1 Corinthians 15:12, Paul says, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead?” That is, “What future do any of us have if Christ has not been resurrected?”

To show that we do have a future, Paul writes the lengthiest explanation of resurrection in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 15. He makes a solid case not only for Christ’s being raised from the dead, but that we, too, as followers of Christ have the promise of resurrection.

I believe there are two primary reasons why Paul gives such a lengthy account of resurrection. First, there are apparently some people in the church at Corinth who question Christ’s resurrection. Secondly, this telling of the resurrection sums up Paul’s advice to the church in Corinth. That is, as Paul has spent the first fourteen chapters of 1 Corinthians diagnosing the problems at the church in Corinth, Paul then gives them the answer for how they can fix their problems. All their problems, be they things that happened in the past, be they struggles they are currently enduring can be overcome as they stay fixed on Christ’s resurrection. Nothing in their past, no present problems can have such a grip upon them that they cannot become the church God intends for them to become as they stay focused on the power granted to them through Christ’s resurrection.

This staying focused on the cross, thinking of a better future, what we can call a resurrection faith, not only applies to churches, like Corinth, the same truth can apply to families, to individuals, to friendships. Nothing in the past and no present problems can hold us back from experiencing the future that God intends for us. So how do we develop a focus on a better future, a resurrection faith, as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15?

As for a church, we can take as a contemporary example Christ United Methodist Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For several years they have taken the promise that God had a better future for them. Listen to what their pastor, Rev. Dick Wills writes. “God has always been futuring for God’s people. When God spoke to Moses, he didn’t tell him how it was in the past. God didn’t vision in the present to tell how life could be more bearable in slavery. No, God told Moses to lead God’s people out of Egypt and into their future in the promised land. Jesus talked about the Kingdom that was coming in the future but this is also here now. God has always been calling God’s people into the future. I want to give you an important principle for any church, any person, or any home: “It is not what your are now that is important, but what God wants you to be and what you can be with faith.” Among the many ministries started at Christ Church, one is a ministry to homeless families in the Fort Lauderdale area. The Church has purchased an apartment complex that houses homeless families, provides them job training and allows them to live the apartments until they secure a full time job and can pay their own bills. Because of their focus on a better future, they are also helping others, like these homeless families to also share in having a better future.

And for us, let’s make a couple of observations from Paul’s defense of resurrection, let’s see how we can develop a resurrection faith.

One thing, living with a resurrection faith means that we have a shared future. One of the concerns brought out in 1 Corinthians 15 is that if the dead are not raised, then what happens to those who die before Christ returns? Do they cease to exist? But as Paul writes in verse 22, “All will be made alive in Christ.” Whether we die before Christ returns, or if we are living when Christ returns, all are made alive through Christ, all share the same future promise. Because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, we are joined together, sharing a common future.

Andrea Midgett, a writer in the magazine Christianity Today shares her story, “When I think of the cross, I see the arms of Jesus. And I hear him saying, in Matthew, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers chicks under her wings.” One cold night years ago in North Carolina, I went outside to check on some animals then housed in my father’s small barn. There was a full moon shining down bright, brittle light above the pines. It was so cold that the water in the horses’ trough had frozen over, unusual for the coastal counties. As I went to get an axe to chop through the ice, I noticed a yard chicken, a hen, perched near the trough, with several biddies tucked under her wings. I was impressed with how she had turned an, it seemed to me, surely tired, for the sake of her children. And I was uplifted by what I took to be a gift and encouragement to my faith, this visual depiction of Jesus’ care for me. But it struck me that those chicks had come to the hen. I don’t know if she chased them around the yard first, if some came more willingly than others, or if some were still out there half-frozen. (There were a few late arrivals perched on top of her wings.) I only know the chicks I could see had allowed themselves to be gathered up and protected. They had quit fighting what they had no control over in the first place and said, “You do it, Mom.” And there was Jesus, dying a slow and terrible death, with his arms pulled wide. The cross is God’s passionate invitation for us to come in from the cold.” We can move beyond any past or present problems as we come to Jesus, his arms stretched out, so that we can be gathered together, enjoying a better future.

We can also say that living with a resurrected faith helps us to stay focused on the solution. Paul could have easily written a letter twice this long as he could have given specific solutions to each of the problems in the Corinthian Church. But instead, as a way of addressing all the problems, he gives his conclusion, this chapter 15, stating, if we stay focused on the Cross, taking as our goal the better future God has designed for us, then present problems fade under the power of the resurrection. Subject everything to Christ, Paul tells us in verse 27, “For God has put all things in subjection under his feet” everything can be taken to Christ, nothing is too big or too problematic. Nothing can hold us back from staying focused on the future. Keeping our focus on the future is to focus on the solution.

In the 1994 Winter Olympics, held in Norway, twenty-three –year-old Tommy Moe of the United States won the gold on the men’s downhill. Sports Illustrated said it was a beautifully controlled run on which he held tucks and thrust his hands forward in perfect form at places where others had stood up and flailed their arms. After his victory, Tommy Moe explained his thought processes. “I kept it simple,” he said, “focused on skiing, not on winning, not on where I’d place. I remembered to breathe –sometimes I don’t.” The winner of the gold metal in the Olympics had to remember the most basic of basics, breathing! He kept it simple. Likewise, as we seek to have a strong walk with God, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know where we win or lose. Spiritual strength depends on the basics. We need to make sure we’re breathing the things of the Spirit.

How can we stay focused on the cross?

How can we experience the promise that Christ has been raised?

What we are saying is that reaching the unchurched is so important to us that we are willing to . . . but before this, it’s to believe the message ourselves. To experience it ourselves.

“The process through which the emerging church will make itself known will necessarily be messy; it may occasionally lead to conflict. However, if our deepest desire is to be faithful to God through our congregational life, we can begin to experiment, follow hunches, and trust that the Spirit will help us discern the most faithful forms of emerging church life. Trying to figure out the shape of the emerging church is not a luxury for those of us who lead Christian communities. The new cultural context demands it.” –from The Postmodern Parish: New Ministry for a New Era.