Resurrection: Exchanging Perishable for Imperishable – Lectionary (RCL) Reflection for Epiphany 7C (1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50)

1 Corinthians 15:35-50 New Revised Standard Version

³⁵ But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” ³⁶ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. ³⁷ And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. ³⁸ But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. ³⁹ Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. ⁴⁰ There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. ⁴¹ There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

⁴² So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³ It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ⁴⁴ It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹ Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

⁵⁰ What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

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                If we accept the premise, which we must accept by faith, that Jesus’s resurrection is the first fruits of our resurrection, then what does this look like? It’s a perennial question. The Corinthians were asking that question. The contemporaries of Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century were asking the question. Moderns ask the question. That question has to do with the “what if.” If humans experience resurrection, and this resurrection is bodily in nature (can resurrection be disembodied? And the answer is essentially no) then what does a resurrected body entail?

                Since the topic for discussion in this passage (and in the larger theological conversation) involves post-death experiences, we don’t have a lot of direct information to work with. That is, we can’t do scientific tests to determine what a resurrected body is like. While testimonies about near-death experiences abound, these testimonies vary widely in their details. Most of them say nothing about resurrected bodies. Here in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul speaks of bodily resurrection, he doesn’t provide a lot of details. It appears that for Paul there is continuity between the earthly/physical body and the spiritual body he offers up here, but there are differences as well.

                One thing to keep in mind is that for Paul, we’re not talking about a resuscitated corpse. What he is speaking of here is different from the story of Lazarus in John 11. According to that story, Jesus raised up Lazarus, who had been dead for some four days. In other words, he wasn’t sleeping in this tomb. In fact, John records using the King James: “he stinketh.” In the story of Lazarus, this form of resurrection was not permanent. He simply got a second chance at life.

                What Paul has in mind is something much more permanent than what happened with Lazarus. The body he speaks of here has continuity with our existing bodies, but it’s not exactly the same. He uses the analogy of a seed to a plant. The seed must die (be buried) so that the plant can rise. There is continuity between seed and plant, but they are also different. The message is that the seed (the perishable) must die so that it might emerge from the ground as a plant (the imperishable).    

                Before we move on to the major section of the reading from 1 Corinthians 15 we should note that the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary set aside verses 39-41 (I’ve included the text of the passage but put them in italics). These verses reveal that not all flesh is the same. Fish, animals, birds, and humans, all have their own kind of flesh or body. Not only that but there are heavenly and earthly bodies. Each has its own glory. The assumption of the lectionary creators, as opposed to Paul, is that this portion of the letter is not essential to the large point, which is that the perishable must give way to the imperishable so that we might transition from the old age into the new.

                As noted, from time immemorial, it would seem that people understand that the body itself is impermanent. Unless you take steps to embalm the body it will dissolve into the elements. We go “from dust to dust.” Whether we’re cremated or buried, it is assumed that the persons’ life force, however that is understood, has already departed the body with the last breath (ancients did not have the instruments to measure brain activity, so it would be the last breath). While the body might dissolve, many hold out hope that a person’s life force (soul/spirit) continues on in some form. That of course leads to the question of how this life force/soul/spirit reunites with the body, especially if the body itself no longer exists (one of the arguments against cremation).

                Paul doesn’t address these questions directly. What he does is offer contrasts. Using the metaphor of a seed that is sown, Paul speaks of that which is sown as perishable is raised imperishable. The same is true of that which is sown in dishonor. It is raised to glory. The weak are raised with power. In other words, what we experience now does not compare with what will experience in the next life.

                Again, we don’t have scientific proof for this promise. We don’t know what happens to us post-death. We must always keep in mind the possibility that when we die that’s it. We’re dead. Thus, like the Epicureans, we might as well eat, drink, and be merry (whether or not we die tomorrow). It was a live option for Paul’s audience. It’s also possible that our souls go to heaven and that’s it. For many in Paul’s day, life as a disembodied soul was attractive. It’s also possible that at death the soul and body separate, after which, at some point, perhaps on the day of judgment, the two will be reunited. It’s also possible that body and soul are one and inseparable. Paul definitely rejects the first option and likely the second, because he speaks of an embodied resurrection. As to whether body and soul separate at death or they remain united some form is less clear. While the idea that body and soul separate at death, with the soul awaiting reunion with the body, is very common, it has competition. Personally, I think Joe Jones has it right:

While the traditions have been much more diverse than commonly suspected in how life beyond death is characterized, I am here affirming that persons are resurrected at the time of death, encounter the judging and forgiving grace of God, and are transformed into grateful and fulfilling persons n the life of the eternal triune God. I have affirmed that this is a single destiny for all persons, thus denying that at death there is a resurrection to dual judgment, entailing blessedness for the righteous and faithful and condemnation and punishment for the unrighteous and sinful. I thus skirt all those questions about what happens to the dead as they await the general resurrection at the end of all things [Jones, A Grammar of Christian Faith, 2:734].

                Whatever the format of what happens after death, we can assume that Paul looking back to the second creation story in Genesis 2, where God takes clay, forms the first human from that material, and then breathes life into the body so that it becomes a living soul. When it comes to the resurrection, even if the physical elements dissolve into the elements, for Paul this is the seed that is raised with a body as God determines (1 Cor. 15:38).

                Standing at the heart of the passage is the contrast between the perishable and imperishable. The physical body that exists in this life must give way to the imperishable. The physical gives way to the spiritual. Though it would seem that even the spiritual body is material in nature, it is just that it does not perish. It is immortal. As we read this passage we need to be careful, as the contrast between physical and spiritual can suggest a body/soul dualism that is foreign to Paul’s Jewish background. As James Miller notes “Paul never speaks of the soul’s being resurrected, as if resurrection leaves the body behind. Rather, Paul’s overall point is that a continuity exists between a preresurrection body and a resurrection body. To get from one state to another requires transformation, but human existence never ceases to be bodily” [James C. Miller, Connections, p. 262].   

                As Paul continues his message here, he compares Adam and Christ. Adam, he says was a “living being” (“living soul” KJV), but Christ has become a “life-giving spirit.” This reflects something Paul wrote earlier in the chapter, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:22). For Paul, in our current state, we share Adam’s mortality (he is the “man of dust”). But, in the resurrection, we share in the immortality of the man “from heaven.” In verse 49, Paul writes that “just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” That is, our destiny, such that as we are transformed through the resurrection we are enabled to inherit the kingdom of God. This requires that we take on an imperishable identity, or as Paul writes later in the chapter, the mortal body puts on immortality (1Cor. 15:54).

                Paul’s wide-ranging discussion doesn’t give specifics about what resurrected life involves, but it is imperishable, immortal, and death no longer reigns. Yes, in the resurrection death has lost its sting!    (1 Cor. 15:55)