Peace Lutheran Church
2025 Sermons
Posts Tagged "Body"
Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 16, 2025
Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1-20
Theme; If/Then
Outline
1. If Christ has not been raised you are in your sins
2. Thanks be to God that Christ was raised, so too will you, and you are no longer in your sins.
Sermon:
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the First letter of Saint Paul sent to the church in Corinth chapter fifteen verses one through twenty.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Have you ever heard a solo? A solo is someone singing or playing an instrument alone. When I think of an solo, I immediate think of “Rhapsody in Blue,” by George Gershwin. It starts out with this haunting clarinet solo. Then the piano comes in, and then the whole orchestra, and the theme you hear first in the clarinet gets picked up by other instruments and expanded and explored. The solo comes first, but it is part of the whole which is still coming. That is similar to what Saint Paul is talking about in our text today. What did Jesus do for you? He died and rose from the dead right! He currently is the solo. His resurrected body is part of the New Creation even now, ahead of time. We await the full orchestra when everyone will be raised from the dead. What a joyous day that will be to hear. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we look forward to our own resurrections, how does that impact our lives today? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. If Christ has not been raised you are in your sins
When you think of your resurrection. When you ponder what exactly happens after you die, what springs to mind? Probably quite a bit but nothing related to a physical body or a physical resurrection. We might picture merely our souls at rest. Perhaps merely floating somewhere like the life force of Obi-Wan Kenobi or Yoda after they die, a kind of glowing version of our physical selves. Remember how neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda left an embarrassing corpse behind when they died? Neither did Master Oogway, from Kung-Fu Panda, for that matter. In fact, in entertainment for young and old, we Americans seem to be content with the soul living on without a body (if it is a family movie), or souls living on in dead bodies (if it is a zombie movie), but we do not imagine something as vulgar as a corpse has much of a future.
Offer an American ghost a body and they would probably turn you down too. We do not need a resurrection of physical bodies in our culture. This kind of narrow hope for a vague kind of life-after-death-without-your-body has affected the Church as well. I have often heard life long members say that it does not matter what happens to their body when they die. It is merely a shell for their soul. That they can treat their body however they want and it will be alright.
Nothing could be farther from the truth! Your body is not a mere shell for your soul. How you treat it matters because it reflects upon your Creator. It is intimately connected to who you are as the creature that God the Father has created you to be. In fact, without a physical, bodily, without a physical resurrection, we have no hope at all
Paul makes this point clear in our text for today. If there is no bodily resurrection. If Christ is not raised. Not only are you still stuck in your guilt, shame, and sins. You stand condemned under the wrath of God for all time. There is no forgiveness. There is no hope. There’s just nothing but complete and utter despair, eternal wrath and separation from God since there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves.
To drive home his point, Paul uses a combination of logic and imagery. He starts with an almost computer lingo Boolean string of if/then statements:
{IF physical corpses are not raised, THEN Christ is not raised.}
{IF Christ is not raised, THEN your faith is worthless.}
{IF faith is worthless, THEN you are stuck with your sins, and the dead people you love are just dead.}
{IF you are stuck with your sins, and the dead people you love are just dead, THEN this religion is a lie, we have no hope, and followers of Jesus are pitiful, disillusioned suckers.}
2. Thanks be to God that Christ was raised, so too will you, and you are no longer in your sins.
Thanks be to God that we are not pitiful, disillusioned suckers! We are not suckers because of what God has done for us. While we might say that without the, “It is finished!” of Good Friday you would be stuck in your sins, Paul pushes the foundation of our faith forward a couple of days. Without the, “He is risen, just as He said!” of Easter, our faith is empty, and our sins remain. Thanks be to God that He has raised Jesus from the dead. He no longer lies in the coldness of the tomb but Jesus is risen forever, exalted to the right hand of the Father.
Jesus has been raised as the first fruits. Jesus is the first and the evidence of what is to come. The same as there is always a nice red, ripe apple while al the rest are still green and unripe, heralding the tasty goodness to come when all is ripe. So too here. Jesus is the first installment, the opening solo of the New Creation. His resurrected body is part of the New Creation even now, ahead of time.
And if you want to know what the New Creation is like, then look to Jesus and His living body which eats, and walks, and talks, and loves, and shares with those He loves. The New Creation looks, feels, smells, and tastes like Jesus. Jesus is the firstfruits offering, set aside as holy to God even as we, God’s people, depend on God for the rest of the harvest still to come.
Thus, the resurrection still impacts our lives today. Not only does it prove that our sins are forgiven, God’s wrath appeased by the shedding of Jesus’ blood. It impacts our daily lives, as we live the holy lives that God has given us to live. Through the power of the Holy Spirit living within us, we live in Christ’s holiness upon this earth. Not that we are already holy, we are simultaneously sinner and saint, but we live sanctified lives as we do the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do, empowered by His Holy Spirit to do them. We do good works while we look forward to the great harvest to come, when we will be resurrected the same as our Lord Jesus Christ, purified and holy forever with Him in the new heavens and new earth forever.
Get used to your body. You will have it forever.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 23, 2025
Text: 1 Cor. 12:12-31a
Sermon Outline
God Knew What He Was Doing When He Designed the Body.
I. We’re predisposed to divide the body, either by feelings of inferiority or feelings of superiority.
II. But God has designed a unified, healthy, well-ordered body with all the gifts it needs.
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the First letter of Saint Paul to the Church at Corinth, chapter twelve verses twelve through the first part of thirty-one.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. What do I have here? Right, I have a puzzle. I enjoy putting puzzles together. It’s fun to take all the different parts and put them together. It’s fun to see if you can figure out what the picture is. The best part is the final piece, when you see every little part put together, and you can see the larger whole. Something like this is going on in the Corinthian idea of the Body of Christ. Saint Paul says we are all parts, put together in the Body of Christ. We all have our parts, what do you think yours is? Ponder that as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
God Knew What He Was Doing
When He Designed the Body.
I.
If we could draw a picture of the Corinthian Church, it would be all about a human body divided, maybe along the absurd lines of a cubist or surreal painting, or perhaps the exaggeration of a political cartoon. But that’s not how our Lord designed his Body, the church. God knew what he was doing when he designed the body. Paul wrote his letter so (v 25), “that there may be no division in the body.” Even when Jesus as the Lamb of God was being killed for the sins of the world, his bones were not broken, and his body was not divided. Do you suppose that’s a thoughtless coincidence? Again, “that there may be no division in the body.” Do you think this is important to Paul? More importantly, do you think this is important to our Lord?
So why should this matter to you? It matters because we’re all predisposed to see ourselves as members of that Body in one of two ways: (1) either we labor with a misplaced sense of inferiority, or (2) we labor with a misplaced sense of superiority.
It’s just so easy to diss those who have an elevated view of themselves, and evidently, there were lots of such people in the church of Corinth. (I know, Lutherans have no problem with this!) If you read 1 Corinthians cover to cover, you’ll see that Paul has already been giving these people a spanking. But here in chapter 12, he starts with those who are living with feelings of inferiority.
“Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” or “because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body” (vv 15–16). This is beautiful on Paul’s part because it forces those with feelings of superiority to empathize with those who suffer feelings of inferiority. It gets them off their high horse without knowing that has happened. So gracious!
But both groups need the stinging word of God’s Law. The person who says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” is accusing the Lord of bad design. It’s a full-on violation of the First Commandment. This person, by his ongoing groveling, is enabling the person whose head is almost exploding with his or her greatness to dive just that much deeper into his or her delusional parallel universe.
Just to recap: Love God! Oops, failed there. Love the neighbor! Oops, failed there too. Feelings of inferiority are not to be confused with humility. Indeed, many people control others with their disabilities or their grievances.
But God most certainly knew what he was doing when he designed the body. Verses 18–19: “But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?” As hideous as cubist and surreal paintings can be, they force us to reckon with that question.
All of which brings us to those who have feelings of superiority. Verse 21: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ ” Yes, you do! Every member of the body needs every other member of the body. That’s how bodies are made. God knew what he was doing when he designed the body. If the hand does not reach for the bag of carrots, the eye will not receive the vitamin A contained in those carrots so necessary to eye health. God knew what he was doing when he designed the body. When injured, the head needs the feet in order to get to the hospital. The hands need to cloth the lesser parts to give them the greater honor.
II.
A balanced and wholesome understanding of the body and its members is heard when the psalmist says to the Lord: “You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance” (Ps 139:13–16).
How do we become a member of this Body? We were all “baptized into one body” (v 13). We were incorporated into that one Body by means of Baptism, a Baptism that we all share. That Body is the Body of Christ. Let that sink in! The qualitative difference between an eyeball and a spleen pales in comparison to the difference between what we all were by nature and the grandeur and glory of what we all are now as members of that one Body of Christ. So the psalmist can say, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps 84:10). Whatever your abilities and gifts, flashy or pedestrian, whatever your checkered past, if you are in Christ by Baptism, you are a treasured member of the most exalted Body in the entire cosmos. Christ gives His Body gifts, whether large or small, that are given and necessary for the Body to function properly. All are a part of the body. You need someone to lead you in music and giving praise to God. You need a Pastor to give you God’s Word and administer the Sacraments, just as much as you need someone to take out the trash and sweep the floor. How messy would the church be if that never happened? A small thing, but you would notice the body in pain after a while, the same as you do if you stub your small toe.
Just as Christ has a Body, of which you are a member by Baptism, so you, too, have a body with members. You know how this works. The pancreas doesn’t say to you, “I was a good boy today. Will you please reward me by giving me two ounces of sautéed spinach?” No! You give your body what it needs. If it needs water, you give it water. If it needs rest, you lie down and pull the covers over you. If it needs fresh air, you step outside. You relate to your body by providing for its needs. You relate to your body by providing gifts.
In that vein, Paul shows us an hors d’oeuvre buffet table just to whet the appetite for “higher gifts” (v 31), those being apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles, gifts of healing, helping, administration, and various kinds of tongues (v 28).
All of those gifts, whether large or small, are given to ensure “that there may be no division in the body,” because they are there to get the greatest and most necessary gift of all to you, Jesus himself, so that you could be in him.
Sometime this afternoon, stand in front of the mirror and take a good look. Don’t let your eyes deceive you. Speak to that person: “You are a marvelous new creation because and only because you have been baptized into the one Body of Christ.”
Yes, God most certainly knew what he was doing when he designed the body, and you are part of that grand design.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.