“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.” ( 1 Cor 15:37-38).

The Corinthians couldn't grasp what a resurrected body might look like. For them a blessed eternity could only be lived freed from the human body. Paul, like Jesus, drew upon an agricultural analogy. What goes into the ground and what springs from it are entirely different in appearance. For the just, that is the true hope of the resurrection. Certainly, the resurrection has something optimistic to say to those who suffer from ill health, or who have lost body parts to war or disease and long to be whole once again. Eternal life does offer physical hope. But there is much more to the resurrection than no longer needing glasses, contact lenses, or pacemakers.

What will come forth at the resurrection will be people of God whose wills are wholly devoted to the praise and service of our God and each other. Now we praise God and serve our neighbor and God in part, then we will do so with complete maturity. Now, as we exercise ourselves in the faith that works through love, the good that we do is never whole-hearted. We are always doing battle against the old nature. If the old nature cannot totally discourage us from pure worship and service by its temptations, it will try to compromise it by mingling it with less than pure motives and desires. With St Paul, we can crucify the old nature every day, and every day enjoy His fruits as the Spirit works a stronger faith for us to exercise. But by the end of the day, the old nature still has mingled his vinegar with the milk of human kindness.

What about those who will take part in the resurrection of the unjust? As bad as outlaw Ben Wade professed to be in the movie 3:10 to Yuma, he still showed brief flashes of “humanity.” But what goes into the ground is nothing like what comes out in this case as well. Can you imagine a mass of people wholly and exclusively devoted to serving only themselves? What kind of society can exist where the rule of the day is, “Love yourself with all of your heart, strength, mind, body and spirit”? If the mind balks at imagining a world of pure motives and will, with no less ease does it conjure up a world of total misery and chaos. Those who say that this world can be a living hell do not understand the real source of human depravity and his capacity to create misery.

For the Christian, the resurrection of the just is highly anticipated. Gone will be the temptations against which we struggle regularly. Christ conquored all for us on the cross. Gone will be half-hearted attempts to love even the lovely. Banished forever will be the agonizing lament, “The good that I want to do I don't do and the evil I don't do is what I find myself doing.” I suspect that when we finally see and experience this new day, it will be a long time before our jaws are lifted from their wide-open awe. And yet, we will recognize that this is what we were created for from the beginning.

A word to fellow proclaimers: Pastors, if your preaching on the resurrection has touched only upon it as the antidote to the fear of death, or if you've proclaimed it only as the hope of a new body, or as a reunion with loved ones, but have neglected it as a the beginning of life with a new heart and will completely attuned to God, have you told the whole story?

A blessed Easter to you all!