Sermons 2025

Video

Sermon Outline

Do Not Fear Living and Even Dying for Christ, Because While in Adam All Die, in Christ All Will Be Made Alive.
    I.    We all die like Adam because we all sin like Adam.
    II.    But Christ died our death for us, so in Christ all will be made alive.

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 is the first letter of Saint Paul sent to the church in Corinth, the fifteenth chapter verses twenty-one through twenty-six and thirty through forty-two. 
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today.  How are you doing today? Are you happy to be alive? I pray that you are. There are many reasons that we can have joy over being alive. There is also a lot that we could be afraid of that might take our lives. Sickness, diseases, wild animals. There are many things that could kill us.

Paul tells the Corinthians he fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, presumably because he would not compromise his Christianity. Authorities threatened Paul repeatedly during his ministry. But Paul kept preaching Jesus, even when, eventually, he was killed for doing so.

Why do we die? To answer that question, 1 Corinthians 15 will help. Even if—or actually because—Paul is blunt. “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (v 22). There are only two possibilities. Are you dying with Adam or living with Christ? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

I.
In Adam, all die. All. No exceptions. You have Adam as an ancestor. So the next time you’re at a funeral, take a good long look at the body in the casket. Unless Jesus returns quickly, the day is coming when that will be you.
You can put me in a solid gold casket, and I’ll be just as dead as if you bury me in a cardboard box. I can cover your grave with a blanket of beautiful bouquets. The flowers will hide the dirt. But they will not change the fact that you’ll still be a lifeless corpse six feet under the soil. Because you are connected to Adam. Like I am. In Adam, all die.

How does the triage nurse in the emergency room determine if the unresponsive body that just arrived is dead or alive? Feel for a pulse, right? And check for breath. If possible, maybe find out if there are brain waves. If you have a pulse and breath and brain waves, you have life, right?

No. You have death waiting to happen. You started dying the moment you were conceived. So did I.

But not Adam. Adam started with life that did not have to end in death. Adam enjoyed a carefree existence. And he could eat from apple trees, peach trees, mango trees, and especially from the life tree.
God wanted Adam to continue living. So God told Adam not to eat from one tree. From the only tree with deadly fruit. God was protecting Adam. God warned that eating that fruit would kill Adam. Maybe Adam did not believe the consequences could be that dire. God says ignoring his Commandments will kill us. But we’re tempted to believe the consequences could not be that dire. So we sin. And we die.

You can try to blame Adam. After all, you inherited sin from him. But Adam isn’t the one listening to the devil when you break one of the Commandments. You are. Adam isn’t the one who’s harboring anger in his heart toward the person who makes you mad. Adam doesn’t force you to curse. Or lie. Or covet. Adam is not the one afraid to live for Jesus. You are.

You and I are in Adam. And in Adam all die. There is nothing you can do to stop that reality or reverse that reality. We may as well eat, drink, and indulge all our sinful natures’ desires, because tomorrow we die.

II.
Unless we have another Adam. Unless there is a human like Adam but unlike us, an Adam who starts life without any of our sinful inclinations. But this Second Adam needs to do what the first Adam failed to do. Heed God’s warnings. And resist every enticement of the devil. And then this Second Adam would have to do something even more unlikely. He’d have to be willing to die for people who ignore his warnings.

Jesus is the Second Adam who volunteers to pay your debt in full. He willingly and joyfully obeys the will of the Father, even when you owe death. He takes the blame for the sin that kills you. Your sin kills him instead of you. In that great exchange, Jesus gives you, His perfection. That leaves you sinless.

That is why we clothe the newly baptized in white. It’s also why we cover the bodies at each Christian funeral with a pall. The pall is white, to tell you the body beneath it belongs to a purified, baptized child of God. Ours has a red cross covered over with gold in the center to say the body beneath it was washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb, the Second Adam. The cross shows you where that blood was shed. Someday that pall may cover your dead body. 

Maybe the pall should also include an altar, where your Lord puts into your mouth his body that rose from the dead and his blood that pays the debt it would have taken an eternity for you to pay in hell.

In Adam, all die. But you have already died. With Christ. In Baptism. Now in Christ will all be made alive.

That’s why when Paul speaks of Christians who have died, he sometime calls them asleep. Oh, make no mistake; the bodies of Christians die. The wages of sin is death. We will collect our paycheck. But when you are in Christ, that death is not permanent. It is temporary. Like sleep.

One Greek word for resurrection means “to be awakened.” If you die before our Lord’s final advent, before the day Jesus returns, picture him reaching down into your grave, tapping you on the shoulder, and saying, “It’s time to wake up.” Then you will wake up from death just like you wake up each morning. You will get up out of your grave like you get up out of your bed. Because whether you’ve been dead only a few minutes or for a few centuries at his return, you still will be baptismally linked to the risen Christ. And in Christ, all will be made alive.

You no longer have death waiting to happen. You have life waiting to be lived, now in this old creation and fully in the new creation.

Death hurts. Death separates you from the people you love. Death is a blot on God’s good creation. So despise death. But do not fear death. Death has been conquered. Death will be undone. In Christ will all be made alive.
That is why Paul did not have to fear death when he faced the wild beasts. That is why you could say at your confirmation, “I am ready to suffer anything, even death, rather than compromise this confession of faith.” That’s why you can love your enemies instead of hating your enemies. Like Joseph did in our Old Testament lesson. His brothers sold him into slavery. But Joseph did not hold it against them. He believed in the God who uses evil to accomplish good, who uses the evil of death as the gate to life with him. You are in Christ. Even if they kill you for being a Christian, you won’t stay dead. Not permanently.

Maybe that’s why in, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul does not say the bodies of believers are buried. He says they’re planted, “sown” (v 42). Maybe we’ve been using the wrong word. We talk about burying Christian bodies. Maybe we should join Paul in saying we plant them. Because when you bury something, you put it in the ground and expect it to stay there. When you plant something, you put it in the ground and expect it to come out again. We plant the bodies of baptized believers in Christ. That’s why we do not need to fear living for Christ or dying for Christ.

It’s true that in Adam all die, but in Christ shall all be made alive. 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.