When did you first hear about Jesus? Who shared the message of Jesus with you? Was it a parent? A Sunday school teacher? A pastor? A friend? Do you remember what you heard? What was the message you first heard?
Depending on how old we were when we first hear about Jesus, the message could have been fairly simple. It might have been as simple as “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” While this children’s song is a good start, it’s only the beginning of a lifelong process of growing in spiritual maturity.
I don’t remember when I first heard about Jesus, but I’m guessing I was fairly young. Since I grew up in the Episcopal Church, I was accustomed to regularly reciting either the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed. Even if I didn’t fully understand the words, I heard the message. While the first creed is relatively simple, the second is a bit more detailed. Those two ancient creeds gave birth to many other statements of faith that can be much more complex and detailed.
I know that the Presbyterians have a Book of Confessions that includes quite a few faith statements, including the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Confession. These two confessions are very detailed. But for my purposes, I decided to look in the Glory to God hymnal to see what it contained. Besides the two ancient creeds, it includes “A Brief Statement of Faith” [Glory to God, p. 37-38]. While the title suggests brevity, it’s much more detailed than the Nicene Creed.
One of the criticisms of the ancient creeds is that they don’t say much about Jesus’ earthly ministry. However, this statement speaks of Jesus “preaching good news to the poor, release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners and calling all to repent and believe in the gospel.” My point in drawing our attention to these creedal statements is that they offer summaries of what Christians have considered the core message of the Christian faith.
As we turn to chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, we encounter Paul’s brief statement of faith. He reminds the Corinthians that when he planted the church he passed on to them the good news that had been shared with him. In other words, he didn’t make up the message he proclaimed to them. He simply passed on to them what had been given to him.
The word focuses our attention on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Paul insists that this message is of first importance. This is the foundational message of the Christian faith.
What Paul shares here in chapter fifteen, complements the message he shared in chapter one of his letter. In that chapter, Paul told the Corinthians that the cross “is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). In other words, for many people, the idea of following a crucified messiah didn’t make much sense. It certainly doesn’t make sense to people who prize power and success. And the message of the cross would be foolishness, if it wasn’t for the resurrection. The message of the resurrection is this. Although humans sought to kill the Son of God, God raised him from the dead. Therefore, as we will see as we go forward over the next few Sundays, death doesn’t have the final word. So, in many ways chapters 1 and 15 serve as bookends to what we find in chapters 2 through 14. These chapters speak about what it means to live the Christian life, which according to Charles Campbell, “is lived in the dynamic relationship between crucifixion and resurrection” [Campbell, 1 Corinthians, p. 244].
Paul wants the Corinthian church and us to know that if we hold firmly to this core message, which he believes is of first importance, it will “set free you free and make you whole as long as you hold on tightly to the truth of it. If not your faith will have no meaning” (1 Cor. 15:2 First Nations Version).
This truth, according to Paul, centers on three events: Christ died for our sins, he was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day. According to Paul, this confessional statement is in accord with the Scriptures. He also tells us that after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to a multitude of witnesses, beginning with Cephas, otherwise known as Peter. The remainder of the list includes the twelve, along with five hundred other brothers and sisters to whom Jesus appeared all at the same time. While some of these witnesses had died, most of them still lived so they could confirm the message. Besides Peter, the twelve, and the five hundred, Jesus also appeared to his brother James. Last of all, as to one untimely born, Jesus appeared to Paul. Paul confesses that he was an unworthy recipient of Christ’s visitation since he had persecuted the church. However, by God’s grace, he was included in that list. That is a fairly substantial list of witnesses, but I’d like to add a few other important witnesses that Paul doesn’t mention. That starts with Mary Magdalene, who, according to the Gospel of John, was the first witness to the resurrection.
When Paul offered up this confession of faith, he had more than one concern in mind. While he wanted to confirm for them the basic Christian message, he was also trying to defend his apostolic credentials, which were rooted in Jesus’ appearance to him. There were those in the congregation who were questioning Paul’s authority when it came to how they lived the Christian life. Who was he to tell them what to do? Well, that conversation is for another day!
Getting back to the core message of the faith, as Paul revealed here in his letter, we might want to say that this is the starting point in our journey of faith. In fact, we might narrow it down even a bit further and start with Peter’s confession. When Jesus asked the disciples who they believed he was, Peter made the “Good Confession”: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Mt. 16:16). That confession is the origin of our Christian DNA. What Paul does here is add a bit more detail. The ancient creeds and the Presbyterian “Brief Statement of Faith” add even more details. But for Paul, at least in that moment, this confession was sufficient.
When Paul invokes this chain of witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection, he admitted he didn’t deserve to be included in the list. Nevertheless, even as he includes himself, we can hear him invite us to add our names to the list of witnesses. Beth Felker Jones puts it this way:
We are the next link in the chain of those created by the resurrection of Jesus, but we are not to be the last link in that chain. Though we do not see Jesus in the flesh, we are connected to this line of witnesses, to the fleshly eyes that saw him so, and we are called upon to join this chain of witnesses to the resurrection story to others who stand in need of its hope. [Connections, p. 234].
As Kurt Kaiser’s gospel song declares:
It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up to its glowing; that’s how it is with God’s love, once you’ve experienced it: you spread God’s love to everyone, you want to pass it on. [Chalice Hymnal, 477]
That is our calling. Like Paul, Peter, Mary Magdalene, and a whole chain of witnesses who faithfully proclaimed the good news down through the centuries, Jesus has called on us to pass on the good news of God’s love and grace to the next generation of witnesses.
Preached By:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church
Troy, Michigan
February 6, 2022
Epiphany 5C
Image attribution - Resurrection of Christ, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56588 [retrieved February 5, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:0000_Mosaics_of_Resurrection_of_Christ.JPG - Eugenio Hansen, OFS.
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