Testifying to Hope: Resurrection and the Defeat of Death

The “first importance” of Christian faith is hope in the resurrection of the dead.

Acts 23:1-11

1-Corinthians-15-3-webWe’ve been at this series in the Book of Acts for a whole summer now, and by now I hope you’ve begun to see some common threads about being the church. We’ve talked about the community of the church, sacraments, evangelism, stewardship, idolatry, and a host of other themes during our time together. But if you were to boil down the whole message of the book of Acts, what would it be? What would be the thesis statement of Luke’s great story of the early church?

Well, you could certainly argue that the work of the Holy Spirit is a major theme. The Spirit is present and at work throughout. One commentator even says that the book shouldn’t be called the Acts of the Apostles but rather the Acts of the Holy Spirit. That would be a solid thesis.

Maybe the thesis would be about missionary work, because that’s what’s happening throughout. Maybe it’s about church life. Those are good essential themes as well.

When I look at Acts, however, I see something even more coherent that runs as a thread throughout the book—a consistent message that keeps popping up over and over. It’s a thread that began in Luke’s Gospel, which is the first volume of the story, and continues right up until Acts 28 when Paul is in Rome (we’ll end the series with that next week). It’s the primary message of the preaching of every sermon in Acts, and the message that gets everyone who preaches it into trouble with their fellow Jews and the civil authorities. It’s the “good news” that we most often refer to as the “gospel.” And what is that gospel?

It’s the message of Jesus Christ raised from the dead. Indeed, Paul says in today’s text, that’s what all the fuss has been about. “I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”

"You will be my witnesses..."
“You will be my witnesses…”

Remember that Acts begins with the ascension of Jesus 40 days after his resurrection, and that Jesus tells his disciples that they will be his “witnesses”—witnesses of his resurrection—to the world. Everywhere they go, they preach the good news about Jesus, which is bound up in the hope of resurrection.

That shouldn’t be surprising to us, since all four of the Gospels end with the empty tomb, which is good news, and therefore, “gospel.” Today, you mostly hear about resurrection only at Easter, as though Jesus’ resurrection was a nice icing on the cake after his and after all his life and teaching and atoning death on the cross.

But it was much more than that—it was the central fact that drove the early church into mission, the ground of their hope as Jews awaiting God’s kingdom and a message for the Gentiles seeking a new kind of world that was much better than the one currently dominated by emperors and a capricious pantheon of other gods. At its heart: the early church was a resurrection movement—a movement that pointed to a new world where death and the powers who wielded it as a weapon had met their match in the Lord Jesus.

Hope in the resurrection is at the core of the good news about Jesus.

This is the message Paul preached as he traveled around the Mediterranean world. The good news about Jesus, for Paul and the Gospel writers, was the news about Jesus’ resurrection and what it meant for the hope of the world. We see the core of that message in 1 Corinthians 15, which we read a bit ago: Paul reminds the church in Corinth of the “good news” he had proclaimed among them—the good news through which they and, indeed, the world world could be saved from the power of sin and death. Hear him again in his own words:

“For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve…[and, Paul goes on to say, 500 others] and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me” (1 Corinthians 15:3ff)

The scriptures Paul refers to here are those of the Old Testament. Resurrection was the ground of the hope for many Jews—a sign of the restoration of God’s kingdom on earth and God’s return to Zion. They thought, however, that that resurrection would only happen at the end of time. Paul proclaimed, however, that it had already happened. The hope of God’s kingdom, God’s new world, had already begun to become a reality in Jesus. God’s rescue plan for a broken world had been realized. That should have been great news for the Jews, and many received it that way. Others did not because it challenged their paradigm of the kind of savior they were expecting: a political and military clone of David and not a contractor from Nazareth.

Non fui
Roman tombstone, influenced by Epicurean philosophy: “I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t care.”

Paul also took this message to the Gentiles, whose worldview had no such hope. The Roman worldview about death, for example, was very fatalistic. You can find many Roman tombstones from the period with these words written on them: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo: “I was not, I was, I am not, and I don’t care.” The promise of resurrection spoke to the hopelessness of life and offered a glimpse of a God with real power, and not the pretender gods who dominated their cities with statues, as we saw last week. Paul realized that he had to challenge those idols, and he did so with the promise of resurrection.

So here was Paul, preaching a message about a Jewish peasant, who had died a criminal’s death on a Roman cross, but was raised from the dead and is the world’s true Lord. It was at once a curious and a dangerous belief—one that threatened and continues to threaten the order of the present world.

 

Hope in the resurrection dispels the fear of death.

It was because of his message about resurrection that Paul was in danger just about everywhere he went. In Acts 20, as Paul was preparing to go to Jerusalem, the elders of the Ephesian church met him in Miletus so that Paul could say goodbye, knowing that this journey could be the end of him and that he would likely never see these friends again. Notice what Paul says in 20:22 –

“And now as a captive to the Spirit I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for me. But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace.”

Paul recognized that the risen Christ was his master, and because Jesus had risen from the dead the apostle knew that his future was secure no matter what happened to him. The prospect of death did not seem to give him any fear, because he had seen his future in the face of Jesus—a future where death is defeated by resurrection power. Paul writes about this in 1 Corinthians 15:54 –

“When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul believed in the ultimate defeat of death or he wouldn’t have gotten on the boat in the first place.

Death is God’s enemy, says Paul, and that enemy has already been defeated in the empty tomb. The victory still needs to be completed when we, too, are resurrected to new life in God’s new creation. There’s no reason for the Christian to fear death, but we do. Maybe that’s because we don’t have a good understanding of the gospel, and how Jesus resurrection deals with death and it’s twin partner, sin. Paul gets at this when he adds in that simple yet powerful statement—the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law.

Paul is saying here that most of the brokenness and sting of sin that we experience is the result of our fear of death. Yes, Paul will say in Romans, the wages of sin is death (in other words, death is the result of sin), but it’s also true that fear of death is also the cause of sin. Think about it: Fear of death brings about anxiety, and we will do everything we can to put off that anxiety. For example, fear of death can cause us to fear the loss of our life and livelihood, so we acquire and hoard things via the sin of greed as a way of staving off death by trying to live the good life now. Fear of death puts in us a manic need for security, which will cause us, in the extreme, to sin by killing others who would threaten to take security away from us. Fear of death can cause us to begin to believe that everyone is expendable and less than human than ourselves, which leads to the sins of lust and hatred (which are often connected). Economic oppression, racism, genocide, war, and a host of other sins are the result of fear—a fear of death that is so debilitating that it causes us to go inward in self-serving and self-preserving ways that are really the root of the sin that stings us.

As long as the fear of death holds us under its dominion – whether consciously or unconsciously – we dare not take the necessary risks to live fully, selflessly, and in a way that reflects the way of Christ.

But Paul says that when Jesus ultimately defeats death, and the fear of death, then sin will be defeated along with it. His resurrection was the proof of that promise. Therefore, we can have power over sin in the present because, in Christ, we no longer have anything to fear. History has been decided. Our ultimate future secured. That’s the hope of resurrection, and it’s a hope we can begin to live right now. What would happen if we began to live without that kind of fear? What would you do for Christ if you had nothing to fear? What sin that you deal with would melt away if you really believed in the hope of resurrection? How would your life be different with that hope as your confidence, rather than the fear of death?

Hope in the resurrection challenges those in power.

See, the truth is that those with the hope of resurrection become the most dangerous people in the world. They are dangerous to those in power because the powerful cannot defeat a people who do not fear death. Fear of death is thus a powerful weapon wielded to influence our decisions. Politicians, advertisers, the media, and a host of other powerful forces play on our fears in self-serving ways. Everyday we’re bombarded with messages about things and people that can kill us. But those with resurrection hope will know better, and won’t buy into the fear.

Paul stands before the Sanhedrin, but he is not impressed by their power. The high priest, Ananias, tries to intimidate Paul by having his minions slap him across the mouth (which, as Paul points out, is against the law of God). Ananias is a whitewashed wall—looking bright and strong on the outside but crumbling underneath. The high priests power is shaky, and while Paul respects the God-ordained office, he has no respect for the power of fear that Ananias is trying to wield over him.

Time and again we see Paul standing up to those in power, knowing full well that they have the power to kill him. Governors, tribunes, centurions, howling mobs, assassins—even the emperor of Rome–all of them have the power of death at their fingertips. But you can’t stop a man who doesn’t fear death. Paul was the one who spoke often of the cross—the cross being Rome’s ultimate fear-inducing symbol—but Paul saw that cross and the tomb together as symbols of victory for the one who defeated death. Christians didn’t fear the cross, they embraced it.

why-did-the-Romans-persecute-christiansRome tried to do everything it could to snuff out these early Christians. After Paul’s day there would be a series of great persecutions: Christians burned at the stake to light Nero’s garden parties, Christians thrown to the lions in the arena, or skinned alive. But the more the powers tried to suppress them, the more the Christian movement grew because these followers of Christ stopped fearing death.

The powers continue to wield the weapon of fear, and in many places the church has bowed to pressure of conforming to the culture out of a fear of irrelevance that could lead to the church’s demise and eventual death. But the church was never meant to collude with the powers. The resurrection challenges the powers, and it challenges us to be a people who will stand up for the way of the cross and the empty tomb over and against any other way—not by wielding violence ourselves, but through the weapons of love, forgiveness, and grace.

Notice what happens when Paul mentions the resurrection. It immediately causes a fight between the two polarized Jewish factions. The Sadducees don’t believe in resurrection, and the Pharisees do, so long as isn’t attached to Jesus. Both want Paul to side with them, but Paul’s hope is bound up in a completely different worldview—the Christ-centered worldview of resurrection and the promise of a new creation.

 Hope in the resurrection drives the church’s mission.

It’s that vision of God’s new world that keeps Paul traveling within the present one. Even now, as a prisoner in protective custody in a Roman cell in the Antonia Fortress, next to the Temple in Jerusalem, Paul will soon be on the move. The risen Christ appears to him there, much like he had on the Damascus road on that day that set Paul on a series of long journeys to speak about Jesus. This night, however, Jesus doesn’t open the cell doors with a violent earthquake, as he had done for Paul and Silas in Philippi in Acts 16. Instead, the risen Christ reminds Paul that in spite of his chains, he was still a witness to the hope of resurrection. “Keep up your courage,” Jesus says. For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome.”

keep-calm-and-gospel-on-3You have probably noticed that Acts is a traveling narrative. Indeed, the history of Christianity is a travelogue of people in different times and places going out to share Christ with others who haven’t heard the good news—people bound up by fear of death and with no hope for the future. Our own Methodist heritage is a traveling one, where circuit riders traversed the land on the American frontier to bring the gospel to out of the way places, including here in Colorado, where Father Dyer was the first Methodist to ride the circuit in the territory.

Paul’s hardships in traveling were myriad. In 2 Corinthians 11, he gives a list of them: shipwreck at sea, beatings, stonings, imprisonment, mobs, hunger—it’s a lot to imagine. But despite all of that, Paul kept going because he knew the risen Christ and the power of resurrection. Fear would not keep him from going.

We may not be called to head out on the open sea or, like Father Dyer, to strap on snowshoes and brave the Colorado winter to bring the gospel to a small mining town. But we are called to walk across the room, across the street, across the hall, across the lunchroom at school, to share the good news of Christ with those who live in fear. Oh, we have our own fear about sharing the gospel and our testimony of what Christ has done in our lives: fear of embarrassment, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of rejection. Those fears are just subsets of the fear of death! But we are resurrection people, and we have good news to bring. In Jesus, God has defeated death and is making a new world possible. The more we live in that world in the present, the more likely we are to push past our fears and be bold in sharing what we have experienced in Christ. We ought to be the most fearless people in the world!

The hope of resurrection secures our future. Everything else pales in comparison to that fact. N.T. Wright tells the story of getting into a cab once with his bishop’s collar on. The cabbie, seeing this, says to him, “So you’re a vicar, eh?” A bishop, actually, says Wright. “Well,” says the cabbie, “you know what I always say. If Jesus Christ rose from the dead, the rest is all just rock and roll, innit?” Yes! That’s the good news!

The thesis statement for Acts is the thesis statement for the church. We are a resurrection people, and because of Jesus’ resurrection we should see the world quite differently. There’s a reason that one of the most oft-repeated phrases in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid.” God’s new world is breaking in upon us. Whatever fear you are dealing with today, don’t let it drive you. We believe in the hope of resurrection!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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