1st Corinthians 15.19-26; Luke 24.1-12
“Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” In today’s second reading, with the image of ‘first fruits,’ St Paul takes an ancient biblical festival and makes it a picture of what Jesus’ resurrection means. Paul is the great evangelist of Easter. He has nothing at all to say about Jesus’ birth; everything for him is based on Christ risen from the dead. Christ is “the first fruits those who have died.” The celebration of firstfruits was an Old Testament harvest festival. Each year, God’s people took the very first produce of the land and offered to the Lord in thanksgiving. This offering, in turn, dedicated the entire harvest to God, with the trust that there was more to come.
It’s not unlike every mid-to-late summer here with the first garden tomato. It tastes amazing (because it is amazing) and you know there’s more to come, lots more. Before you know it, you’re overrun with sliced tomatoes, can’t eat enough BLTs, and hardly have time to keep up with oven roasting, making sauce and canning. By picturing Jesus’ resurrection as ‘first fruits,’ Paul wants us to see the abundance of God’s blessing in Jesus risen from the dead. The offering of Christ’s life will give life to the world in a harvest yet to come. “In Christ all will be made alive.”
There is another Old Testament story we can use to picture what’s in store for us through Jesus’ resurrection. Before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, Moses sent spies on a reconnaissance mission into the land. The spies were told to find out whether the land they were about to enter was good or bad, rich land or barren. Moses also told them to bring back some of the fruit of the land so that everyone could have a taste of what was in store for them in the future. The spies came back with pomegranates and figs and one bunch of grapes so heavy that it took two men to carry it on a pole between them. The spies gave this report: “We made our way into the land to which you sent us. It is flowing with milk and honey, and here is the fruit it grows.”
As picture of Jesus’ resurrection? Like spies who bring back a taste of what is to come for God’s people, Jesus—in his death and resurrection—enters the realm of death for our sake, goes before us, comes back alive, and gives a taste of life that is in store for us all. The message of Easter is that what happens to Jesus, will happen to all who trust in him. “In Christ, all will be made alive.”
Yet as today’s gospel begins, life is the last thing on anyone’s mind. The women who went to the tomb were on a mission of mercy. They went to tend to the body of Jesus and do the things we now pay funeral directors to do: to give Jesus a proper burial after things ended so terribly on Friday. A sad, somber, realistic duty brought them to the tomb early that morning. And you heard what happened next. What did they find: joy, glory, conviction, conversion? No. They didn’t find what they expected, and what they expected was not to be found.
The beginning of that first Easter morning is not impressive. The Gospel of Luke tells us that the women were perplexed and terrified. As for the rest of the disciples? When the women did what the angelic messengers told them to do, when they went to the disciples and said, “He is not here, but has risen,” no one believed them. You heard the evaluation in the gospel. “These words seemed to them to be an idle tale.” An idle tale, empty words—like something dreamed up over a cup of coffee and posted on social media without any fact checking.
In fact, if you check the facts, you might wonder even now what, if anything, really is different on this side of Jesus’ resurrection. Has anything changed? Maybe that has always been the question. When Jesus’ resurrection occurred, a few women and a few disciples heard the news. But that day didn’t begin with ringing bells, the triumph of trumpets, or shouts of Alleluia. As for what happens next, read the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of the New Testament. There, you see how little changed in the world after Jesus was raised from the dead; then or since. Violence stalks the land; good continues to be the apparent hostage of evil; the weary still do not have any rest; people still lie, cheat, and die. There is, as one wisdom writer in the Old Testament observes, “Nothing new under the sun.”
Yet like dawn itself arriving after a long night—slowly, though eventually and ultimately—or like first fruits signaling the beginning of the harvest, new life has begun with Jesus. The Risen Christ is the pledge for the day when death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, when all things will be made new. Easter gives us a taste of hope.
And this gift of hope and life is not merely a promise for a distant future but can be experienced now. Even now in our day, life in Jesus Christ is life made new. That life was enough to change ordinary men and women on the pages of the Bible. They had followed Jesus in his life yet often misunderstood him; they fled at his death; they were perplexed when they discovered he was alive again. Yet these ordinary, bewildered, befuddled human beings—our family of faith—got a taste of something new in the first fruits of Jesus’ resurrection and they were changed from ordinary people to extraordinary. For them, the world hadn’t changed. But they were changed. They began to live differently in their unchanged world as it was. And since the power of Jesus’ resurrection was enough to change ordinary people on the pages of the Bible, it can change us, too. Because of Christ and his resurrection, we can also see things differently, respond to things differently, live differently. The world as we live in it may not be different; but in Christ we see it differently because, in Christ, we are made alive, made new.
When the spies brought back fruit to the Israelites in the wilderness, the Promised Land was still off in their future. But that was years off. There would still be battles before they entered the land, threats that led them to worry about the future, suffering that caused them to doubt God’s promises. But they had a sure and certain taste of what was waiting for them and the pledge that God would be faithful to them in everything. And for us? Through Jesus’ resurrection, a new world has opened up in the middle of the present one.
What that means for how we might live now is described by the late Peter Gomes. Gomes says that because Christ is risen, “My vision is not limited by headlines; I will both live and die by a standard that defies the standards of the world. Where the world tells me to hate I will love, cost what it may; where the world tells me to stand pat I will move on, to wherever I am to go, where the world tells me to be prudent, fearful, and cautious, I will be brave and foolish and courageous, no matter what; where the world tells me that my destiny is shaped and determined by the past, I will claim that God is my future and that I shall yet become what God means for me to become.” Easter gives us a taste of life and hope. Because of Christ and his resurrection, we see things differently and respond to the world differently. Because, in Christ, we are made new and alive—ordinary people made extraordinary because Christ is risen.
On Easter, God’s new world begins. The resurrection of Jeus Christ gives us a first taste of abundant life yet to come. “In Christ all will be made alive.” In Christ, risen from the dead, our future is certain and secure. Although now we see in a mirror dimly, we shall see face to face. But even now we see clearly enough to trust that the world as we live in it is not just some tired old place going in circles without meaning or purpose, a cynical sort of ‘same stuff, different day’ winding down to a complete stop under the weight of sin, injustice, suffering, and death. Every act of justice, every act of mercy, every act of kindness and love in our world and in our lives proclaims the resurrection.
Like a spy sent into a land that we will one day enter, Jesus enters the realm of death for our sake, comes back alive, and gives us a taste of a new world in God. In Jesus’ resurrection, God’s promised future has begun, not merely some day but in our day. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” And he meets you today in the middle of your life.
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