We’re now in Chapter 15 of the First Letter to the Corinthians, and it’s almost ironically (at least that’s the way we can read it) that Paul addresses the church to say that he needs to “remind” them of the “good news”. It’s ironic because as a church, you would think that we know what we are talking about, and that was especially the case in Corinth where Christians thought highly of themselves. They thought of themselves as very educated and highly spiritual. And yet, after all that Paul has already told them in this Letter, he feels the need to remind them of the basis of their faith.
So what is he talking about?
Paul says that he needs to remind them of the “good news” that is also translated as “Gospel”, but in this case it’s not about the book, or the books, and I think it is important to have that in mind. If you’ve noticed, Paul in his letters does not spend time “telling the story of Jesus” in the sense that he does not spend much time reminding people of Jesus’ encounters with the disciples, his teachings, his miracles…The “good news” that Paul presents are formulated in v 3 and v4 in these terms: “(…) Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” and “(…) He was buried and was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures”. We don’t know here if those words are Paul’s own making or if they were part of a first form of a Creed people would say together while gathering for worship (probably the latest). If you remember from a few weeks ago, Paul, in other words, had already, if more briefly, reminded the Corinthians of the heart of the Christian faith: It is to proclaim that “Jesus is Lord” which is proclaiming Jesus’s divinity. Here we have a little more details: Jesus showed his divinity by dying for us and rising from the dead, as it was announced in the Scriptures. Indeed, Paul does not spend a lot of time telling the stories of Jesus, because for him all comes down to this story, the story of Jesus’s death for our sins and the Resurrection. And then, Paul reminds the Corinthians that who we are called to be as Christians is to be witnesses of the Resurrection.
So again, a few remarks about that:
1 – Where is our faith in the Resurrection?
Paul reminds the Corinthians of the centrality of the Resurrection in our faith. We don’t have that many details but it looks very likely that the Corinthians had adopted the Greek understanding of the division between body and soul. They believed in an after life yes, but they probably struggled with believing in Jesus’s bodily Resurrection. As a result, they didn’t think that life as they knew it really mattered: the body, destined to corruption, didn’t matter and as a result a lot of what was going on in the world didn’t matter to them (whether good or bad). They were focused on being “spiritual”, which meant for them as ethereal as possible.
To me, this passage is thought-provoking because it addresses an issue that we certainly deal with today when it comes to religion and spirituality.
– On one hand, we have Christians who, like the Corinthians, are so focused on the after life that they don’t really care about this life in our world: environmental care and social justice aren’t priorities because our time on earth is temporary compared to an eternity with God
– On the other hand, we have Christians who almost never mention the after life, as a result Jesus is to them an example on how to behave on earth but they often really struggle with having ultimate hope when confronted to all the tragedy going on in this world.
By reminding the Corinthians (and us!) of the centrality of our faith in Resurrection, Paul addresses those two issues: Our life on earth matters because, as Christ raised from the dead, we will also raise from the dead – and our life on earth matters as the “mold” (if you will) of the shape we will have in eternity (Paul will develop this idea later and we will come back to that next week). Yet for Paul as well our life on earth isn’t everything and there are problems (sins) we just cannot deal with or overcome, it all depends on God’s grace. This is the meaning of the belief in resurrection.
2 – How does this belief come to us?
Again, there are two tendencies that still exist today:
– As for Resurrection, on one hand people look for scientific / concrete proofs which they hardly find, so they conclude Resurrection is impossible to prove and as a result they just downplay the importance of this belief. Sometimes, they don’t really believe in Resurrection anymore and Christianity becomes more of a cultural thing – From Paul’s letter, we understand that it was what happened to the Corinthians, they saw Christianity as a type of wisdom.
– On the other hand, we have people who claim that we just need to believe in Resurrection, but at some point it’s hard for them to give any explanation and they are unlikely to convince anyone – especially in a scientific age like today when plenty of people don’t want to believe “blindly”.
To this, Paul, again, gives us the middle way: Yes, it’s impossible to prove Resurrection but we have testimonies, and we have many testimonies. Those testimonies of two sorts:
– The Scriptures: Paul says that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies.
– And the people: People have seen Jesus and mainly, they had their lives transformed by the risen Christ.
And so it is for us. We don’t have scientific proofs of the Resurrection but we have the Scriptures – if it’s sometimes hard to make sense of some passages taken individually, still the Scriptures for us Christians make sense as a whole in announcing Christ.
In the Scriptures, we have the testimony of past witnesses, but we also have the testimony of more recent witnesses and even living witnesses, as Paul notices. For us, those witnesses may not have seen Jesus in a vision but those witnesses had their lives transformed by Jesus.
As a christian community, we share (or should share) our stories about our encounters with Christ (which may not be as straightforward as “I was lost and now I am found”) and we share how Christ changes our lives – which would be the best proof of all that He lives. Being a witness and listening to testimonies is a huge part of our spiritual lives!
3 – This leads us to the last point: Encounters with Christ are always transformative. The belief in resurrection is what makes the difference between a “cultural” Christianity, a “secular” religion and a real spiritual life. For Paul, no doubt that the Corinthians didn’t live the true spiritual life, their religion was cultural, a mix of wisdom and philosophy with stories about Jesus added on top, and we have to acknowledge that this is also the way it can feel in our churches on occasions.
But we see in our readings today that when we meet Christ in truth, two things happen:
– We are deeply humbled / we realize who we are as a person and we don’t see ourselves as very wise or very holy, rather when we encounter Christ we realize our shortcomings, we see ourselves as incomplete, as Paul (he realized he was “untimely born”) and we see ourselves as sinners, as Peter in our Gospel today – I think it’s quite extraordinary that when realizing who Jesus is, Peter asks him to go away! But this should be the natural reaction we have when confronted to the holy (we see that today as well in Isaiah).
– Yet what happens also when we meet Christ is that we are given his grace, and we start a journey of transformation. It does not mean that we have it all figured out, but we are on our way to the resurrected life. More simply put, if our faith does not transform us, it isn’t a faith that is about resurrection, about changing our lives now to receive what is to come. Our faith isn’t a real Christian one if it isn’t a faith in the resurrected Christ. The Corinthians claimed to be Christians but Paul called on them about many sins still practiced by members of the church: idolatry, sexual immorality, boasting and pride and so on. Yes, they called themselves “Christians” but they needed to work with the grace they had received so they wouldn’t have received it “in vain”. It is always the challenge for us too, not limit ourselves to a cultural or social religion but to practice a living faith, the faith in the Resurrected one.