Mary:

This morning’s scripture reading is taken in a continuation of our look at chapter 15 of First Corinthians. And I resist all urges to sing it. You’ll know what I mean. Hear the word of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:50–58 (NIV)

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. ⁵¹ Listen, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵² in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³ For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” ⁵⁵ “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” ⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁵⁸ Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

May the Lord bless to us the reading of his word.

Congregation:

Thanks be to God.

Bart Garrett:

Thank you, Mary. And I join Mary in welcoming all of you. I’m Bart Garrett, the lead pastor here. If we hadn’t had a chance to meet, some of you know that I’m preparing to go on sabbatical this summer. And as I prepare, one of the things I’ll miss the most is probably the opportunity to tell dad jokes publicly. Don’t get me wrong, I will truly, deeply, sincerely miss all of you. Most of you while I’m away—no, wait, mostly I’m gonna miss the dad jokes. I’m kidding, of course. I’m actually grateful, confident, and excited as I think about sabbatical. I’m grateful that our personnel team really cares about the renewal and the refreshment of our staff. And I’m honored and humbled to be able to participate in that. And I’m confident because we really do have a great staff and I know we will thrive this summer. And I’m also really excited. I’m going to get to do something I’ve been wanting to do for years over sabbatical. I’m going to get to visit a lot of our local church plants each Sunday. And I’ll be able to encourage those pastors, but also just receive and not preach, which is great. And I’m also really excited to come back because some of you don’t know we turn 150 years old as a church in 2028, and there are a lot of beautiful plans and prayers to push us in that direction. So I’m super excited about that.

But one more dad joke for the road, okay? A lot of enthusiasm. What’s the difference between a literalist and a kleptomaniac? Well, you see, a literalist takes things literally, but a kleptomaniac takes things literally. See how one comma changes everything. So how much more? One word changes everything. And that’s what we’re talking about. This word—erga—the in Greek, three words in English: Christ is risen. And this has really turned the world upside down, or right side up. It’s turned many of our lives inside out. And we’ve been exploring, as Mary said, First Corinthians 15, which is the most extensive teaching on the resurrection in Scripture.

And please understand, if you are exploring faith or you’re new to faith, or you’re considering Jesus, or you are unconvinced that any of this is true, you’re actually in the same shoes or sandals as every single person Paul encountered in every city he visited—Rome, Corinth, Thessalonica, Philippi. He wrote letters firstly to say, you are not alone in your doubt. But as they considered the resurrection, faith eventually followed.

Tim Keller, in a book that he authored while undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer, writes these words:

When Paul met the risen Christ, it challenged him both rationally and personally. He not only had to overcome his deep rational doubts that a resurrection could happen in the midst of history and that such a weakling could be the Messiah, he also had to see that his goodness was insufficient, that he was spiritually lost, and that nothing less than the death and resurrection of the Son of God could rescue him.

— Tim Keller

So in the early church, every single person moved from doubt to faith. And we’ve been using this one word that changed everything as a launch pad to some other words that have bearing on our lives. So we talked about grace. We talked about faith. Last week, we talked about being alive. And today, as you saw three times in our passage, we’re talking about victory.

Now, when I was dating Katie, who’s now my wife, the first time I ate with her extended family—and you’ve got to know, she has seven Southern Baptist ministers in three generations of her family. So insider baseball for just a second: I grew up Presbyterian. So if you’re Baptist, you’re like this. If you’re Presbyterian, you’re like this. As we were preparing for the meal, they prayed over the meal, which, you know, even as a stodgy Presbyterian, I’m totally okay with. And then after the prayer, a cappella, they belt out “Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever. He sought me and bought me with his redeeming love.” It was a little kooky, and it was also very endearing. And I named something about myself that day that in the context of Christian faith, I really didn’t like the word victory. It sounds so triumphalistic. To the victor goes the spoils. In order to have a victor, you have to have a loser. Don’t get me wrong. In the arena of competition, let’s duke it out. In games, let’s have a winner, let’s have a loser. But in the Christian life, I’m not so sure.

However, since then, I’ve learned that I’ve really been thinking about victory all the wrong way. And I learned, actually, that Paul intentionally draws a severe juxtaposition—a powerful contrast between the cultural understanding of the word victory and how Paul uses it in the early church.

So the cultural or the Corinthian understanding of victory: In athletics, they had victory in the Olympic Games, in the Panhellenic Games, and it brought fame and food. And in warfare, victory brought the spoils, and it was usually in the form of riches and women and slaves. And in their mythology, they had Nike—or Nike—the winged goddess who was depicted flying in and standing in victory with Zeus and Athena.

But how did Paul use that word in the early church? And again, the audience in Corinth, they were very wealthy, they were sophisticated. They were Greeks. They had this thick culture, as I just said, of athletic competition. They were worshiping these many gods. Yet Paul’s refrain was this: He said, victory is not achieved through might or merit, but it is received as grace, through faith, as the gift of God in Christ. Not Nike, who’s swooshing in—see what I did there?—and hovering above, but Christ, who is stooping down and entering in. The symbol of the early church was not the swoosh—just do it. It was the cross. Christ does it.

So here’s the question: Does our modern American cultural understanding of victory feel more like the Corinthian culture or more like the Christian culture? Because it seems to me like victory is power and dominance and being right and in control and winning. That all we do is win, win, win, no matter what. Don’t get tired of winning. We need more winning. Socioeconomically speaking, if you win, you’ve earned it, you deserve it. Don’t be like all those other losers and suckers. Or consider today’s political realm for just a second. It’s all about winning elections, defeating or destroying your opponent, canceling MAGA, owning the libs.

Could we zoom out for a hot second? See, politics comes from the Greek word polis, which means city, which means relating to cities and citizens, activities involved in governing any given society. That’s a good definition of politics. So actually, politics is not about winning. It’s about flourishing. So here’s an inventory question for a Christian: Whenever I vote or engage in politics, is my vote or engagement firstly, even mostly, about my party winning or about my neighbor flourishing? And in Scripture, the neighbor is usually that person who was set to the margin.

So in this passage, we see a Christian path and a purpose of victory that is utterly foreign to many of our notions of victory today. In the Christian path to victory, while our path, again, is often the ends justify the means, that there’s dominance and arrogance, the Christian path is sacrifice, humility, and service.

And some of you are thinking, but Bart, I mean, it’s so bad out there. We’ve got to fight. There’s a culture war, and we must win it. And that’s an understandable retort. In fact, it’s biblical, or at least it shows up in the Bible. In fact, it shows up in the life of one of the Bible’s heroes, the disciple Peter. Remember when we’re in the Garden of Gethsemane and it’s the last night with Jesus and there’s this huge culture war going on, and Rome is winning, and Peter says, we’ve got to fight back. And he draws his sword and he cuts off the Roman centurion’s ear. And then Jesus says, “Well done, my good and faithful friend.” Wait, I’m sorry. I need reading glasses. Jesus says, “Put away your sword. Should I not drink the cup my Father gave me to drink? Those who fight by the sword will perish by the sword.”

And I understand this might be unsettling for some of us. Yet I think my concern is both biblically and historically true: that in a broken world, there is an unending spiral downward of violence. And the only act that ultimately quells violence is an act of nonviolence. It’s an act of self-sacrifice. And I think we absolutely know this to be true, practically. Think of that altercation where you are incensed or the other person is apoplectic and you or the other person de-escalates with a kind word or a compassionate gesture. What happens? It diffuses the situation, doesn’t it?

Now, it’s always appropriate to say in a teaching like this: I’m not talking about abusive situations where someone is in danger. If that’s you, get out, get help. Let us help you. Yet in general, a gentle answer turns away wrath and a harsh word stirs up anger. And just so we’re clear, that’s not Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. That’s King Solomon in the Book of Proverbs. And writ large, that’s God’s path: victory, sacrifice, compassion, being willing to lose for the sake of others.

So what about God’s purpose of victory? Well, that’s what this passage is all about. What is the end of victory? What is the final desire of victory? Well, for us, again, in our view, it’s often control or influence or validation—to prove our point, to defend our tribe, to create winners and losers, to create insiders and outsiders. But for the Christian, it’s to bring reconciliation between humanity and God and between one another. It’s also to bring a restored and a resurrected world to fruition. Do you see it? A reconciled humanity in a restored world. That’s Jesus’ purpose for victory.

And you may say, well, Bart, that’s grand, that’s even compelling. But so what? What does that even matter for today? Can you please get a little more practical?

So I’m thinking about this question in practicality, in light of what I’m calling the anatomy of victory. In this passage, it’s three couplets: you see sin and death, you see flesh and blood, and you see rest and labor. And I think there’s some practical suggestion under each one of these.

So firstly, sin and death. And just to recap, last week, if you weren’t here, we talked about being alive versus being dead. And if you were here, you’re saying, geez, here comes the Grim Reaper, Bart, to talk about death again. But our contention last week is that we deny death. We ignore it, we avoid it, we sand it down as just a part of life. Yet the way death aborts relationships and conversations and hopes and dreams and vocations—everything about that in your life screams, death is not normal. Death is unnatural. So kick at it as the enemy. Yet we know we lose in the short run. Death gets the victory.

So juxtapose that with verse 54: “This saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Now, if we were to rewrite that verse in the broken world we live in, it might sound like this: Life has been swallowed up in death. Death, you sting us. Death, you have the victory. And that sting, actually, ultimately, preeminently, firstly comes from sin. That’s what Paul says in verse 56: “The sting of death is sin.” It’s the relational breach that happens when we walk away from God, when we close the door on God, when we assume that we know better what we need for our own lives than God does. And so we begin to live a life apart from God, alone, all by ourselves. Spiritually speaking, it’s like the toddler meets the shoelaces. Existentially speaking, “No, I want to do it all by myself.” And this is what gets us. This is what stings us and even dismantles us. Because Paul is saying, without God, we even have death to do all alone.

But look at verse 57: “Thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” You know, I would suggest it’s worth exploring whether or not the resurrection is true simply for the sheer opportunity of not having to die alone. And I know you may not understand that at 22, but you certainly do at 52 and certainly at 72. Paul is so confident of Jesus’ victory over sin and death that he joins the Hebrew prophets Isaiah and Hosea in quoting their mockery of death. “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” That’s Isaiah’s words. “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” Those are Hosea’s words. Death does not get the last word. Resurrection does.

Resurrection means nothing ultimately controls us. No authority or kingdom of this world, even evil, sin, and death. Resurrection does not promise that all the circumstances of life will go smoothly, but it does give us hope that we can be turned into the kind of people who can handle whatever comes. More and more, as we walk with Jesus, we truly walk in freedom from the guilt of sin and the fear of death. It’s actually very practical.

What about this second piece of anatomy of victory to consider here? Flesh and blood. This is where we started in our first verse, verse 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.” So you’re hearing flesh and blood and you’re saying, well, no, wait a hot second. We’ve been talking about how resurrection is physical. You’ve been saying this for four weeks. Are we now back to no flesh and blood? Is it all harps and halos again? What gives?

Well, flesh and blood was the Jewish idiom for a mere mortal. So what Paul is saying here is that frail mortal humanity cannot survive in God’s eternal and perfectly holy presence. If you’ve read C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, it’s those shadowy souls that are apart from God and they can’t even visit heaven for very long because the grass was like shards of diamonds. It was too real and too vibrant for their ghostly, frail feet.

But there’s even more in this passage. It’s not just flesh and blood, but it’s this combination of flesh and blood and perishability and imperishability. And so what Paul is doing here—and this is where you put your thinking cap on for just a second—is he’s talking about those who have died before Christ’s return and those who are alive in the world right here, right now, when Christ returns. And what he’s saying is neither the living nor the dead at the coming of Christ can go into the kingdom as they are. Both must be changed. In other words, this body, this body right here, right now, will not be destroyed or abandoned, but it will be changed.

The resurrection of the dead might be likened to that slow seed growth we talked about last week, but the resurrection of the living right here, right now, will take place with startling suddenness. Verse 52 and 53: in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, in a trumpet blast, which not incidentally was usually blown in that day to express victory. You know, all week as I’ve been mulling over this past passage, I’ve had in my head a soundtrack, and I actually ended up listening to it a few times: Johnny Cash’s “When the Man Comes Around.”

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
100 million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum
Voices calling, voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It’s alpha and Omega’s kingdom come

— Johnny Cash, “When the Man Comes Around”

The some are born—those are those who died before Christ returned. And those that are dying—those are those who are here as Christ is returning, raised to new life.

So up to this point, Paul’s been stressing the continuity that our resurrected body will have with the present body. But right here he’s kind of stressing the discontinuity—that our current bodies are unfit for eternity, that the kingdom requires not just improvement, but transformation, that the resurrected body is somehow just alike and exactly different from our body right now.

The gospel accounts actually give us a picture of this. Because when Jesus returned, resurrected, the disciples touched him and he ate fish. And it didn’t just somehow slip through his non-body onto the chair. And it did not matter to him that he was enjoying this fish, yet he slipped through a wall and at first his followers didn’t even recognize him. It’s like that person you knew as a teenager and maybe they moved away and you bump into them 30 years later and you’re like, “Sarah, is that you? I didn’t recognize you,” and you look exactly the same.

So what does all this mean practically? Well, a couple things. One: your body matters to God. That there is moral significance to the life you live in the body. That unlike what our culture tells you, you’re not merely a bag of chemicals or a bundle of nerves or a brain on a stick. What you do with your whole self today matters for eternity. The resurrection says what you do with your body is a moral issue.

But a second practical suggestion: some of us are thinking, what if I don’t love my body very much? Resurrected into this body? Please God, no. But you should know that God loves your body and in glory it will be whole and complete, not lacking in anything. So we live with anticipation that God is not finished with us, that our best glorified self is yet to come, that my back won’t always hurt and my knees won’t always pop and my digestive tract won’t always cramp. It’s very practical, living in the body God gave you and longing for the resurrected one that he promises you.

So lastly, we’ve looked at sin and death, flesh and blood. What about this third couplet? Rest and labor. This is our last verse, verse 58: “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

To me, this might be the most encouraging promise of God or blessing of Scripture for this life right here. Your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Or said another way, your work in God isn’t wasted work.

I mentioned how excited I am to come back from sabbatical to WCPC. Here’s one major reason why. Here’s a picture of our faith and work cohort. We were at a faith and work conference all weekend, which is why I missed the men’s breakfast yesterday. Some of us weren’t able to be there—Tommy, who was at the breakfast? Megan, Mei Lynn, Ryan Mann. But this is the rest of the group. After nine months of living together and how our work matters to God and how God matters to our work, we’re a hub church that’s going to be facilitating these cohorts for years to come, which is incredibly exciting.

But yesterday, all of the graduates—so these and four or five other churches—presented their vocational plans. And in their plan, they had to present one learning and one practice. And as a pastor, it was so amazing to listen to these plans. And many of the learnings could be summarized like this: In the Lord, nothing is wasted. Everything matters. Every diaper you change, every seat you offer to another, every bag of groceries you bless a neighbor with, every kind word you utter, every ounce of patience you muster, every piece of software you develop, every case you file, every class you teach, every meeting you attend as a leader, every vision you cast, culture you build, team you fashion. Nothing is wasted in the Lord. Everything matters in the Lord. Why? Because what you do in the Lord is not done in vain. It may not be praised on earth, it may not feel effective, but in God’s economy, nothing done for Christ will vanish somehow. It’s used in the resurrection.

And because your future is secure, your present matters. So be steadfast, don’t waver in the faith. Be immovable. Don’t let discouragement move you from hope. Be abounding. Don’t settle for the minimum. Overflow in your love and your service and your generosity, for your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

And then lastly, each plan produced not only a learning, but a practice. And many of the practices, I think, were oriented around resting in God in Sabbath. Many of these graduates were saying, our work begins each week when we first in Sabbath, rest with God. Imagine together the world as it was intended to be. No disharmony between our body and soul, our feelings and our conscience, our words and our actions. Resting in God kind of pulls back the veil to imagine what will be. And then we move back to Monday morning into our work, into a world that’s still broken and unpeaced and disharmony, fragmented and fractured, not integrated, but disintegrated. And in this world, Christian, your labor is the delivery of God’s future into the present. So precious.

Friends, beloved congregants, I look forward to returning soon. In the interim, stay faithful, keep working. What’s done for Christ matters forever because Jesus has conquered death and guaranteed your resurrection. Live every day with purpose and courage and eternal perspective. The resurrection is not just a doctrine to believe, but a hope to believe in. We may bury our loved ones, we may feel the ache of aging, we may walk through dark valleys, but we do so with a promise whispering in our hearts: we shall all be changed. Death is swallowed up in victory. Jesus is coming. Resurrection is coming. So press on. Fight the good fight. Finish the race. Keep the faith. Don’t lose hope. Don’t despair. Jesus is coming. Resurrection is coming. The victory has already been won.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, we pray. Amen.