Not To Be Pitied! - 1st Corinthians 15:12-26 (Easter Sermon)
I would like to tell you two stories
that involve the feelings of pity.
An elderly couple walked into a
restaurant and ordered a hamburger and a soft drink. The waiter noticed the
elderly gentleman cut the hamburger in half and slide one portion over to his
wife.
Taking pity, thinking the poor couple
couldn't afford much to eat, the waiter offered to bring another burger to the
table.
“No, no,” said the husband. “We
share.”
Later, the waiter approached them
again, saying he would be happy to give them another hamburger. But the
response was the same.
“No, it's all right. We share.”
When the waiter noticed, however, that
the wife was not eating, he could restrain himself no longer. Approaching them,
he asked the husband, “Why isn't your wife eating?”
“Oh, she's just waiting for the
teeth.”
A young man started a new job at a local
restaurant. On a busy Friday night, the
owner suddenly emerged from the kitchen and handed him some money.
"We're in trouble," the
owner said. "We're out of quarters, and customers are waiting. Go next
door and get me $40 worth."
The young man ran to the supermarket
next door, but a cashier said she wasn't allowed to give out that many
quarters. Determined, he sprinted to a convenience store two blocks away, but
it was closed. At a gas station farther down the road, the clerk took pity and
gave him the four rolls of quarters. Twenty minutes after he'd left, the young
man handed the coin rolls to his boss. "Where are the quarters?" He
asked.
"Right here," said the young
man, completely out of breath.
The restaurant owner’s face sank.
"I meant chicken quarters."
In the first story, the waiter had
pity for this older couple that appeared not to be able to afford to each have
their own meal…then he has pity for the man’s wife as she just sits there while
her husband eats.
In the second story, a gas station
attendant evidently has pity on an out of breath waiter looking for
change. Of course, as the story
concludes, we have to wonder who we are supposed to have pity on—the waiter who
ran all over the neighborhood looking for change, or the restaurant owner who
can make change for anyone, but who can’t supply his chicken-hungry customers
with food.
Both stories evoke pity due to
misunderstandings—the first from not knowing the couple’s habits, the second
from not knowing what kind of quarters to get.
Which one evokes the most pity from you?
For me, it is the first story. I
mean, if a couple is having to share teeth, I think we ought to have pity one
whoever has to eat second. I mean, just
think, if you are really hungry, you are having to just sit there and wait
while your spouse enjoys their food.
With all this talk about pity, we may
need to ask, “what is pity?” According
to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, pity can be understood as: 1) “a sympathetic
sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy,” or 2) “something to be
regretted.”[i] The first waiter though the elderly couple
was suffering from poverty and felt pity…the gas station attendant evidently
saw a very distressed young man looking for change and had pity.
What does pity have to do with Easter
or our Scripture reading from Paul?
Well, according to Paul, if some people are right, then those who have
struggled to follow Christ are to be pitied above anyone else. Evidently there is an ongoing debate in the
church of Corinth. The debate centers
around resurrection. For those of us
gathered here this morning, I would think that at least 75% of us, if not 100%
of us are here because we believe that there is no question about the
resurrection. However, in the early
church there was quite a debate. We have
to understand the culture of the time and the heritage of the people. Among the early Jewish Christians there would
have been those who were influenced by Pharisaic tradition and others from
Sadusaic tradition. Those who had been
influenced that the Pharisees in their understanding would have believed in the
possibility of the resurrection of the body…the Sadducees did not. When you add the new Gentile Christians into
the mix—whose Greco-Roman influence would have them considering resurrection
from completely impossible to something that might happen once-in-a-while in
isolated incidents, but for whom the idea of a general resurrection of the dead
was completely foreign.
Paul, though, asserts that there can
be no question about the resurrection of the dead. It seemed that the Corinthians wanted to
accept and go with the resurrection of Christ as a given fact, but wanted to
debate as to whether or not anyone else would be resurrected. Paul says if you question the resurrection of
the dead, if you want to suggest that God won’t raise the dead, then you have
to include Jesus in that mix—in other words, no resurrection means no
resurrection, including Christ. And if
this is the case, if there is no resurrection of Christ, and therefore no resurrection
of any of the rest of us, then, Paul says, “we are of all people most to be
pitied.”
Paul says, if you want to feel sorry
for someone, if there is no resurrection—if Christ has not been raised from the
dead, then you better feel sorry for all of us!
Why?
Feel sorry for us because if there is
no resurrection then, since we have been saying that God raised Christ from the
dead, we are misrepresenting God…and if there is one person you do not want to
misrepresent, it is God, He will hold us accountable.
Feel sorry for us because without the
resurrection everything we have believed has been a lie, a joke, it means
nothing…it’s like learning that the free trip you won will really cost you as
you add in taxes, insurance, security deposits, tips, and any other fee that
those giving you the free trip want to add in…
Feel sorry for us because without the
resurrection we are still trapped in our sins…without the resurrection the
cross means nothing for without the resurrection Jesus was just some fanatical
man with a few teachings that foolishly allowed himself to be killed and it has
no redemptive power for us what so ever, and we are still completely estranged
from God…
Feel sorry for us because without the
resurrection those who have died, especially those who have died for their
faith, are nothing more than dead rotting corpses in the ground…it means
Stephen was stoned for no reason; it means that Dusty Miller, a Methodist
layman during World War 2 who was crucified in Thailand for his faith, died for
no reason; it means that Ri Hyon Ok was executed in June of 2009 for
distributing Bibles in North Korea died for no reason;
Feel sorry for us because if there is
no resurrection then we are simply wasting our time and our efforts…
Feel sorry for us because if there is
no resurrection then when we have put our life on the line (and Paul will tell
us repeatedly elsewhere all the times he has put his life on the line for the
sake of the Gospel of Christ), it has been for nothing…
Feel sorry for us because if there is
no resurrection then when we have denied ourselves the pleasures of this
life—eating and drinking and merriment to our hearts content—then we have lost
out on whatever joy we might experience…it means that when we came and watched The Passion of the Christ rather than
the NCAA Tournament, we wasted two hours of our life…it means that when we give
up Monday Night sitcoms to study The Way
of Jesus or the first part of American
Idol because we are on the way home from choir practice, we are wasting our
time…it means that when we choose to give to a mission project rather than go
out to eat, or fund a church renovation project rather that put a down payment
on a new luxury vehicle then we have thrown away our money…it means when we
give up a sporting event for a church social or turn down a vacation in order
to help with Vacation Bible School, then we have been completely foolish…
“…if the dead are not raised, then
Christ has not been raised. If Christ
has not been raised…we are above all people most to be pitied.”
However, my brothers and sisters, we
are not to be pitied. We do not need
anyone feeling sorry for us. Why? Because Christ has been raised from the
dead…and he is the first fruits of all who will be raised from the dead.
According to Paul we do not need the
pity of the world, because like that waiter with the old couple, the world just
doesn’t understand us. We do not folks
to feel sorry for us because of any sacrifice we make on behalf of the Gospel
because through Christ we have the promise that we are living for more than
what we can experience right now…we are living for the future that God has in
store for each of us. Paul reminds us
that just as death came into the world through one man, through Adam…so too
will we all experience the promise of true life, of eternal life, of
resurrection life through Christ. We
don’t need the pity the waiter or the restaurant owner in the quarter confusion
might have received, because we are not confused. We don’t need the pity because even if we are
temporarily suffering, distressed, or sorrowful, we know our joy comes in the
morning. We don’t need the pity because
there is nothing we regret. Christ has been raised, and God will keep His
promise and we who have given their lives to Christ will be raised as well.
He is risen!
He is risen indeed!
In the Name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
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