The Day Death Started Losing

Paul had already written the part of his letter about love, and then a long part about how to behave in church, and the friend writing it all down had filled sheet after sheet. (Paul usually said his letters aloud while a helper wrote, and signed the last line himself.) He was in Ephesus, across the sea from Corinth, and one more piece of news from the church there would not leave him alone.

Some of the believers there had died. Their families had buried them. Now some people in the church were saying, "Dead is dead. Nobody really rises from the grave."

Paul took a breath. "Write this," he said.

"Friends, remember the good news I brought you, the news that saves you. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried. And on the third day he was raised to life, just as the Scriptures said."

Then Paul listed the people who had seen Jesus alive. Jesus showed himself to Peter. Then to his closest friends, the ones called the twelve. Then to more than five hundred of his followers all at once. "Most of them are still alive," Paul said, which was his way of saying, Go and ask them! Then to James, Jesus' own brother, and to all the apostles.

"And last of all," Paul said, more slowly, "he showed himself to me." Paul had once hunted down Jesus' followers and dragged them off to prison. "I am the least of the apostles. I don't even deserve the name. But by God's grace, I am what I am."

Then came the hard part. "If the dead are never raised, then Christ was never raised either. Then our preaching is empty, your faith is useless, and you are still stuck in your sins. And the ones you buried are simply gone. If Jesus only helps us in this life, we are the saddest people in the world."

The pen stopped. The helper waited.

"But Christ HAS been raised from the dead!"

(If the helper's letters came out a little bigger there, nobody could blame him.)

"He is the firstfruits," Paul went on. Every spring, when the barley first turned gold, farmers in Israel cut the very first bundle and brought it to God, as a promise that the rest of the field was coming in.

"Death came into the world through one man, Adam," Paul said. "Rising from the dead comes through one man too. In Adam everyone dies. In Christ everyone will be made alive. Christ first. Then, when he comes back, everyone who belongs to him. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death."

Paul's letter sailed to Corinth, but it could not open a single grave there. What it could do was point the families to the first bundle, and tell them to wait for the field.

God's people have waited ever since, through more springs than anyone can count. People who belong to Jesus still die and are buried, like seed in the ground, and every one of them is part of the harvest.

And the first bundle is already in. One morning outside Jerusalem a grave stood open, and the man who walked out of it will never die again. One day he will come back for the rest of his field, and death, the enemy that took everyone, will be destroyed. Jesus came up first, and the whole harvest is coming in behind him.