. We may never understand God‘s mind enough to take over his job from him, but we can always understand enough to follow him faithfully.

As we seek that transformation in our own life, and we seek to share it with others as well, our attention is attracted like a magnet to the change we see in and around us. We don’t notice slow growth the way we mark those mountain top experiences, and major growth spurts. Those of you with math and engineering backgrounds might call this the Delta – the difference between one thing and another. Forgive me if that’s a gross oversimplification. Those of you who pay with cash might think about this as the change you get. The difference between what you give and what it costs is the change you receive. In both cases, what we have to offer is never enough to get us to where we want to go, let alone where God wants us to go. The change is not something we overpay. The change is what Jesus has to pay for us to get there because we can’t get there ourselves. The Delta, the difference, is what God will do in our lives to make us into his disciples.

That will amaze, confuse, frustrate, and humble us every time. And there were those in Corinth who would scratch their heads and wonder how a demon-possessed slave, so brutish and vulgar that he was kept in chains in a place of death in decay, unclaimed to every culture, unable to put two sensible words together, could change enough to become a powerful evangelist, leading, thousands to follow Jesus, and raising a generation of the church. That’s more than the dead coming out of the grave alive again. That’s becoming a whole new person.

So the skeptics scoffed at Paul, asking him where these new bodies in the resurrection would come from. Will God brush off these old bones and put us back on the board? Will he try to stretch a few more miles out of the skin we wear today? I’m sure many of us think, “Oh, I hope not. I’m ready for a trade-in today.” And we might wonder if they were even serious about that question. But we don’t have an answer to their question. Not a scientific one, anyway. We know we’ll get new bodies and trust that they will be good because we know God is good. But we also know that those new bodies will be the icing on the cake when we measure the difference between us then and now.

The Goal

Paul calls them foolish for focusing on the physical aspect of the resurrection and neglecting the spiritual change that has to happen in us. Our passage last week addressed those who doubted a physical resurrection at all, and I think Paul may have started with those critics because if you don’t believe God can bring life out of death physically, you won’t even be able to imagine, let alone believe the even greater spiritual change God wants to do in you.

We are way out in deep water here. The concept of resurrection, both physical and spiritual, always blows my mind, and it does so because it touches every part of my life. It touches every relationship I have. It touches everything I do. And it shapes who I think I am. It is easier to talk about the end times, about signs in the sky, and how to line them up with prophecies of old because that’s talking about what everybody else is doing. I don’t have to worry about who I will be when those end times arrive when I focus on the change in the world around me instead of the change myself. But Jesus didn’t call the sun, moon, and stars to be his disciples and follow him. They already do. I’m the one that’s the question mark. Paul wrote to the Romans and told them that you and I are the ones the rest of creation is watching, trying to see what Jesus is doing in us.

With all this expectation and wonder, we are tempted to believe that the end goal, that perfect submission we sing about and blessed assurance, is something you’d have to study for 100 years just to catch a glimpse of. But somehow, the fishermen, tax collectors, healers, lawyers, and the other disciples of Jesus who passed on their faith to us today came to the exact same conclusion. What’s the goal we’re heading for? We want to be like Jesus.

We know that means more than just looking like Jesus physically. Some of us would be too tall or too short, not have enough facial hair, have the wrong kind of skin, or be too soft-handed. It wouldn’t work out, and it’s a good thing. That’s not what God is asking of us. Paul pointed back to the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. We don’t know how they looked physically either, but there are two things we do now. We know we don’t dress like them. And we know that, no matter how distant we may be from them in time, geography, language, culture, and experiences, we can all read one story about their life and know that we are related to them. We just have to read about their sin to know their blood flows in our veins.

Paul tells us that’s how he wants us to feel about Jesus. He wants us to experience enough of a spiritual change, enough of a spiritual resurrection right now so that we can open up our Bibles and pick any of those stories of Jesus, read them, and know that we are related to him. We’ve been there in those situations. And even more than that, we’ve been in those situations with Jesus because we follow him wherever he leads us. We’re not asking him to come into our house into our lifestyles and cultures, fix them up, and make them look prettier or Holier. We’re not asking him to redeem our lives by making our lives now somehow fit in heaven. We know the Delta, the change that God wants in our lives and that we need in our lives, is too great for that. We want to come as we are. We need to go and bring our sinful, dead hearts and sinful, dead lives, and allow Jesus to pay the price to make that change in us to and make new life out of us.

Invitation to Transformation

What can you do today to begin receiving the transformation Jesus has for you?

This Wednesday, we begin our journey through the season of Lent together with our Ash Wednesday Prayer Stations. While going to and from those prayer stations will not fix you or get you where you want to be, it might help you see Jesus in a new way and understand what you need to pray for to become more like Him. That could be the first step in a journey of saying goodbye to your old self and hello to a new life with Jesus.

We have Bible studies that meet weekly, and at least one new one is starting this month. You can check your newsletter for more information. Studies are great because, as good as reading the bible is on your own, it becomes exponentially better when you get to watch and hear about the transformation in the lives of those around you as you study God’s Word together.

Our prayer circle meets on Monday evenings, and we would love for you to join us as we pray for change in the lives of others. Together, we lift up the needs of our church family.

Too many opportunities are available for you to do them all, so I ask you to seek Jesus for guidance and follow where he takes you instead of jumping at every shiny thing that comes across your path. As you pray for that change that only Jesus can bring, he will work through the changes He is making in you to encourage and lift up those around you, whether you know it or not. And by following Jesus, where He leads and guides you, you will become more like Him.

I will pray for us in a moment, and then, as we embark on this journey to discipleship together. Bekah is going to come and lead us in professing our faith. She will lead us in this first step in accepting Christ’s invitation to transformation, say and pray the Apostle’s Creed together. I invite you, to listen deeply to the words we say today and how Jesus calls you closer to Him through them.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, we come today to accept your invitation to follow You. Take us wherever You desire. Show us the change you are giving to us, and give us the faith to receive it. Give us eyes to see You working, ears to hear Your voice calling, minds that are open to Your wisdom, and hearts that are filled with faith so that we might proclaim with our mouths and demonstrate in our lives that we belong to You. In Your Holy Name. Amen.