Epiphany 6 - Grace Changes Us - Loose Change

02.13.2021

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

“12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”

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Fenced in Faith

Lord, help me to change... but not that much.

Lord, save me from my sins, but mostly on Sundays. I like my life the rest of the week as it is.

Lord, I will follow wherever you lead... so long as there is free coffee, WiFi, and snacks. I'm not going anywhere without snacks.

Lord, I don't know what you expect out of me, but I'm sure I can't do it. Can't you just come back and fix everything yourself? Why don't we skip to the end?

These may not be your usual prayers, but maybe they are honest prayers for some of us, at least some of the time.

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We hit roadblocks in our lives, and when we can't immediately get over those roadblocks, we build fences around them and tell ourselves not to go that way again.

Some of the Jewish leaders were famous for building a "hedge of protection" around the laws of God, adding additional laws on top of what God commanded. They thought, for example, if no one was allowed to say God's name, you could not break the commandment of taking His name in vain. Very soon, we realize that we have fenced out from our faith, praising God's name in a right way, so that we keep ourselves from accidentally using God's name in a wrong way. As the years go by, our children and our disciples may forget God's name altogether, blocked by the fences we built.

We know we are not supposed to give up on faith in God, but it can be difficult figuring out what happens to our faith and our lives after we are saved. We also know our faith is supposed to keep growing throughout our lives, not live on a fence between being saved and not believing at all. We know Jesus wants us to give Him our whole lives, not just a handful of loose change.

Paul, writing to a church that had tried so hard to use their gifts and talents to fix themselves, had a particular lesson for them and for us today as well: There is no hope without resurrection.

If it were not so

If God's love for us stopped at the cross, if Jesus had not truly died, then God was pretending to be human and just pretending to love us. If Jesus had stayed dead, stayed in the tomb, it would have shown that God was powerless against death. The philosophers have reasoned this through the centuries, and our minds can reason with them from time to time as we struggle to understand God and how to follow Jesus.

Paul tells us that if we were only following a dream, we would be most pitied of all people who ever lived. He said this because there was and has always been an idea in our world that following Jesus was only about being a good person. A better human being. And that is about half of the truth there. Following Jesus will make you a better person. Not more intelligent, or more skilled, not necessarily more socially acceptable, but more loving and probably a bit braver.

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However, that is only half of the truth. Following Jesus will also bring challenges. The Rich Young ruler was asked to sell everything he owned, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Jesus. He couldn't do it. He could give something. He could maybe even offer more than just the loose change in His pocket. But He was an important person in this world and couldn't give up the comfort of ordinary life and be brave enough to trust Jesus and follow Him into the unknown.

That's not just one example. It's an example of thousands of stories... literally thousands. The vast majority of people in the first church from Acts chapter 2 sold their possessions and moved in with the poor. Then they were persecuted and chased out of the city, spreading across the world. The bible tells us at least 7,000 people were doing this, possibly within the first week.

That's about more than just money. That is leaving family, selling up inheritance, moving into tents, and recognizing that this world is only temporary. The aches and pains, the sadness and sorrows, but also the joys and excitement this world has to offer as well... all of them are temporary.

If Christ has not been raised from the dead, we have no hope. All the teaching about being a good person is lost in the severe problem that this life is all we have. If this is it, you don't need Jesus. As the pagan philosophers said, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Love those who love you, hate those who hate you, hang on as long as you can because this is it. As Paul wrote, if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then we won't be raised either, and evil, death, and darkness win in the end.

Paul asks us that if we do not trust that Jesus rose from the dead, as He said He would, and as His followers have shared over the centuries, do we really trust Him at all?

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I tell you it is so

Like us, Paul wrote to those who started following Jesus after He ascended back into heaven and are waiting for our own resurrection. Jesus had a similar conversation with His disciples before He died on the cross. Thomas and Philip wanted to believe, but He didn't understand how Jesus could fulfill His mission by giving up His power and leaving.

Thomas asked:

"Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" - John 14:5 (NRSV)

and Philip also said:

"Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." - John 14:8 (NRSV)

Jesus responded to both by telling them to remember the things He had already done in their lives, to trust Him to do even more, and to promise the Holy Spirit to guide and empower them in His physical absence. They struggled to understand until they saw the risen Lord after Easter. Even then, it was the Holy Spirit that guided them into a new life, years after they saw Jesus in the flesh.

But what about right now? What does the resurrection of the dead have to do with the way we live now? Well,

if we have forever to spend with Jesus in heaven after everyone who ever lived is raised from the dead and justice is done in the high court of heaven,

and after you've had 5 million years to follow Jesus, which is just a drop in the well of forever,

do you think you will even remember the hurt, pain, guilt, and sorrow you are suffering today?

That is the power of the resurrection. It fills us with so much life that our sin and brokenness no longer cripple us. Our fear no longer fences us in. Instead, they all become doorways of grace and testimonies of healing. They mark the places God has moved and worked in our lives.

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Your one thing

Believing God will raise us, Knowing God will raise us from sin and death, gives us the freedom to live differently. It opens the door to total change, not just loose change. It allows us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, give our power away, pick up our crosses, and follow Jesus. It will enable us to put our trust and faith in God entirely. It makes us people whose Hope goes beyond this world, unsurprised by the evil in this world and therefore unafraid to follow Jesus into it, shining His light.

We are not quite there yet, though, are we? Some days our hope is too frail. Our faith is smaller than a mustard seed. Our actions do not match the beliefs our mouths profess. So we give up on the following Jesus part and settle for just waiting for Him to come back and save us again.

It's not usually for lack of trying. The fences in our lives have doors or gates that get jammed closed, and we do not have the strength to get them open no matter how hard we pull. However, I've learned one thing about jammed doors. It is not usually the whole door that gets stuck. Usually, one corner, or one side, or maybe even just one small spot gets blocked or wedged in, making the whole door immovable.

The trick to getting them open is not to push or pull harder but to find that one spot and help the door get over and past it. Sometimes that means pulling up instead of out or pushing the door to one side. Sometimes it means finding the right tool to get in and clear out whatever is caught there. But, in our lives as well, if we can find the one stuck spot and address it, the whole door may swing open.

So today, instead of praying for God to come and fix everything all at once, I want you to spend some time with God's Spirit, examining your life and figuring out what your one biggest thing is that is holding you back from following Jesus fearlessly. What is the one piece of your life, that if God helped you change, might change everything? What is the one place in your life that needs the power of God so that new life can flow through it all?