This Sunday’s sermon was all about the resurrection. It had to be, since we’ve finally made it out of I Corinthians 14 and into 15. I spent the first portion of the sermon time thinking, “Really God, I believe in the resurrection, so, um, can we move on?” Just like, if thinking for a really long time about the place of tongues in the church doesn’t interest you at all, you might find chapter 14 tedious, or if wondering about the second coming doesn’t give you a thrill you might want to race through the book of Revelation, if you’re not struggling with doubts and disbelief about whether or not Jesus rose bodily from the grave, you might get to the middle of chapter 15 and feel like Paul is laying it on a bit thick. But then I began to actually listen to the sermon and I remembered that, while I do believe, those seeds of reservations, foolishness, and doubt that are the property of every Christian are sewn in my life also. Sure, I believe in the resurrection, but mostly I live like God hasn’t accomplished that great work and doesn’t plan to and doesn’t want to. Christ has surely been raised from the dead but nevertheless death has an awful lot of dominion in the way I live each day.
Witness my annual Autumn Fear. Knowing that winter fast approacheth, I spend every possible moment looking out at the glory of flame and not rejoicing, but rather being angry and afraid that the moments are so brief, the the color is but for a moment, that the coming cold will lay waste to every possible moment of happiness for at least six months.
Autmn isn’t my favorite time of year because winter comes right after it.
Fear hovers behind every golden and scarlet windswept leaf.
Knowing that God desires not the death of the wicked, but that they should turn to him and live, and that life is given to the one who dies to himself, and that the ongoing sanctifying work of the Spirit is furrowed into the Christian heart through suffering, I abide in the kingdom of anxiety, afraid of what holiness may lie just around the corner.
But fear is usually a bad choice, unless it’s the reverent fear of the Lord. Because really, the reason that autumn is so much a formidable display of beauty is not because of its signal of death, but is because of its peculiar and glorious light. No other season is lit up in such a way. It is the light that remakes each tree into such a glorious flame. The moment the light fails, each tree returns to its ordinary goodness. Surely this momentary marriage of light and death is the generous picture of God’s perfect death and resurrection. The light came into the world, and gave life to the world, through the suffering of death. Fear should be destroyed in the startling light emanating out of the empty grave.
And now I will arise and go cook something out of root vegetables. Have a lovely day if you like that sort of thing.
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