1Corinthians 15:20-28.

On Good Friday, we said that there is a need from time to time to give some thought to doctrine, to spend a little time that is teaching on the meaning of the gospel. This is Easter and it's a marvellous thing that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He is God with God, the Son of the Father and so we may expect Him to be raised from the dead by His Father. And in that expectation there may be a certain thinking that what we may expect about Jesus is not to be expected for ourselves. We are just human beings. Every day we see other people die, and we have yet to see anyone resurrected;Yes, in hospitals we may see people resuscitated, but while we rejoice in that we know that they will one day die.

Throughout the Christian world ministers are everywhere preaching that Christ has been raised from the dead to people who are under a strong sense of everyday life or should we say everyday death that dead people stay dead. Ever since the Easter gospel has been shared it has come up against this thinking: Christ may have been resurrected but the dead are still dead, which suggests that there is no resurrection of the dead. This was the thinking, despite his preaching that Paul found in the Church in Corinth and this is thinking that despite two millenia of preaching is still found in the Church today. But the two thoughts: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and there is no resurrection of the dead although they can be set out on paper and in our minds cannot both be true in practical reality. And that is what we are dealing with here. Not pie in the sky hopes but the present reality of our own lives. If I am cut do I not bleed, if I die in Christ am am I not resurrected.

All our thinking about our own resurrection begins with the observable fact that dead people stay dead. But then there is Easter. Here is another observable fact: Jesus Christ was killed, he was buried but on the third day He rose again. He who was dead is no longer dead, and this was not resuscitation, this was a true coming into a new and eternal life. There is not just one fact: people die and stay dead, but two facts, there is also this: Jesus Christ died but is resurrected. How do we know as people that some thing can be done? We can dream or wish for a thing to be done, but how can we know that it can truly be done? There's a big count down going on to the 2012 Olympics. People are training to break records. How do they know they can break the record? Because others have done it before them. We know a thing can be done because it has been done. Many years ago it was thought it was impossible for a man running the mile to break the 4 minute barrier, but it was done and now every Olympic mile runner does it. When a thing has been done we know it can be done. As the women saw, as the angels declared, as the men were to find out, as Paul was to see. Jesus Christ has broken the death barrier, and one day we will do it also. Christ as Paul says is the first fruits of the harvest of the Christian dead. That's why He refers to death as falling asleep. It's not because Paul is too tender to say death, he is a man who is not afraid to be direct, abrupt and even offensive in defence of the gospel. He calls death falling asleep, because death like sleep is something Christians will rise from.

Paul sees that Christ is the new Adam. Paul treats the first Adam as an historical figure, you may find that hard to do, but even so, the reality is that all people share the same inheritance of death. Adam is not just the Hebrew name for the first human being it is also the general Hebrew word for mankind. As in Adam we all die, as in our humanity we all die. But Christ is a new man. He obeyed where Adam, where all men disobey. So while in Adam, as a human being, all people die, so all who are in Christ, all Christians live. Paul says nothing here about non-Christians – so please don't get lost in sidetracks of wondering. Let's keep to the main point, because if the main point is not true for us, then it can never be true for others. Because Christ died and was resurrected, we who are in Christ and also die, will be resurrected. Because of our humanity, of our being in Adam we don't have a problem about believing the first part, so Paul is saying to us, because of our Christianity, of our being in Christ, don't have a problem about believing the second part. To see Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile is to see many many others doing the same. Bannister was the firstfruits of the 3 minute miler, Christ Jesus is the firstfruits of resurrection, the first installment of the whole harvest. Because Christ has been raised from the dead, then Christians will be raised from the dead. Indeed as has been said, the resurrection doesn't just promise our resurrection, it demands it, for only thus is the final enemy, death is itself destroyed.

None of us knows when the end will be but we do know that it is coming, and if we are alive when it comes, we will know it is happening for Jesus Christ will return in glory riding on the clouds of heaven. It will be unmissable. All Christians who are then alive will be gathered into His presence and all Christians who have died by then, will be gathered from Paradise, which is not our destiny but our waiting room. Then all present things will end and we shall live in the new creation, where there is no more separation between God and His people, and no more death.

So don't worry about death, it is not your ending. It's the gateway to your destiny. Secondly if Christ has indeed been raised then living without Him is nonsense. What do people live for? To earn more money to buy more things to have more pleasure this side of death. To be a parent, to raise children, to be a good father or mother, and so through a descending line make a biological legacy, which eventually the grave puts a full-stop to. Someone else gets your money and your children's children and their children forget you. Life sooner or later drains away in death. But the resurrection changes what is significant. To know that death is not an ending, gives being in Christ now more meaning. It is a gift of grace but it is also a walk in faith expressed in love. The Kingdom is not a pious hope, the King is coming, and those who will live in the coming Kingdom are those who now live in the present Kingdom. Don't live your life according to the world, for as John tells us, the world and its desires pass away, but the person who does the will of God lives forever. Jesus is the first fruit of this harvest, we are the harvest, may our lives be fruit worthy of the King in whose Kingdom we now and will live. Amen.