Not so long ago, my husband decided to make a birthday cake. He hunted out a recipe, got the ingredients together, whacked them in a bowl and fired it in the oven. 30 minutes later and he had something that looked suspiciously like a cake. Success! He iced it and congratulated himself on his cake baking prowess. It was later that evening that he spotted 150g of butter in the microwave and therefore decidedly not in the cake. Tucking into a slice revealed that although his creation did indeed look like a cake, it didn’t quite taste like one. There was clearly something missing.
And this is where today’s passage is leading us. Not so much towards a discussion on butter to flour ratio, but rather the question of whether removing an ingredient changes the whole. More specifically, whether a belief in the resurrection of the dead is really all that important to our faith.
Whilst ‘on the third day he rose again’ might roll off the tongue – after all, we say it in the creed and we sing it in the songs – Paul is calling us to imagine an alternate reality: a world in which Easter Sunday never arrived. He’s hit pause at the Saturday and calls us to linger there. So let’s do just that… what if…?
- What if the final vision of Jesus was him hanging, bloodied and lifeless on the cross?
- What if all his promises of new life and new hope ultimately came to nothing?
- What if he didn’t rise from the dead?
If, if, if… Paul uses this tiny word seven times. He doesn’t hold back. ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.’ It’s simply pointless. Just as some of the disciples did in the shadow of the cross, we may as well pack up and go home. If Jesus remains in the tomb, neither do we have any hope of leaving the grave. There’s no point to any of it. God is misrepresented, we’re still dead in our sins and at death everyone perishes. A sobering thought.
That isn’t to say, however, that a belief in the resurrection is the only ingredient of faith.
If we were to ask each other, what makes you believe the Gospel? We would each throw other offerings into the mix. Maybe:
- Because I pray and God answers
- Because Jesus shows me how to live
- Because it makes me the best version of myself
There is nothing wrong with pointing to the good things of this life as reasons for the hope we have in Christ. But we don’t have to walk with Christ for long to realise that good things can feel fleeting and sometimes invisible altogether. There are times when:
- I pray and God doesn’t seem to answer
- When I don’t want to live in the way Jesus calls me to
- When I’m frustratingly far from the best version of me
The final verse says: ‘If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.’ The word ‘only’ is crucial here. Paul doesn’t say this life offers no reason to hope in Christ. Of course not: there are glorious blessings for us to celebrate and rejoice in. But we are to make sure we fix our eyes on the extraordinary truth of the resurrection. We are to hold tight to it, refusing to loose our grip, determining to believe and keep on believing that this world is not all there is. There is a resurrection, there is life beyond the grave, there is a hope for the future. And, my word, will it taste good.
Let’s pray.
Father God,
Forgive us for all too easily living as if this life is all there is. Lift our eyes, we pray, and make the mind-blowing doctrine of the resurrection real to us. Give us a new perspective and help us to live in light of it. In the names of Jesus, our risen Lord and Saviour,
Amen.