I sit here in Europe with a war starting not so far away, hard though it is to believe. Yes, it’s the other side of the continent, but less than the distance from San Fransisco to New York, in a country that doesn’t seem so different, with people who don’t seem very different. Wars are nothing new, but this one seems somehow closer, psychologically as well as geographically.
My feelings. Yes, astonishment that there could be a war in Europe, horror at the likely outcome and the death and suffering that will certainly occur, a sense of events being out of control. In such times it’s easy to question how can any of our beliefs in good, in grace, in salvation be secure when such things happen. And, of course, for many people, in many parts of the world, this experience of war, of tragedy on a large scale, is nothing strange, nothing new.
Also this week I have been reflecting on the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth (1 Cor 15). In our readings this weekend we come to the end of this chapter, which we started three weeks ago. In it Paul is discussing the resurrection. For Paul this is not some philosophical or theoretical idea – it’s a practical reality with real and tangible effects. It’s the most important thing he has to communicate: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Cor 15:3). But can we really hold on to ideas from 2000 years ago, from a world which was so different to ours, where tanks and aircraft didn’t cross continents in days or even minutes?
Here we do need to stop and recognize that, in fact, the world in which Jesus, and Paul, and all those other apostles lived and died was not so very different to ours. There were large parts of it living in peaceful circumstances, with secure livelihoods, and secure futures for their families. Many places had lived in such circumstances longer than anywhere in our modern world. There was also hideous cruelty, almost continuous warfare somewhere, and vast differences in wealth, even greater than those that exist today. Jesus and his followers were talking to people whose life experiences were not so different to ours, who understood wars, and inequality, and suffering. And what did they talk about – salvation and resurrection. We could be saved from our experiences, we could even be saved from death.
Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand that being saved from death, being resurrected, is not some fancy metaphor, some nice poetic vision, great on our good days, but not so helpful when staring at a tank or an AK47. Paul sees it as a reality. He goes through the arguments one by one: if Jesus really rose from the dead then clearly rising from the dead is possible (if he didn’t then we are pathetic fools for suggesting it); if we don’t understand what a risen body could be, then look at how any living thing changes from conception throughout life, and don’t imagine a risen person is somehow the same as a mortal person. No we can’t imagine what we will be like as resurrected people, but if we believe that Jesus rose then we must believe that we will also rise, and rising means death has no effect for us. After death we are released from sin and all the bad things in our current experience.
Paul concludes by saying to his friends in Corinth: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Whatever little work we do, however we struggle in a world which seems too terrible to comprehend, we are saved, we will be resurrected, our efforts are not in vain.